Personal, Social, and Emotional Development of Children in Early Years - Essay Example

Personal, Social, and Emotional Development of Children in Early Years Personal, Social, and Emotional Development (PSED) holds immense importance and myriad ramifications for children’s learning and development. It not only plays a fundamental role in supporting the development process in children but is also recognized as a key element ensuring success in life as a child grows. PSED is distinguished in sense that it helps children tremendously in developing positive attitudes about themselves and others and this is especially important when they have to relate with other people outside their homes. However, PSED may fail to reach the desired objectives without sufficient involvement of responsible adults who as parents and caregivers should constantly encourage the children to follow the guidelines by giving them positive feedback and modeling good character. PSED cannot support children’s wellbeing in isolation as it essentially relies abundantly on an appropriate role played by influential adults in children’s lives who may be facing different problems. This essay is actually based on contemplating the nature of role played by PSED in children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in an attempt to evaluate what important literature has to say on the subject. Moreover, this essay will also discuss some general strategies implemented to combat negative behaviors in ADHD children. The aim of the literature review and discussion is to find out how positive feelings could be encouraged in children with ADHD who have disruptive behavioral and gross social interaction issues. Before advancing to discussion, I would like to introduce a child A aged 36 months who has been diagnosed with ADHD. He lives with both his parents and grandparents and has one younger sister. It is discovered that child A has significant problems in interacting with others and building relationships. To cap the matters, he also has difficulties in concentrating at the nursery which negatively interferes with both his ability to cooperate with the teachers and positively interact with fellow children. It is apparent that this child has sufficient early signs of emotional and social difficulties to keep him from developing positive feelings about himself and others which is why he does not feel confident enough to build strong social relationships. This inability to appropriately interact and adjust in different settings inculcates profound sense of loneliness and hopelessness in a child and if unaddressed, such chaotic issues readily grow into fast driven pandemonium. Therefore, it is exceedingly important to acknowledge any disturbing or unusual behavioral pattern displayed by any child in his/her early years to keep him/her from growing into a troublesome and emotionless adult. Encouragement of parents in this regard can truly create a change as “this helps the child feel valued and special and gives them a sense of self-worth” (Early Years Matter 2012) which apparently lacks in child A though he lives with both his parents. It could be that there is a lack of encouragement at his home which is why he has drawn inwardly as a coping mechanism. Quite a collection of worrisome issues are experienced by children from all backgrounds in early years especially once they go outside and join schools and if the parents due to any reason avoid paying due attention to such issues, the chances of behavioral imbalance outgrow any positive outcomes expected from a troubled child. There are numerous psychological factors which should be scrutinized before advancing on to correcting a troubled child’s behavior and improving his/her personal, emotional, and social development. Many such factors may also have significantly influenced child A’s self-image and identity to the extent that he started showing early signs of ADHD. All these factors are also associated with potential consequences for personal, emotional, and social welfare of a child. Research stresses that any strategy to combat negative behaviors in a child in any setting must be implemented after acknowledging the associated consequences. Children in crisis are basically children in agony, turbulence, and anxiety. It is clear than child A is exposed to some sort of internal or external crisis which is not letting him concentrate, build relationships, and develop positive attitudes about himself and others. Research based on young children of up to age five suggests that environmental risk factors are potentially capable of influencing the normal development pattern of a child in early years. This is why it is stressed that emotional management of troubled children should be started in their early years as “studies show that programs focusing on emotion management are more effective for younger than older children” (Wallace 2011). Living in an unsafe community fraught with violence or aggression, receiving poor quality of attention and care from adults, and lack of support and guidance are all crucially powerful environmental risk factors which could paralyze a child’s ability to positively interact with others. “If the environment of the society is tense and emotionally charged” (Dutta 2012), the children also tend to develop disturbing emotions in accordance with the state of the society they live in and become emotionally unstable. Parental and community support is exceedingly important for a child to understand many intricate and challenging emotional and social areas (Early Years Matter 2012). The place to which a child belongs basically plays a role in shaping his/her idea about life or the society at large. This is because research has repeatedly “linked the development of children to the wider social circles that surround them” (Duncan & Arntson 2004). If a child grows up in a violent community which refuses to follow any guidelines or respect the social code of conduct, he/she is more exposed to the risk of developing similarities with the people around him which can both readily and gradually make him/her unable to develop close or healthy affiliation with anyone. This is because an early childhood lesson for such a child growing up in an