My Connections to Play

QUOTES:

“Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.”

Joseph Chilton Pearce (author)

“Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable.

Without it, life just doesn’t taste good” 

Lucia Capocchione

“Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.”

 O. Fred Donaldson (martial arts master)

PICTURES OF ESSENTIAL PLAY ITEMS FOR MY YOUNGER SELF: 

 Doll Baby;   Tricycle;   Lego

 

In Nigeria, play was widely supported when I was younger.  My parents bought quite some play items for us (children – we were one or two years apart) to play with.  Items like Tricycle, Doll Baby, Lego, Ludo, Black Board and Chalk (although bought for learning, we also used it in teacher-student play).  Quite a lot were gained in play, like using Lego to build things - a house or an aero plane - promoted sense of imagination and confidence in us; using the tricycle as a taxi in taking people to market, collecting money and giving change was very good for our mental alertness and creativity which I still enjoy today.  Apart from getting the items for us, my parents, especially my father, trained us on the usage and still participated in some of the plays.  There were early childhood centers then also, but we had more play than learning that it was generally believed that we just leave home to play.

I feel play today is different from the play in which I engaged in as a child because in the centers then we hardly touched any writing material unlike today that children are now taught to hold and use writing materials from early childhood class. We were able to play with one another then and this helped us mentally, physically and also to know more about others around us, but today young children are saddled with writing and learning that there is little or no rapport among the children in the class.  Then, parents are able to get acquainted with each other through their children’s play pal but today, parents urge their children to learn and write faster than the other child that hostility is easily spreading across board.  My hope for younger ones today with regard to play is that the parents, teachers and the community will once again see the importance of play in lives of these children and embrace it as it used to be.

Relationship Reflection

Relationships are the significant connection or similarity between two or more things or people and their involvement with one another.  Relationships/partnerships are important in life because man can not live  and thrive in a vacuum; even the Holy Bible supports relationships in Genesis when it says: ”it is not good for man to be alone”. Without relationships procreation would be absent and very soon the world would have come to an end.  Personally, relationships broaden my horizon, enrich my knowledge with various ideas from partners and this continue to help in sharpening my brain and keeping me abreast of new ideas. 

Currently, the relationships/partnerships between the following people and myself is positive and very cordial:

This is my husband and myself.  We have a good
husband/wife relationship. 
The relationship is being developed and
maintained through constant communication,
love, individuality and mutual respect for each other. 
Married in 1994.

              

This is my daughter. We enjoy a very good child/mother 

                                     relationship. 

                                     The relationship is being developed and                      

                                     maintained through constant Communication, show of love, 

                                     proper respect and understanding.

This is my son.  We enjoy a very good son/mother
relationship. 
The relationship is being developed and maintained 
through constant communication, show of love,
proper respect and understanding.

Next is my mother.  We have a good mother/daughter relationship. The relationship is being developed and maintained through communication, respect, idividuality and show of love.

Then all my four sisters. We have good sisterly relationships. The relationships are being developed and maintained through constant communication, mutual respect for each other, individuality, understanding and show of love toward one another.

Over time, I have experience some challenges in developing and maintaining relationships as a result of inadequate and total break-down in communication; ego; pride; and the like.

Some special characteristics that kept the relationships going are 1) Real show of love in exhibiting understanding; for example, if I had to spank any of my children (not often though), they still come back hugging me and apologising for their wrongs because they usually have a clear understanding of why the spanking was necessary.  2) Another characteristic is correcting in love; often, I have heard people around me; at home, at work and in church; say the way I correct brings fun to the ears, but sense to the the brain.

As an effective early childhood professional, my experience with relationships/partnerships will definitely impact positively on my work because I always learn from esperience and put myself in other peples shoes by imagining how they would  feel in situations.  I did not have many happy experiences while growing up (especially from my mum), and this has helped me to understand actions, reactions and feelings involve, and as a result, I am able to decide against some actions that draw negative feelings from the receiver and affect the general outlook for the child’s entire life.

When I Think of Child Development …

QUOTES: About Children

"Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate."

                                                                                                Anonymous

"Hugs can do great amounts of good, especially for children."

                                                                                Princess Diana, Princess of Wales

 "Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see."

                                                John W. Whitehead, founder, Rutherford Institute

Testing for Intelligence?

