Reflecting on Learning

 

Over all my years working with children and their families around the world, it is my deepest hope to be able to work on a level of advocating that will get me involved with international help for those I work to understand and protect. I have worked briefly with NAEYC at the local level to help with workshops for both families and professionals just like me. I would like to not only be a full time advocate working for NAEYC or another organization that works with families around the world. I would like to get back into traveling in order to help be part of the foundation of new organizations that work with children that are not given the opportunity to go to school because of situations beyond their control. For the time being I will work within my community to gain more knowledge of how to complete my goals and continue working with child services organizations to build my professional resources that I will need later.

I would like to thank all my classmates for their continued support and help during class and all the great ideas and insights given. I hope we can continue to keep in touch after we graduate and it would be awesome to be part of a group advocating for our families and children. We have one more class and we are done with this part and on to really putting our new knowledge to the test of what we learned-we will be a force to be reckoned with in society!!!! Best to everyone and hope to see you at graduation.

Week 7:EDUC-6358

Impacts on Early Emotional Development

This week we had to look deeper into a region around the world that was of interest to us and I chose to look at East Asia and the Pacific region which includes areas such as: Vietnam, Mongolia, and Myanmar to name a few. Since starting with Walden back in 2009 on my Bachelor’s degree I have learned and research many topic that both hurt and help our children everywhere and it never ceases to amaze me how children end up being the victims in every situation. Children in this region suffer from malnutrition, unhealthy water resources, since 1990, the proportion of people in the region with improved sanitation has risen from 49% to 66% – but this still means that around 670 million people do not have access to proper sanitation facilities. On top of this, some 236 million people, or 12% of the total population, lack access to clean water. (http://www.unicef.org). In many of these areas children are subjected to war zones that they have no way of escaping and often are made to fight for their survival and that of their families. Living in these conditions affects not only a child’s physical and mental health but most definitely their emotional health to an even greater degree. The East Asia and Pacific region encompasses one-third of the world’s population – or around 2 billion people. It also contains over one-quarter of the world’s children – around 580 million children in total. The region stretches from Mongolia in the north to Tonga in the south, and from Western China to the Cook Islands. The smallest country in East Asia and the Pacific, Niue, has 1,700 people while the largest, China, has 1.3 billion people. There are around 30 million children born in the region every year.

“In every country, in every culture, there is violence against children,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. “Whenever and wherever children are harmed, our outrage and anger must be seen and heard. We must make the invisible visible.” The damage to children caused by sexual and physical abuse is often very serious and lifelong. These children are more likely to be depressed and experience other types of mental health problems, to think about or attempt suicide and to engage in more high-risk behaviors than their non-abused counterparts (http://www.unicef.org/eapro/media_21211.html). The region has significant diversity – in peoples, cultures, environments, economies, political systems and potential. It includes some of the fastest-growing economies in the world as well as ten of the least-developed countries – six in the Pacific and four in East Asia. The Pacific is a distinct sub region within the wider region, with its unique characteristics, dynamics and challenges.

This region has many challenges that can affect children’s emotional well being and development because many are living in a war zone and do not have their basic needs met adequately. They are in many areas not given the resources to become educated as we are in the United States and other countries.

Doing the research this week has helped me to gain better insight into what we in America have and many take for granted and how children around the world have to fight for the smallest right that should be freely given to them. The children in this region need us to help them get what is rightly their and stand up for them in any way we can and that starts with being a child advocate for children everywhere. We need to hold the governments accountable for what is happening in all countries and not fall for the lies they spout daily and that many believe at the expense of children.

UNICEF, 2013. http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html

East Asia and Pacific region: http://www.unicef.org/eapro/activities.html

http://www.unicef.org/eapro/factsheets_on_eap_health.pdf

 

Week 6 Blog

The Sexualization of Early Childhood

 

Everywhere we look today we see sexualization in early childhood from what the children say to their toys, and what they watch each day on television. Over the years I have seen this issue go from something not talked about or even seen in many of my classes/preschools to being an everyday occurrence that many times needs to be addressed in some way. When we turn the television on our children are bombarded by ads for sexually explicit materials and of course they are going to ask questions and when they don’t get a good answer at home they come and ask us the next adult they can talk too.