unsafe community would be that aggression is the only tool to get things done. Such negative lessons acquired at a very early age are seldom forgotten. In bad communities, “distrust and isolation out of fear may become the norm, making children more vulnerable to psychosocial harm” (Duncan & Arntson 2004). That is why PSED programs and other psychosocial interventions aim at breaking the cycle of violence as this is fundamentally important. However, environmental risk factors are least likely to influence child A as he is apparently living in a safe and supportive environment with both his parents and grandparents. Then, there are family risk factors like severely depressed or anxious parents, parental substance abuse, poverty, or nasty arguments which can individually disturb a child very much in psychological terms and cause him/her to behave unusually emotionally and socially. Violent parental arguments can cause a child to develop “intense anxiety disorders or posttraumatic stress disorder” (Cohen, Groves & Kracke 2009) and he/she may also learn to show temper tantrums over little issues. “He will throw his toys and other things in a fit of anger” (Dutta 2012). Personal wellbeing of a child as young as 3 years old is at high risk if the parents repeatedly have nasty arguments between themselves or if they heavily abuse each other in front of the child. It could be that child A’s parents have some sort of family difficulties like depletion of financial resources or they may have nasty temperaments themselves. The parental behavior inflicts direct response of the same nature on the child’s behavior. This is because “children’s development is inextricably connected to the social and cultural influences that surround them, particularly the families and communities” (Duncan & Arntson 2004). It could be that child A is having issues in feeling positive and interacting with others because his parents are not modeling good behavior for him. Research stresses that children from all backgrounds essentially “need role models – adults who show them how to be with others; how to be kind and to understand why people behave in certain ways” (Early Years Matter 2012). This is why child-focused psychosocial projects try to ensure children’s success by creating supportive environments for them. Child-focused psychosocial projects are those that “promote the psychological and social well-being and development of children” (Duncan & Arntson 2004). They heavily stress on abundant involvement of influential adults. A school is understandably a major source of emotional and psychosocial development for a child where he/she not only learns but also becomes a social being. “Schools have become recognised as important locations for addressing student wellbeing” (Wallace 2011) because they provide credible opportunities to promote a child’s mental health and help him/her in moving past internal issues. Therefore, the teachers at nurseries should conduct such programs for the young children which “contribute to a child’s feeling of safety and emotional security” (Duncan & Arntson 2004). Also, the development programs need to be especially tailored to meet the needs of the children because it should be understood by the teachers that many children may have difficulty concentrating otherwise due to the psychological consequences of various complex issues like ADHD as in case of child A. The socio-ecological perspective also identifies that “children must be understood in the context of their individual traits” (Cohen, Groves & Kracke 2009). Therefore, it is critically important that the main objective of such programs should be related to “individual treatment and the prevention of further difficulties for students identified as having problems” (Wallace 2011) like child A has been diagnosed with ADHD. Emotional and psychosocial development programs conducted at schools are more effective if they passionately address the means to promote mental and social wellbeing of the children instead of debating more as to how to prevent mental illness. The effectiveness of these programs also depends on the involvement of parents and the community and the time period for which they last (Wallace 2011). Within-child psychological risk factors like gross temperament and health issues can also hinder a child’s normal PSED. It is a well researched reality that poor physical health can heavily influence mental health of a child (Wallace 2011). Physically inept children are least likely to concentrate which may makes them irritable over not being able to process their thoughts or certain social processes. This may even make them emotionally unstable because the conflict between reality and their mental processes may become too big for them to handle. It is claimed that “children who are weak remain irritable, easily excitable and emotionally unstable” (Dutta 2012). ADHD is linked to emotional turbulence and it is claimed that “children with emotional disorders have an increased risk of developing physical disorders” (Wallace 2011). It could be that child A has health issues or is having difficulties coping with his teachers or fellow students at the nursery and has the tendency to lash out over minor things due to which he is left unable to concentrate and develop close bonding with anyone. He may also be uncomfortable with the level of attention and care provided by his parents and he may also have low self-esteem because he may feel that his parents or grandparents pay more attention to his younger sister than him. It is a fact that young children many times develop serious jealousy issues and become withdrawn once their younger brothers or sisters arrive in the family and sometimes, this jealousy matures with time and lasts for life. The elder children in such cases become increasingly possessive about their parents especially mothers and may even start showing physical signs of distress like biting nails or pulling hair. They feel threatened that their place of superiority and dominance in their home is taken away from them and as a response, they withdraw socially as being unable to process their feelings around the reality. Early intervention of such disturbed children is critically needed in order