Measuring / Assessing “the whole child”

In order to view young children holistically, I believe that the following measurement or assessment should be carried out: 1) Naturalistic assessment: where all those who interact with the child on a regular basis watch the child at play or gives the child a direct test in various environments to bring out the variations in the social interactive behaviour of the child.  2) Focused assessment: this is obtain behaviours usually displayed within a familiar context.  3) Performance assessment: This is necessary in order to allow chidren display their knowledge and apply it, e.g. telling story, climbing a ladder, etc (Notari-Syverson and Losardo).  4) Dynamic assessment: this is to weigh an independent performance of the childin relation to dependent performance in order to determine the learning potential and responsivity to instructions in the child (Notari-Syverson and Losardo).  5) Curriculum based language assessment: this is used to discover and study the gaps between the actual curricular context and the child’s competence.  This will equally show the corrective measures necessary, where and how needed.  These are carried along with whatever measure/assessment already in place.  These will be used on individual basis with models adopted to suit the child that is being assessed. (Notari-Syverson and Losardo).  In Nigeria, for example, the school-age children are assessed on general current affairs, aptitude test and skills assessment.  These are done to know the speed at which the child can learn and how easy learning is for the child. 

Additionally, some children are good in all except in linguistical expression, this should have been taken care of if such children were correctly assessed – the challenge would have been detected and corrected before then.

Reference

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

Notari-Syverson, A. and Losardo, A.  Alternative Approaches to Assessing Young Children. Brookes Publishing.  Retrieved from http://www.brookespublishing.com/onlocation/topics/AltApproach.htm

Consequences of Stress on Children’s Development

The body reaction to physical or emotional situation that affects normal balance in any way is termed stress.  Some describes it as a “pressure on the outside that causes pressure on the inside” (The Medicine Chest, 2006).

As a child, one stressor that I experienced was the feeling of unlovable.  This was a feeling I usually sensed from my mum since I was a young child.  I always got seriously beaten at the slightest opportunity, even for things not really my fault. There was a day that I was beaten until I developed cramps and could not move again, “die if you want to die”, she said as she continued beating.  This treatment continued throughout my developing years.

I was able to cope with it because in this part of the world, Yoruba – Nigeria, it is a taboo for children to look their parents in the face or talk back at them, though changing now.  I guess this helped me because all throughout I held on to the believe that my mum could not do better and it was for my good. It affected my studies greatly and I became sickly.  Once I was taken to hospital after check up, I was asked to wait outside, leaving my parents with the doctor and on the way home, mum was fuming and asked, “how can that be the cause? Even if it is I don’t want to talk about it”, and dad just said, “well, you’ve heard it all”. I did not know what it was. A child’s own parents often maltreats the child through abuse and neglect (Berger, 2009). However, recently, I was reminded of one of my statements then, I was said to have told my dad not to worry, “we would buy a new mummy for daddy”. How babyish! There was no resource used and no support obtained.

I would like to know more about Nigeria and the type of stressor that impact the development of the children.  I am choosing Nigeria because I am looking forward to establishing a pre-schooler educational outfit very soon and I would need every information that I can get about young children in Nigeria.  Hypertension, a notorious adult disease now takes on children as victims (Osobu-Asubiojo, 2011). Many stressors were highlighted for this but most  highlighted was Genetic, which means it runs  in the family; or excess in daily activities especially these days that children wakes up by 4 a.m. to get ready for school in order to beat the trafick jam and get back home by 8 p.m.  to complete their assignment, have dinner, shower if possible and go to bed; routine in daily activities, that is doing the same thing over and over; or change in life style and diet, taking too much of fast foods. In order to reduce this risk, there is need to educate parents and caregivers on the danger in eating fast foods and children not having enough rest.  Balanced diet including fruits and vegetables is essential.  Eating of food with low sugar, fat and salt was highly recommended. Regular day sleep was also suggested with a 30 minustes exercise at least thrice in a week. Alcohol should be strictly avoided.  At the national level, nothing is being done yet, but doctors advise is being given to parents and caregivers as necessary, however, it is not nationwide yet. I hope this will go round faster.

