My Connection to Play

“Play is important because it is the way in which children are able to use and reflect on their experiences, to represent their ideas and to ask and answer the questions that preoccupy them”.  Sandra Schmidt

“Play helps children weave together all the elements of life as they experience it”.  Joan Almon

I don’t have pictures, but I have vivid memories of playing with a cash register and money made out of newspaper when my two brothers and I would play store for hours in our home.  I also remember playing house and having baby dolls and a blanket which I used to put the dolls to sleep with.  I remember playing outdoors until it got dark or it was time for dinner.  The children in the neighborhood would play hot peas and butter and we would play punch ball.  I remember how major these two games were; every kid in the neighborhood would play and we had so much fun.  I also remember that the park in our neighborhood did not have a basketball hoop so the boys would use the monkey bars as a hoop and play basketball for hours.

The adults that were in my life when I was younger bought toys that supported my play experiences.  The toys back then were not computerized, but could be used to develop a child’s imagination. My parents would also give us empty containers, newspaper and pennies to use for our time playing store. My mother would always encourage my brothers and me to go play.  She may have done so to get us out of her hair, but she always said “go play”.  Another example of support was the adults did not involve themselves in our play.  It was a time of exploration, decision making on our part and learning.  My brothers and I would work through our differences during our play time without adult interference.

Outside of the children in my class the only other children I have the real opportunity to see interact are my step-grandchildren.  When they come to my house they have their own room.  I have some games and legos that they might play with, but they don’t really play with these things.  I have observed them playing for hours on their handheld computer game devices.  Occasionally the youngest will ask for paper and draw, but they don’t participate in imaginary play or dramatic play like my brothers and I did.  These children spend a great deal of time also watching TV.  When I was a child we had specific times of the day we were allowed to watch TV and the shows we watched were monitored.  Play today, from what I have observed is very different.  My step-grandchildren are not allowed to play outdoors unless my husband is outside with them.   So they don’t have the time of exploration I had when I was young.  What I see as the problem for children today is the threat of bodily harm if they are allowed to play outdoors unsupervised and the invention of computer games.  My hopes for children of today is to have what I had when I was a child and that is to have hours of unsupervised play.

The role of play in my childhood helped me become creative, independent, physically agile and cooperative with my playmates.  I think the hours of unsupervised time of play that I experienced as a child help me to be less stressed by the demands that school/academics played in my life.  I think having the opportunity to play helped me become a better student in school as a child and an adult, because I was able to be a child when I was a child.

Relationship Reflection

Relationships/Partnerships are important to me because it is a way to gather information about the children in the program.  Information that I gather helps me plan and strategize my lesson plans and teaching style with each child.  I recently had a conversation with the mother of Andriana, who is speech delayed.  I told her that Andriana speech has not improved over the last two months since her meeting with Babies Can’t Wait.  Babies Can’t Wait is an organization that handles children with a speech deficit.  I wanted to talk to her because Babies Can’t Wait told the mother to give Andriana a couple of months to see if she improved.  Andriana’s mother enlightened me to the fact that at home Andriana was using her words more they were better able to understand what she was saying.  Her progress at home was a surprise to me and my co-teacher.  The two of us now had to figure out how to get Andriana to use her language in the classroom.  This conversation was very important to this child’s development and success and created a challenge for me as a teacher.

 I have several professional relationships with people in different functions in Early Childhood Education.  My relationships with the family advocates proves to be one of the most important relationships that I have.  The family advocates work very closely with the families.  They provide me with important information about the children in my program and I also provide them with information.  My relationship with the Director and Executive Director serves me well in that they provide information about things that are happening in the agency and events and activities that are in the planning mode for the families.

I am challenged with maintaining a partnership with a few of my families.  Mainly because they do not drop-off or pick-up their children so we do not make contact with each other daily.  What I do to stay in contact with them is periodically call and let them know how their children are doing and advise if there are any problems.

Each of these relationships helps me be a better teacher.  Information is powerful especially when you are teaching.  I think I am helpful to the professionals  that  I have a relationship with in that I bring suggestions, knowledge and encouragement to the table.

Thank you

I just would like to thank everyone in group 2 for their blogs.  I have learned a great deal in this course and some of what I learned I learned from you.  I would like to especially thank Gwen Phelps and Cassie Massaker I definitely visited your sites, sometimes I commented other times I just read.
I wish everyone the best in their future endeavors.


