Explain How Children and Young People’s Development Is Influenced by a Range of Personal and External Factors. 2.1 and 2.2

Describe the expected pattern of children and young people’s development from birth to 19 years, to include:

Describe the expected pattern of children and young people’s development from birth to 19 years, to include:

There are many factors that can influence a child and young person’s development, particularly in relation to their background. The formative years can be termed as crucial in regards to development and any major setback can create many problems for the future.

A baby’s genes are determined at conception. If something is faulty at this stage, this can have a huge impact on the child’s development. This may be physical or intellectual. If a mother takes drugs or smokes when pregnant, there is an increased chance of delivering an underweight baby at birth. It can also lead to cognitive problems for the child as they get older.

Other factors that can affect a child’s development can include genetic problems passed on by a parent, mental or physical disabilities, poor living conditions causing illness such as asthma, learning difficulties, autism, dyspraxia, aspergers, poor communication skills due to sensory impairment such as deafness, blindness, partially sighted.

Negative reinforcers- Likely to make people repeat behaviour as well but the behaviour is being repeated to stop something from happening i.e. children who are going down the slide too quickly will learn to use their hands to stop themselves as they are unhappy about the speed.

There is also the argument between behaviourists to whether behaviour is learnt better through positive or negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is when someone does something correctly and we reward them with a sweet or chocolate. A strength of this is that the individual will repeat the action again, but a limitation is that the individual will expect the reward every time.

Environmental factors - if a child’s house is not maintained in a proper way it negatively affects their developments. If a house does not have proper

The area a child grows up in has an effect, for example if a child is brought up on a council estate in poor housing they are more likely to have health problems. If parents are not working or have low income jobs they are likely to buy cheaper food and usually this means lower quality which can lead to health problems. Children and their families may have lower expectations. They might settle for the life that id mapped out. If a child lives in high rise flats or appartments they have less oppportunities to play. In poor quality housing there may not be a garden or safe playing area. This is reducing the childs opportunities to develop their physical gross motor skills. This of course is not always the case

Children and young people often experience many things which have a direct impact on their development; things such as their family environment and structure, personality, hospital visits, childcare arrangements, and culture.

This encourages the child to continue the positive behaviour and they will be rewarded with positive attention and something for example as a toy or treat.

Parenting can be very difficult to those who are parents whether they are a mother a father or a guardian. Parents are obligated to find disciplining techniques that are suitable, and to the world, acceptable. Many people think that negative reinforcement is a good form of discipline, but what they don’t know is its causes increase in the behavior.

When I was in grade school I had teachers that would reward students for good grades and positive behavior thus making it more likely for us to work hard to do better. I remember receiving candy, a material reinforcer, recess extensions, an activity reinforcer, and even activity passes, an activity reinforcer, for doing well. If I proved to know the content well enough, then I was allowed to skip an activity in class to do something more fun such as a craft or a game instead. Or sometimes, those who did exceptionally well on a quiz would be allowed to go to lunch early which also meant a longer recess. These incentives to do well positively reinforced my work ethic so that I was studying more and working harder to achieve good grades. I noticed as I went through school that my work ethic strengthened the more positive reinforcement I received. If I began to slip, and my effort level decreased then I would receive negative reinforcement from my teachers in the form of a bad grade, a secondary reinforcer. This would then signal me to work harder so that I would not receive the same low grade as before. The consequences I encountered from both working hard and slacking off shaped the way I behaved in school. When offered incentives to do well and negative consequences for not performing as well, I was induced to work hard and get good grades. One particular example of Operant Conditioning I remember from my early education was when my father promised my class McDonalds lunch if all of us got 100% on our spelling test. I remember our entire class studying harder than we had before to achieve a perfect score on our test. We ended up making our goal and being the highest scoring class all year for spelling tests. My father’s positive reinforcement of our habit to study hard affected my class and for the rest of the year my class had a notably higher work

Pavlov is famous for his “Pavlov's dogs” experiment. He would sound a bell just before the dogs were fed. Eventually, the dogs would begin to salivate at just the sound of the bell. This illustrates the theory of classical conditioning.

1)Operant conditioning-Operant conditioning teaches certain behaviors through either rewards that increase wanted behaviors or punishments that decrease unwanted behavior.