Reference

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

Osobu-Asubiojo, O. (2011). Hypertension: Killer of Nigerian Kids. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://thenewsafrica.com/2011/04/25/hypertension-killer-of-nigerian-kids/

The Medicine Chest. (2006). Stress In Young Children. Retrieved February-March, 2006, from http://www.healthychild.net/TheMedicineChest.php?article_id=339

Child Development and Public Health

IMMUNIZATION

Immunization is meaningful to me because it prents deathand various diseases in children if taken as schedule.  Unfortunately, most parents do not get their children immunized accordingly and this leads to various preventable diseases like whooping cough, malaria, Hepatitis B, etc. in children and at times may lead to death.

In South Africa, immunization is given to children in order to prevent diseases.  However, in order to reduce the mortality rate of children under age five, South Africa has now introduce two more vaccines; Pneumococcus conjugate and Rotavirus, to the conutruy’s immunization programme. Pneumococcus conjugate vaccine is to protect against diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis etc, while the Rotavirus vaccine is to protect against diarrhoea among infants under five years.  The South Africa health department is working to have the vaccines available to the East this year and nationally by March next year.  It is estimated that the introduction f these vaccines will save the lives of about 14 children each day or more than 4,700 deaths per year from pneumococcal pneumonia and viral diarrhea.

With this information about the importance of immunization, once I start the educational outfit, I would include the immunization reminder on the newsletter every school term and also include it on the discussion list on every Parents/Teachers Forum (PTF).  

 

In Your Life and Around the World

The personal birthing experience I want to talk about is that of my first child.  It was the first birthing experience for me and it was highly spectacular.  There was a heavy noise early that morning from a blown transformer not far from my residence; I got up sharply from sleep and as I stood up the water broke.  After some hours I was at the hospital.  There was no contraction then I was given an injection to induce labour, then the doctor left.  The pain started with contractions at intervals.  I got to the hospital about 9.00am and at about 6.30pm the contractions had become severe and there was no doctor or nurse around.  I was in that pain all alone in the room till the doctor on ward-round came at about 7.30pm.  He asked who was detailed to stay with me, I said none.  I was examined and he brought a nurse with an instruction “stay with her” while he continued the ward round.  The nurse peeped outside to be sure the doctor was no longer around, turned to me and said “it’s not time yet, just stay”, and she left.  The doctor, understanding the system, came back after about 8 minutes to check on me, “where is the nurse?” he asked, “I don’t know”, I responded.  He went out to get another nurse.  This happened about three times before he finally came back to take the delivery himself.

The actual delivery was another episode because the baby was distressed having stayed longer than required.  The doctor then tried to use a ventouse (vacuum extractor) to pull the baby, but with head full of hair it did not work.  He changed to Forceps and had to do a large cut because by then, it was rather too late.  Finally, the baby was out, the doctor rushed to resuscitate the baby while the Intern doctors (supporting) attended to me.  This is in a nut shell, but it was a sordid experience, even after birth I carried the remnants of placenta for months with each day in pain as if in labour. 

I choose this example to highlight the essence of proper prenatal medication as this helped to sustain me and the baby throughout the ordeal and after (doctor confirmed).  The impact could make the victim run from birthing and might even loose the baby.  Some mothers might be hostile to the baby as if it was the baby’s fault which will definitely affect the child’s development.

In Nigeria generally, especially in the General Hospitals, that is, government hospitals, once pregnant, you must register for prenatal care, you would have appointment dates when there would be proper check up, register your complaints and drugs would be given with required injections.  On delivery date, which would have been confirmed during the previous prenatal appointment, be at the hospital with the necessary items for both mother and child.  Doctors would be around to attend to you and support as the birthing progresses.  However, if you do not register with any of the general hospitals and you had course to go there to resolve complications, the patient would either not be attended to amidst series of abusive words or left to bleed for several hours, after giving birth on the bench where seated, before being attended to, still with series of abusive words.  It was a bit different from the personal example provided because I registered there from the beginning, hence I was ushered into a room where I eventually put to bed.  The situation was still similar in that there was no sign of care at all, more so, the elderly doctors were aware this but nothing was being done.   The experience interfered with the bonding process because I was hospitalized for some a week in order to evacuate the remnants of the placenta.  Also, these other women left on the bench to bleed were left while the babies were carried inside.  I must submit that the health care workers, like the early childhood professionals, are supposed to be the custodian of adequate care.