 "When we deal with children we are not merely one person.  We are at least three people.  We are parents of our children...we are children of our parents...we are adults with our own interests and needs.  Often these three people within us do not agree and may have different ideas...about what should or shouldn't be done."  -Magda Gerber

Testing for Intelligence

In early childhood children should be assessed based on the interplay of domains.  They should be assessed cognitively, socially, gross and fine motor skills because these are the areas that we concentrate on when we teach them.  Each of these areas should be tested.  Each overlap as children develop.

Average scores on intelligence tests are rising substantially and consistently, all over the world.  These gains have been going on for the better part of a century.  These increases are called the Flynn Effect.  The rate of gain on standard broad-spectrum IQ tests amount to three IQ points per decade and it is even higher on certain specialized measures. (Neisser,  1997).   Many factors have influenced these gains in IQ tests such as child-rearing practices.  Parents everywhere are now interested in their children’s cognitive development and are probably doing more to encourage it than they did in the past.  Children are spending hours watching shows such as Sesame Street and other educational programs.  Better health and nutrition is a factor over the years, there has been a marked improvement in worldwide nutrition.  This means better nourished brains would allow individuals to perform better.   Increase of education, longer formal schooling years and an increase in culture-free IQ tests.  Visual and technical environment has increased.  Video games and computers each successive generation has been exposed to far richer optical displays than the one before.

Reference:

Neisser, Ulric (September-October 1997).  Rising Scores on Intelligence Tests  retrieved from  http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/num2/rising-scores-on-intelligence-test/1

Sandhu, Inderbir  (2002-2011).  Decline and Increase in IQ Scores   retrieved from:  http://www.brainy-child.com/exper/iq-score.shtml

Stress on Children's Development

The only stressful situation I can think of was a family in New York that experienced a terrible tragedy.  I was about 10 years old at the time when a young girl committed suicide by jumping from the 16^th floor of a friend’s apartment.  Her brothers were 6 and 8 and were friends with my younger brothers.  What made this so traumatic is her body was found near the playground and her brothers saw her lifeless body lying there.  This incident caused stress and trauma not only to her brothers, but to most of the children in the playground.  My mother took the three of us to counseling at our pediatrician’s office.  I had terrible nightmares for several weeks.   My mother suggested to this young girl’s mother that she might consider counseling for her boys and referred her to our pediatrician.  The community reached out to the family in many ways to help them get through their loss.   About  a year later the family moved away, but her brothers never seemed the same after this tragedy.

I read an article about a five year old girl named Marjan she and her aunt who is 10 years old spend their days collecting trash in the community.   The trash that they collect is used as fuel for cooking and heating.  Marjan’s family is poor.  She lives in Kabul Afghanistan where it has been said “it is the worst place in the world to be a child”.  One in five children do not live past five years old.  Many children die from hypothermia.  Many children are forced on the streets due to poverty.  Marjan little brother died from a cold.   Due to the effects of extreme poverty young children are deprived of their most basic needs, decent food, health, immunization and protection.  Many are exposed to the extreme cold of the winters in Afghanistan.    Many of these children will suffer from impaired brain development due to the malnutrition and lack of stimuli/interaction from their parents.   The only organization I was able to find that is working on combating the problem of Poverty in Afghanistan is Save the Children.

 Poverty can present many risk factors:  Inadequate nutrition, substance abuse, maternal depression, exposure to environmental toxins, trauma/abuse, and inadequate daily care of children.    Parental stress particularly impacts upon the developing child disrupting the neuron pathways of a child’s developing brain.  This can cause long term problems, such as learning disabilities, behavior, physical and mental health.  Studies have shown that children raised in poverty have poor academic achievement, are less likely to attend college, are more likely to become a teen parent, are more likely to smoke and use illegal drugs, are more likely to be unemployed.    One intervention for children of poverty is high-quality child care environment.

References:

Damon, Arwa (2008).  Child Scavenges for family's survival in Afghanistan.  Cable News Network retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/2011/World/asiapcf/01/04/afghanistan.child.trash.scavenger

Policy Brief (2009).  The impact of poverty on early childhood development.  retrieved from http://www.rch.av/emplibrary/ccch/pb14_impact_poverty_ecd.pdf

NCCP (June, 1999).  Poverty and Brain Development in Early Childhood retrieved from http://nccp.org/publication/pub_398.html

Immunization

Childhood immunization has recently come under scrutiny because there have been studies that link immunization to autism.  Many advocates of Autism believe that thimerosal mercury which is a preservative in some vaccines was the cause.  Since 2001 thimerosal mercury has been removed, but the rate of the onset of autism has not decreased.   It is the same rate of other countries where thimerosal continues to be used. 

