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The Importance Of Child Development

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Child development is complex because it is influenced by a wide range of factors such as culture. A child’s culture begins to influence them long before they are born. Parents from around the world hold different beliefs and raise their children in unique ways. Cultural norms can greatly affect which values parents consider important and how they share those values with children (Christensen, 2013). The timing of the development of certain skills and characteristics in children, depends on the importance the culture places on them (Buechner, 2015). For example, a good deal of value is placed on academics in many Eastern cultures, and so children spend many hours each day on math and science activities from the time they are very young. But, in the United States children are given a great deal more freedom to express themselves and experiment with things, because we as a society place value on creativity and innovation (O’Sullivan, 2016). In the U.S., the nuclear family is considered the ideal structure for raising children, but in countries like Japan and India, extended family and community members take a much larger role in child care and parenting (Christensen, 2013). Because each child is unique, caregivers need to form partnerships with families in order to meet the developmental and educational needs of their students. According to Copple and Bredekamp (2009) by understanding a child’s culture, early childhood professionals can “make classroom decisions that are

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