to promote their wellbeing at homes, schools, and in life (Lieberman & DiMartino 2005 cited in Cohen, Groves & Kracke 2009). Child A is displaying early signs of anxiety and emotional distress which can be a product of within-child risk factors like jealousy, possessiveness, insecurity, or fussy temperament. PSED programs stress that parents in this regard can play a crucially important role by building strong support systems and acting more attentive and caring towards their troubled child than ever before to keep the negative emotions from rooting inside his raw mind permanently. “High-quality early care and education programs can enhance physical, cognitive, and social development” (Cohen, Groves & Kracke 2009) of the children displaying early signs of emotional and psychological disturbance which shows the undeniable importance of early care. Children tend to imitate the way their parents express emotions and ultimately acquire what they see. If the behavior of parents is stable and they way they express their emotions for each others and for others is consistently positive, the child also learns to “express his emotions in a balanced manner” (Dutta 2012). Therefore, parents should model supportive behavior for the benefit of children. Research on children’s psychosocial development also implies that “a child’s well-being and healthy development require strong and responsive social support systems from the family to the societal levels” (Duncan & Arntson 2004). Psychosocial grooming and programming of children as young as 3 years old is intensely importance and the need of the time. Both Erikson’s trust and autonomy and Mahler’s separation-individuation for socio-emotional development in toddlerhood consider warm, responsive, and sensitive parenting absolutely essential for good personality development in the toddlers. A child’s sense of self is developed more positively if parents and teachers are responsive and provide suitable guidelines. A healthy outcome in a toddler like child A depends increasingly on the mother’s behavior and if challenges arrive in the form of early signs of anxiety and distress displayed by a child, then they can be resolved significantly by warm and sympathetic caregiving both at home and nursery. There are numerous strategies used to manage challenging behaviors in the children. One of the most valuable, practical, and the simplest techniques to implement in this regard is to model good behavior (Olson 2008). When parents or teachers model appropriate behavior as implied by Erikson’s theory, children acquire this attribute from them and try to imitate them as discussed earlier. Moreover, a teacher’s or parents’ instructions to the students in the classroom or homes should be very clear and concise (Olson 2008) because many disruptive behaviors occur when any child with a learning difficulty or concentration problem as in case of child A finds as simple task as arranging books a significant challenge due to misunderstood instructions which are delivered too fast. One way to respond to challenging behavior displayed by disturbed children is to simple ignore them as being exceedingly attentive to a child regardless of the situation does not prove to be an ideal solution every time. “This strategy can be effective in dealing with annoying behaviours such as whining, pouting, screaming and tantrums” (Irish National Teachers’ Organization 2004). But, it should be remembered that withdrawn children like child A suffering from early signs of ADHD should not be ignored as ignorance is also not an ideal solution in every situation. Also, the strategy of ignoring does not work in case of more disruptive behaviors like physical abuse, stealing, and destruction which need to be strictly handled. For such children with particularly annoying or disruptive behavior, a behavior plan should be designed which should “focus on one behaviour at a time and the achievement of the targets should be reinforced positively” (Irish National Teachers’ Organization 2004). Concluding, this much becomes clear from the above discussion that not being able to relate with others is one of the major obstacles encountered by socially inept children which leads to fostering a wide variety of negative emotions like low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. General consensus is that PSED programming of children in early years is crucial because it trains them in three principally valuable behavioral areas related to self-awareness, emotional management, and building relationships. If parents are in crisis, children imbibe the bitterness and severity of the family catastrophe and are very likely to develop disruptive behavioral patterns as in case of child A. It should be remembered that teachers in addition to parents can play a significant role in this regard by identifying disrutive patterns in the children and encouraging positive development in them by designing behavioral plans. When gathering as many threads of information as possible related to a troubled child’s personal, social, and emotional ill health and to support sound development, a comprehensive and logical approach should be taken by the parents to understand the thought processes of the toddlers in a better way. References Cohen, E, Groves, BM & Kracke, K 2009, Understanding Children’s Exposure to Violence, viewed, 02 February, 2013, Duncan, J & Arntson, L 2004, CHILDREN IN CRISIS: GOOD PRACTICES IN EVALUATING PSYCHOSOCIAL PROGRAMMING, viewed, 01 February, 2013, Dutta, J 2012, What are the Factors that Affect Emotional Development in Children?, viewed, 02 February, 2013, Early Years Matter 2012, Personal, Social and Emotional Development, viewed, 02 February, 2013, Irish National Teachers’ Organization 2004, Managing Challenging Behaviour: Guidelines for Teachers, viewed, 02 February, 2013, Olson, K 2008, Strategies for Children with Challenging Behaviors, viewed, 02 February, 2013, Wallace, A 2011, LITERATURE REVIEW ON MEETING THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND EMOTIONAL WELLBEING NEEDS OF CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE: MODELS OF EFFECTIVE PRACTICE IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS, viewed, 02 Feb, 2013, Read More