Immunizations is said to have had “a greater impact on human mortality reduction and population growth than any other public health intervention besides clean water” (J.P. Baker, 2000).   Immunizations in the United States have been mandatory if you wanted your children to attend school.  But recently at least 21 states have adopted what is called the personal belief exemption which allows children who have not been immunized to attend school.   These exemption rates are going up. 

Vaccines have been so effective that parents of today have no idea what many of these diseases look like and what the diseases cause.   Americans no longer see the shrunken legs and paralyzed children affected by polio.  It is my opinion that the benefits of immunization far outweigh the disadvantages and children should still be required to be immunized against these diseases. 

In India immunization such as DPT vaccine and polio vaccine are provided under Universal immunization Program, but there are several others such as varicella, vaccine against chickenpox and Pneumococcal infection that are not covered under this program.  The MMR vaccine that protects against Measles, Mumps and Rubella diseases have not been a priority for health agencies in this area.

The polio disease is still seen in countries such as South Asia, Utter Pradesh and Bihar states in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan and Africa.  Measles, Mumps and Rubella are still seen in other countries such as Western Europe. 

I choose this subject because I read how positively it has impacted mortality rates around the world.  After researching this topic my opinion remains the same that immunizations are very necessary and the dangers are far less than the benefits.  I would always recommend to parents to immunize their children.

References:

Berger, K. S. (2009). The developing person through childhood (5th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.   Chapter 5 page 150

Park, M. (2008).  Where Vaccine doubt persists.  Cable News Network   Retrieved from http://www.CNN.com/2010/Health/10/20/why.not.vaccinate/index.html

Article (2008).  Vaccines for Adopted Children.   National Network for Immunization Information (NNii)  Retrieved from http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/general/vaccines-adopted-children

Birthing

My only experience with birthing was my own. In 1991 I went into premature labor at 26 weeks of pregnancy. I was visiting New York, my mother and was taken to the hospital. My obstetrician deemed my pregnancy hi-risk and had a procedure called a cerclage which assisted in my womb remaining closed. It was decided after about 6 hours of trying to stop labor that they were going to deliver my son by c-section. I was given an epidural for pain. I was taken to an operating room where the delivery was performed.  My mother was present with me.  My son was born at 1lb 4 oz. He remained in the hospital for approximately 4 months until he reached 5lbs and I was hospitalized for approximately 3 days. I was told by doctors that my son may have a host of problems due to the early delivery. The only problem he had was respiratory problems when he had a cold up until he was approximately 5 years old. He is smart and healthy 19 year old today. Due to the circumstances regarding my child's birth I am very pro hospital and doctor delivering babies. If I were in another country the out come regarding my child's birth may have been tragic. Even with a full term delivery so many things can and do go wrong. Having trained professional decreases tragic outcomes.

I researched two countries birthing procedures and found that I am happy I live in the United States. In the Netherlands pregnant woman don't see obstetricians but instead are referred to midwife. Doctors only intervene in high risk Case or if complications arise during delivery. Dutch woman decide whether they will deliver and home or at a hospital and more than half of them choose home delivery. The pregnant woman is responsible for obtaining medical supplies necessary for home birth it is called Kraampakket. Epidurals are rarely given. If given it would be because an anaesthesiologist schedule permitted administration of such. If a mother gives birth early in the day at a hospital she and baby may go home in as little as two hours. Then a system called Kraamhulp maternity home care is put in place. For seven days a nurse would visit the house and tended to medical needs as well cleans, cooks and provides basic parenting skills.

In Germany woman also see midwives for their prenatal care. It is a law that a midwife must be present at every birth and a doctor is optional. A local custom parents must choose child's name from an approved government list. Any exceptions must be approved. The reason for the policy is an effort to thwart potential ridicule of a child with a name that is too different.

In Japan women strive to give birth without the use of pain killers. It relates to the Buddhist perception of suffering: Labor pains act as a kind of test that a woman must endure in preparation for the challenging role of motherhood. Japanese women deliver in hospitals. The baby's father is only allowed in the delivery room if he has taken prenatal classes with the mother. If a c-section is performed the father must wait in the waiting room. After leaving the hospital mother and baby traditionally stay with the mother's parents for months or sometimes longer. The new mother must stay in bed for 21 days. During this time mother and baby are visited by friends and eat a celebratory food Osekihan (red rice and red beans).

My birthing experience was very different from these other countries in that a doctor was present during my delivery and it was done at a hospital.  I was given the option of an epidural.  My baby had the best care because a doctor tended to him and the complications were minimized.  My mother's presents was soothing for me during this stressful time and my recovery time was minimal.