The Environment And Development Of Children

The lives of children are greatly influenced by the environment they grow up in, and the people they come in contact with. For years, psychologists, researchers, and social workers have studied children, and why they do what they do. All have developed many different perspectives on how to view social problems and the development of individuals.

Human development perspective examines the biological, psychological and social development of individuals pertaining to behavior (Hutchison, 2015). The ecological system is a theoretical perspective that examines the individual within the environment that it lives (Garbarino, 1992). There are five subsystems to consider when examining this the individual subject within this perspective; microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem. According to Garbarino (1992) the ecological perspective tries to explain how the environment effects the development of the individual. The ecological perspective also explores the risks and opportunities in the social environment that affect the subject within each sub-systems (Garbarino, 1992). Risk can be described as any thing that threatens development of the individual, while opportunities support and assist in the development. This paper will review the effects of the environment on an individual by applying the ecological perspective to the life and experiences main character in the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

Environment: Socialisation is important for children. Parents who offer their children varied opportunities in which to meet new people and experience new things give their children an invaluable gift. When they are babies, children need no more than the attentive, loving care given by their parents, but as they grow, it is beneficial for children to expand their worlds by making friends with other people and learning about different cultures. Children who gain a sense of confidence in their ability to interact with people will take them into adulthood making both their personal and professional lives

There are many factors that can influence the development of infants and toddlers. Two of the largest are biological and environmental influences. Biological influences can include gender, prenatal care, and the mother’s prior states of health. Environmental influences are widely ranged and can include, but are not limited to, income, housing, teratogens, and stimuli. While these two influences are different, they sometimes interlock, creating a cycle within each other.

Child development is the genetic and internal changes that occur in children during early years. There are many internal and external factors that affect a child 's growth and development. The connection between a child’s environment and a child’s development are explored in Heather O 'Neill 's lullabies for little criminals where a child named Baby becomes a product of her environment. This is explored through the early death of Baby’s mother, her being raised by a young father and her father 's drug addiction. Baby’s bad decisions and choices come from a lack of guidance necessary for a child’s social growth and development.

In There are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz, the way of life in Chicago's Henry Horner projects has a profound effect on all the residents who live there. The children become desensitized by the constant violence that they are forced to witness every day. Children are forced to walk home from school through the urban war zone of these housing projects. It is not unusual for the children to run home from school to avoid becoming casualties of the ongoing battle between rival gangs. The violence has affected Lafeyette and Pharaoh as much as anyone in the projects.

Providing a comfortable, safe and well supervised environment is important to meet the requirements of each individual child’s sleep and rest. Educators should ensure children are safe, healthy and secure in their sleeping or rest environment. Environmental factors can impact on the rest and sleep for children within an early childhood setting, these can include the noise level of the room, the darkness of the room, the temperature and the comfort of bedding or rest area. Educators should try to minimise noise level and provide a calm and relaxing feeling to the environment to help children get the sleep or rest needed, this can be done by playing soft music during sleep or rest times. Reducing stimulation will help children to sleep or rest,

Bronfenbrenner’s (1977, 1979, 1989, 1993, 1994) ecological theory suggested that child (human) development occurs for the child within the context of various environments. These environments, or systems, are influenced from within and between other environments. The individuals within each system influence each other through various transactions that occur between them.

In addition to play promoting pleasure as well as physical activity, play forms the holistic growth in children’s development, or to put it in another way using Brown (2003) acronym, acknowledged as ‘SPICE’; play represents the ‘social interaction’; ‘physical activity’; ‘intellectual stimulation’; creative achievement and emotional stability, (with the addition of “compound flexibility”) in a child’s development. Compound flexibility is the idea that a child’s psychological development occurs using the relationship between his/her environment with the adaptability of the child himself. Thus the flexibility of surroundings and his/her adaptableness can provide children the means to explore; experiment and investigate (Brown, 2003, pp. 53-4). On the contrary, the absence of social interaction and physical activity through the means of play can inhibit children’s overall development and without the consistency of play children suffer a “chronic lack of sensory interaction with the world, [which leads to] a form of sensory deprivation” (Hughes, 2001, p.217 in Lester and Maudsley 2006).

Human development is an essential aspect in early childhood education. This essay is going to discuss the theories of three human development theorists, Urie Bronfenbrenner, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s. Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory is concerned with family, cultural and social influences and all the other environmental elements. Bowlby’s Attachment theory and Stages of attachment and Ainsworth’s “Strange Situation” research which breaks down attachment into three types are related to the relationship between adults and children. These theories are all associated with socio-cultural theory, which is throughout the New Zealand early childhood curriculum Te whariki (Ministry of Education, 1996).

According to Child Trend (2013), it is necessary for children and youth to grow up in a safe environment because they would have a greater chance of a positive development. When children and youth grow up in an environment that is considered safe, they would have a stronger connection with people they interact with, more involvement with afterschool programs, volunteering and religious services (Child Trend, 2013). However, on the other hand, children and youth growing up in an unsafe environment face problems. Evidence shown by Child Trend (2013), stated neighborhoods that are unsafe, have a higher rate of child abuse and neglect, low birth weight, and infant mortality. Also, a dangerous environment is more likely to be in an area of poverty,

Child development is an amazing thing to watch in the way that children interact with one another and how they perceive the world that surrounds. While doing our research of child development we began to observe a group of kids ranging the ages 1 – 12. During these observations we noticed traits such as attachment, comfort, and love. Through the following examples we will proceed to observe development in our environment and explain its relativity to the text

This paper will discuss how a child’s development is influenced by environmental and cultural influences as well as parenting styles and education. This will be argued through four topics including

Infant development is greatly influenced by the environment which the infant grows in. Some important environment factors are the economic circumstances, cultural values, family structure, etc. These types of environmental factors can shift how the infant develops, and if certain milestones are achieved earlier or later. The environment has more of an impact on the infant than people may think it does.

Imagine a boy who has never crunched leaves underfoot as he winds down a forest trail, or a girl who has never followed frogs along a marsh. Imagine children who have watched Finding Nemo but never have seen a living fish in a pond, or have read Charlotte’s Web but never seen the morning dew settle on a spider’s filaments. Unfortunately, our imaginations do not need to stray very far to envision lives of children cut off from nature, solely surrounded by concrete, metal and bricks. Many Canadian educators intuitively recognize nature experiences as beneficial for youth, and various sources of information— their own experiences, poetry, movies or scientific studies—seem to support such intuitions. Despite the growing cultural awareness of the importance of nature for youth’s development, there seems to be a continuing emphasis on indoor, disembodied forms of education in classrooms, that are overly focused on abstract cognition at the expense of emotion, movement, and other processes rooted in body-environment interactions. Why not reconsider the significance of nature as a valuable object of learning, and reshape the current outdoor and nature narrative throughout our curriculum? Based on my own personal experience, Chambers’ affirmations and Doll’s rationale, nature should be considered as such.