Stress on Children

When I was in fifth grade my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I did not fully understand what this meant until my mom went into surgery. My aunt came and spent a few days with us while my mom was in the hospital. When my mom returned home everything seem to be different. She had a section of her hair shaved and a lot of stitches and she was really sick. We had a lot of casserole dinners friends and families made us and my mom spent most of the day in her bedroom. At school I had a hard time focusing and ask to go to the nurses office almost everyday. My teacher was always very supportive I would come in some days crying because my mom had a rough night. The school nurse was also very supportive I was always saying I was sick and needed to go home but instead would let me lay down in her office until I was ready to go back to class. Our family was always around to help with my brother and I while my dad had to work. It was a difficult time for me because I never fully understood until I was older, everything around me seem to be moving fast and I just knew that my mom was very sick and it made me sad to see her that way.

        I decided to look at Brazil and see what are some stressors for young children. To my surprise I found that half a million of Brazilian children work as prostitute starting as young as ten years old (Kuruvilla, 2014). Some of the reasons are that most of the children are homeless,hungry, or addicted to drugs (Kuruvilla, 2014). Other reasons are the families push their children to become "sex workers" because they can make more in a week than the family can make in a month (Kuruvilla, 2014). There are many non-profit organization working to help eliminate this issue and teaming up with local police to help. These findings were very hard to hear sometimes I feel as a privilege American we forget how easy we have it sometimes. At the Sam time I know the level of child poverty is rising in the U.S. and hope that we can reverse this before more thane half a million of our children turn to prostitution to support their families.

Resources

Kuruvilla, C. (2014, June 18). Brazil battling uptick in child prostitution during World Cup 2014. New York Daily News. Retrieved from 

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/brazil-child-prostitution-problem-article-1.1835059 

Malnutrition in the U.S.A and India

Nutrition and malnutrition are very important to me. In my undergrad program I did an internship with the Department of Children, Youth, and Families doing social work, and witnessed many malnutrition infants. It was nothing I would have imagined, you see ads and pictures all the time in the media but when you see a child who has lacked proper nutrition in person and in your own backyard is very scary. The cases varied in why the child was malnutrition, some was just neglect but in other cases it was lack of education of how much a child needs and how often. When I realized this I had a “light bulb” moment and realized that one not all mothers have that maternal instinct and two not all mothers know how to be a parent; whether it was because the were a teen parent or they did not have very good parenting of their own.  In the first years of life there is a lot of development of the brain and without proper nutrition then the child is not getting the nutrients they need to have successful development.

 Looking at other countries I was surprised to find that India is highest ranking in the world for children under five being malnourished. One and every three children in the world who are malnourished live in India. The rates of malnourished children in India are two times higher than in sub-Saharan Africa and ten times higher than in Asia. I was surprised by these statistics because I was always under the impression that Africa had the highest percent of children who were malnourished in the world, not to say that it is not still a problem in Africa. This information was very eye-opening for me and helps to justify a center policy we have put in place at my child care center, which is our teachers are not to do activities with children that is them playing with food because other cultures do not have enough food and can find it offensive and even in our own country.

References:

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/05/13/helping-india-combat-persistently-high-rates-of-malnutrition

Childbirth a Personal and Global Story

The only childbirth experience I have is my own and I do not necessarily remember but have stories from family about my early years of life. When I was born my brother was very sick with leukemia and I was passed off to different family members from birth. Being moved around from family member to family member early on in my life has helped me be able to adapt and except change through out my life. I think it also contributed to my easy going and go with the flow personality. I was born at a very well known hospital in Boston and my mother and seemed to be treated very well.

I feel birth has a very big impact on a child’s development. The first few hours is where the parent-infant bond develops, this is a crucial moment for children to develop trust and comfort with another person (Berger, 2012).

Looking at other countries and how births happen there I thought it was interesting where Russia was when it came to childbirth. Russia seems to behind on western technology and advances in the medical field due to the Soviet era. Some mothers discussed the different conditions the experienced during labor and birth from women being put on beds in the hallway while in labor, multiple woman sharing the same bathroom, bribing obstetricians for better care, and children being injured during child birth (Barton, 2014).  As I kept reading it seemed that there are big strides to improving maternity care (Barton, 2014). Some first steps were just improving the environment by adding flowers and trying to give each mother a room (Barton, 2014). Russian births do not have much emphasis for quality prenatal care the way the U.S. do but do hope that the improvements they look to make include prenatal care as well as the labor process.

Resources:

Berger, K. S. (2012). The developing person through childhood (6th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Barton, J. (2014, March 10) Russia’s looking to improve the quality of maternity care- but it has a long way to go. PRI’s TheWorld. Retrieved from http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-03-10/russias-looking-improve-quality-its-maternity-care-it-has-long-way-go