In my personal or professional experience I have had many times where I have seen young children exposed to this type of an environment and my examples are listed below.

The first example is when I worked at our local before and after program and it was time for our annual boat regatta and the children wanted to wear very short shorts and tube tops (the top that barely covers a girls chest) for the team outfit and my young co-worker said it was fine but being the oldest member of the staff I put my foot down and stated that it was totally inappropriate for children of 9-11 to be wearing something like this for the whole community to see. I felt they should wear at least a t-shirt that covered everything.

Second, I have had children in my three to five year old class come to school wearing make-up and outfits that I would expect a young girl to wear if the parent’s decided it was okay. Some of the outfits barely cover their bottoms and make-up is that no child needs to wear in my opinion.

Lastly, I have had children in my class talk about what their parents are doing at home and I even had a little boy tell me about an operation his father had on his private area and that he was doing much better and he said this in front of the dad. I have to say we just looked at each other and then he took his son out of the room to talk to him in private. It was a very uncomfortable situation, but I think the father handled it better that I would have because I was speechless.

Everywhere I look today I see young children (mainly girls) wearing clothes that should not be made for someone as young as two or three and I feel the parents are setting the children up for trouble when they buy these types of things for their children because we have so many people in the world that will take advantage of a child for the simple fact that they are preying on someone that doesn’t understand why it’s wrong. Today’s movies and cartoons that are made for children are not really safe for them to watch because of the content and many parents don’t know what they are getting into or simply give in to the children when they say they want to see something.

“Girls and boys constantly encounter sexual messages and images that they cannot understand and that can confuse and even frighten them. They learn that sex is the defining activity in relationships, to the exclusion of love and friendship” (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009). When it comes to my concerns with sexualization of young children and how to lessen the negative impact on them would be to start with having parents find a way to really focus on what their children are watching, listening to in music, clothes they wear and the toys they are asking for. We as the adults that spend the most time with these young children need to find a way to help them understand the differing views they see everywhere. Children can learn that by accepting the views they see around them it can sometimes lead to sexual abuse, pedophila or prostitution in extreme cases (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009). It is necessary for the adults to take time to talk with children about safety with their bodies and about how we are the same but different in many different ways. We need to be ready to talk and answer questions in a simple way to help children understand their identities and to help keep them safe from all the hype they see everywhere they look.

Week 5

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

Our lives have the many isms affecting everything we do daily and the one that is my biggest nemeses is “racism”, I say this because it affects all our interactions with the families and children we care for daily. Even though I have lived in many places and with many different families I know I still have issues with racism. I will be honest saying that the areas I need to continue working to improve are racism and classism. Even though I have lived around the world and interacted with many cultural differences I still have moments when I feel one group is getting something that another group is not.

When we let any of the isms interfere with our classrooms, it will affect the whole child because they will not feel safe, loved, included in the group, and they can feel agression from another child or group. Some consequences that can occur with the families that are cared for daily might be unequal treatment in the classroom, not wanting to help certain children with activities, not comforting a child because of their race or social class. A child that is from a different race might not get the same attention as another child that is the same race or has the same social economic status as the teacher, caregiver, or peers. Anyone that has lived the military life or moved often can understand how a child might feel because they are always coming across as different to the children in the new classroom. I can relate to children that come from another country or even when they are just different that the majority of the children in the class because I have been there and I know how affects children’s feelings and can make them act out or become withdrawn from the group. We need to find a way to help all children feel welcome and one way is to show them that it is a great thing for us all to be different because otherwise the world would be very boring with everyone doing the same things. I work to learn some of each language that my children know so that I can at least greet them and their parents daily and I can tell this means a lot to them and adds to their feeling of being part of the whole group.