Three Specific Areas In Early Childhood Development

This chapter outlined three specific areas in Early Childhood development, section 1. How does a young child’s body and brain grow and change? 2. How do young children’s motor skills develop? 3. What are some important aspects of young children’s health? The first chapter outline could have consisted of all my N because it was all relatively new to me but I wanted to incorporate some of the rest of the chapter into my new knowledge so I picked out a few interesting facts from this section. A new fact I obtained through this chapter that chronically ill children tend to be shorter than their more healthy peers and children that are physically abused and neglected do not secrete adequate growth hormones and this can also restrict their
physical growth. In the United States 10,000 to 15,000 children show signs of growth hormone deficiency and without treatment of specific hormones a child’s growth could be effect and may only reach 5 feet tall. The most rapid growth occurs in the temporal and parietal lobes between the ages of 6 to puberty and the role these two areas play is an increase in language and spatial relations. The development of gross motor skills in relation to age was interesting at 3 years of age children begin enjoying simple movement, then at 4 years of age they become more adventurous and by 5 years of age they enjoy all the above activities but become even more adventuresome it seems so quick.
The visual expectations test in figure 8.7 on page 229 was intriguing that children could not determine when they dropped the ball through a tube it did not follow the tube but they thought it would be gravity pulled straight to the slot directly below the point they released the ball. The four developmental stages in relation to the children’s drawings was interesting how there are specific characteristics to look for with each age beginning with, age 2 containing the basic 20 scribbles, age 2 to 3 placement stage, age 3 shape stage, age 3 to 4 design stage, and finally age 4 to 5 pictorial stage. Sleep and sleep problems two topics of interest included night terrors which are less common, little to no memory of the dream, children return to sleep relatively quickly and thankful children normally grow out of this stage. Nightmares normally awaken the child occur closer to morning not normally right after falling to sleep. The Nutrition section had a significant amount of new information,
1. The study that revealed that 45% of children’s meals exceeded the recommended Saturated and Trans fat levels which can raise a child’s cholesterol levels and increase their risk for heart disease. 2. The survey completed by parents with overweight children age 2 to 17 years of age where the parents did not think their child was overweight. 3. The average American child consumes about 2 pounds of sugar a week.
(OMG) 4. The statistics of obesity in children is unbelievable but on a positive note the numbers during 2011-2012 showed a substantial drop in the obesity rate of children 2 to 5 years of age and did decline by 43%. 5. A study completed involving 34 countries the United States had the second highest rate of childhood obesity. Obesity in children is attributing to the increase in type 2 diabetes and hypertension in children younger than 5 years of age. Physical activity has shown a decrease within our society and now it is being reported children in elementary school settings are getting only half the required amount of active necessary to live a healthy lifestyle. I understand academics is necessary but I believe we have forgotten as educators if we do not have healthy well balanced children our culture pays the price later on with a very sick society of adults. I was surprised that the seventh leading cause of death to young children is attributed to firearms the United States ranks as one of the highest compared to 26 other countries. Those countries involved in the test Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands had zero fatalities to children in their respective
countries. This statistic is easily rectified reducing access to firearms in your own home is a priority. My husband owns guns and even though we do not have children we have children who visit us and I thought it was necessary to have a gun safe in our home their inexpensive and definitely give an individual piece of mind something so easily installed in an hour and can save a life time of pain due to a child’s death.