My Connections to Play

Quotes that summarize play in my childhood...

Essential play items...

In my childhood it was all about play and especially play in nature. We were rarely inside and were encouraged to spend as much time outside playing and exploring as possible. In "my day" our parents told us not to come home until the street lights came on. Outdoor and indoor play was regarded as critical to childhood in my family- in fact, in the whole neighborhood. I spent a lot of my time riding my bike and running around our street. However, my grandparents owned a summer home on a tiny beach and I spent countless hours digging, swimming, and just playing in the sand.This is where I formed many of my happiest childhood memories.

Play has changed a lot since I was young. Gone are the days of sending your child out into the neighborhood and telling them to come home once it starts getting dark. I think most parents are too scared to send their child out on their own like it used to be. I recently heard someone report that there is no more "stranger danger" now than when I was a child but I'm not sure that's true. Even if it is true, our streets don't feel as safe as they used to. In many neighborhoods people don't even know each other unlike the days of making sure you behaved because everyone on the street knew your mom.

Another major difference is that children do not have connections with nature like we did when I was growing up. Children often have limited or no outdoor play time during the school day and parents are frequently lax in ensuring children spend time in nature every day. This is my one hope for young children. I hope they will be reintroduced to nature and have a chance to spend quality time in it.

My thoughts on the role of play throughout life...

Relationship Reflection

Relationships and partnerships are important to me because I feel that I thrive on human contact. Through my relationships I gain a deeper understanding of myself and have opportunities to take in the world through the point of view of others. There can be challenges to developing and maintaining relationships. I have learned a few over time.

One challenge is that it is important to know what you expect from each relationship and to know what the other person expects from you. This requires time and communication with that other person. Another challenge to maintaining relationships, especially as adults, is that they take time and effort. This can be easy with people we spend a large amount of time with like spouses or colleagues but it can be difficult to make time in our busy lives for people who are not in our daily circle. The final challenge that comes to mind is that we have to be ready and willing to let some relationships go when they become unhealthy for us. Although it is important to make an effort to maintain relationships there are times that some can cause us harm and we have to be able and willing to look for those signs and let go when it is for our own good.

I have been able to maintain a series of relationships over the years and the one that comes to mind first is the very strong relationships I have with my sister. I wrote about her in my childhood web because she is like the other half of my brain and has always been a critical part of my life. I would definitely say that what we have is a partnership because while I think a relationship is more about finding something that makes us happy a partnership is about collaborating to find happiness and satisfaction for both parties. There is nothing negative about having a relationship that is not a partnership it is just that those relationships do not cause us to actively seek out ways to make the other person happy in the relationship. One special characteristic of my relationship with my sister that makes it a partnership is that we will always find ways to help the other person to grow and become a better version of ourselves. We want each other to be as happy as possible.

A second relationship that is important to me is that with my mom. She and I have what I would also consider to be a partnership for the same reason I feel that way about my relationship with my sister. My mom and I want the best for each other and will do what we need to in order to help the other to gain happiness.

I have a few friends that I consider to be important relationships in my life. In these relationships, although I want them to be happy and they want the same for me, I would not say that they are partnerships. I love these friends and I wish them the absolute best but I would not say that either they or I actively seeks ways to make the other happy. I have the same types of relationships with my work colleagues. We have strong and positive relationships and we support each other in our work but I would not call them partnerships because there is little opportunity to collaborate because our field work requires that we work in isolation from one another most of the time.

The final relationship that I want to make sure to mention is one that is extremely important to me. That is the one I have with my significant other, Dean.  Ours is a partnership in the truest sense of the word. Everything we do is for the purpose of helping each other, ourselves, and our relationship grow. While I was getting ready to write this blog I started looking for some non-academic descriptions of the difference between relationships and partnerships. One that I found that I think describes us perfectly is that relationships are about seeking pleasure while partnerships are about seeking purpose. That is not to say that there is no pleasure but rather that in a partnership of a romantic variety you are not chasing some high of nervousness and excitement but instead finding pleasure in the stability of your love and friendship.

In my work as a coach in the early childhood field the main point of my ability to be successful is in developing positive relationships. We say that all of our work is done through relationships because without strong relationships it is impossible to affect change. Because it is my job to help others determine goals and improve practices I must first forge strong relationships with the providers that I coach. Every day I work on developing stronger active listening skills and reflective practices that include continuous self-reflection and working on my skills in helping others reflect.

When I Think of Child Development...

"They may forget what you said but they will never forget how you made them feel."

~ Carol Buchner

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

~ Frederick Douglass

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: one is roots, the other is wings.

~ Hodding Carter

“Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.”

~ Josef Albers

Student Assessment in Primary Years

No matter the age of the child, all learning does require some measure of assessment in order to understand where the child is developmentally. However, all the way through middle school (at least) that measure of assessment should be focused on all developmental domains in some capacity. When we think about a holistic approach to child/student assessment in terms of school age children some areas of measurement could include:

• Language and Effective Communication Skills
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Social and Emotional Intelligence
• Physical Development and Health
• Diverse Cultural Understanding and Competency
• Approaches to Learning and Systems Thinking Capacity
• Technological Capability

New Zealand once again appears to serve as a model of the hands-on methods of assessment that are focused on a holistic approach. It seems that their assessment of student learning in the primary school years is driven by student learning and teachers have the responsibility to conduct assessments in ways that reflect what and how students learn. In fact, there are apparently no national tests on which students need to perform in pressurized test-taking atmospheres. Below is an overview of New Zealand student assessment procedures based on the findings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)  as published in their Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education NEW ZEALAND.

One other idea I would like to note about my own opinion of assessing school age children through a holistic approach relates to the way children are assessed. I feel that the way we assess children in early education programs should be a model for how all learning is assessed. We should be asking teachers to know individual students and to assess their learning (the domains I mentioned above) through observation and collection of evidence- NOT through standardized testing! The focus of rote learning and testing that has swept our nation is not what we should be focusing on. Rather, we need to think outside the traditional box and give students the chance to demonstrate their capacity through hands-on opportunities.

Consequences of Stress on Children's Development

I would have to say that of the list of stressors we chose from this week it was probably chaos that had the biggest effect on me.  My parents divorced when I was quite young and there was always a sense of stress, tension, and animosity between them. My father wasn't absent but he could be unreliable at times. I remember sitting at our front window waiting for my dad to come pick us up for our every other week Sunday visit and there were times he just wouldn't show up. In addition to that my mom was always working or going to school (mostly both) and so my sister and I were shuffled amongst relatives and different babysitters throughout our childhood.

While the shuffling did cause some chaos it also provided for one of the main support systems/assistance which helped us to navigate through the chaos. If you check out my childhood web you will see how much of an effort my mom put into building a strong support system around us. So, even though there was a lot of chaos there was also a lot of love and support from other family members. This is really how we coped as a family with this stressor. I, on the other hand, coped individually in a different way. I formed an extremely strong attachment to my sister. She seemed like the one constant thing, my calm in the storm, and having shared a bedroom she was always right there when I was little. I was a very emotional child and she would help to take my mind off of the craziness by singing and dancing with me or making up silly games to play together. She was my rock!

I researched New Zealand again this week because I have a special interest in this country and how child development occurs there in comparison to the United States. What I found is that I was not able to find as much information as I had expected. I found that poverty is a major stress factor on child development- with poverty rates having doubled between the 1980's and 2014. One of the main ways to minimize harm from poverty is by forming strong attachments between infants and parents and providing nurturing and loving care. There are programs available to help parents to understand how to form these attachments and provide this care.

In 2012 the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty released a report showing evidence for action to reduce poverty in New Zealand's children. Their report recommended several things- agree upon a measuring system to determine levels of poverty and use it, increase Family Tax Credit amounts, and "add a member to the Work and Income Board who has expertise in child well-being and development issues" (Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty, 2012, p. 40). These were short term suggestions that were accompanied by a few others. In the long term some of the ideas were to create a low-income support payment for families with young children, creating a government pass-on law for child support payments in order to create more stability of receipt of these payments, creating pathways for unskilled or under-skilled workers to receive training and education that would lead to stable jobs, and to increase the number of social housing units by 2000 per year until 2020. These are just a few of the suggestions made by the Advisory Group; in total there were 78 specific recommendations.

In 2016, Russell Wills- Children's Commissioner released a document that outlines the progress that was made based on these recommendations during his 5 year term.

Here are a couple of slides that depict some of the changes:

As you can see, 35 of the 78 recommendation were implemented. However, Wills goes on to say there is still a lot to do.  

Resources:

You can find the full report here and the Children's Commissioner's follow-up here

The article about the importance of relationships and attachments can be found at http://www.brainwave.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/Child-Poverty.pdf

Child Development and Public Health- Immunizations

I chose to write about immunizations this week because I feel that there are some misconceptions about the dangers of vaccines. When I was in my Bachelor's program at Walden we were required to take a class in which the bulk of the work was a group project. The majority of the members of my group were public health nurses and we chose to research immunization. We looked at several aspects such as the importance of herd immunity, the rights and responsibilities of the government, the concerns of parents, and the myths of damage caused by vaccines. We created a mock blog which has a minimal amount of information but highlights the major headlines of what we had researched and were considering. There are 2 full posts in which you can read about Parental Refusal to Vaccinate and our Literary Review of the Importance of Immunization. Through this research many of the ideas I had about the dangers of vaccinating were dispelled.

I reviewed what immunization looks like in New Zealand because I feel that they are a model for the early education community. I was curious if they had any similarities to the United States when it comes to immunization. It turns out they have many similarities. The first of which is their immunization schedule. You can see that it has many similarities to the US schedule in both timing and types of vaccinations recommended.

It turns out that much like in the US immunization is not REQUIRED in New Zealand for school entry or enrollment in child care. However, it is strongly encouraged and it seems many parents have the misconception that vaccination is mandatory. What is required is an "Immunisation Certificate" for the purpose of identifying children who could be at risk in the event of a breakout of an immunizable disease.                    

I am not sure that any of the public health concerns, we researched this week, will affect my work directly. Since I do not have any direct contact with children or families these types of issues are not for me to address. However, I will continue to provide information to the ECE professionals I work with so they can share that information with families.

Birthing Stories

I am choosing to write about my own birth because it is the only birthing experience I have ever been a part of. Clearly, I have no memory of the event so I have asked my mother if she would write what she remembers because I figured she would have the most accurate information.

Here is what she said:

"You were born using the 'Modified LeBoyer Method' - dimmed lights (more like would be used in a home birth, not a hospital), natural birth-no drugs, once you popped out, the staff or maybe your father placed you in a body-temperature bath for a short time to clean you and keep you cozy and snug as you had been in the womb.  

"After all of that, they wrapped you up tightly and gave you to me for attempted nursing, but I don't think you were ready yet.

"In case you need some other info - doctor's name was Sheerin, he was the head of the ultrasound unit at what was then Boston Lying In and Hospital for Women, so he also had an ultrasound machine in his offices and so you were one of the first to be seen in this way in Boston.  I used to have a Polaroid pic of you in-utero, but I've looked and cannot find it.”

When I consider what impact birth has on child development I waiver between ways of thinking. On the one hand that very first experience could have an impact on later life. If complications arise or the birth is particularly stressful for the mother and baby that could impact the later development. On the other hand, I find myself thinking that apart from major, life-threatening complications the important part is what happens before and after birth- prenatal development and a child's life experiences.

I ended up researching a few different countries to find out what they recommend or what is most common for birthing experiences. What I found was that in some countries (like Brazil) doctors are recommending c-sections at an alarming rate because it costs more and requires longer hospitalization and so is a bigger payday for them. In contrast, I found that in countries like Japan and the Netherlands that epidurals are even uncommon and in the Netherlands home births are preferred by many women. In fact, even if a woman chooses to have her baby at a hospital she is still required to have a medical kit in her  home that has all of the supplies necessary for a home birth (called a kraampakket ). Also, every expectant mother is referred to a midwife and almost none will ever see an obstetrician.

The midwife has a number of duties which you would expect- like assisting during the labor and delivery process. A nurse however also comes into the picture after the birth to provide maternity home care, or kraamhulp/kraamzorg depending on your source, and will come to the home for around seven days covered completely by insurance to provide medical care as well as to clean, cook, and provide basic parenting tips. According to Lara Schalken from American Baby magazine- who gave birth in the Netherlands, "another important duty of the nurse is to manage the flow of visitors and make the traditional snack to celebrate a birth: beschuit met muisjes, which literally translates as 'biscuits with mice.' The 'mice' are actually miniature licorice bits with blue-and-white coating for boys, pink-and-white for girls"

The type of birthing experience you might find in the hospital in the Netherlands (as I mentioned the use of epidural is uncommon) might be somewhat similar to my own birth. However, I like the idea of the dimmed lights and warm bath that make my birth story seem more like a home birth even though it took place in a hospital setting. It does not surprise me at all that my mom would choose to have no painkillers and the soothing setting given that she always seems to be ahead of her time in cultural aspects. We have been calling her a hipster for years- even before it became "cool."

References

Court, H. (2016, May 13). 5 things about giving birth in the Netherlands. Retrieved from http://dutchreview.com/featured/5-things-giving-birth-netherlands/

Schalken, L. (n.d.). Birth customs around the world.  Retrieved from http://www.parents.com/pregnancy/giving-birth/vaginal/birth-customs-around-the-world/