Free Essay on Child Development

Current global economic recession

With the current global economic recession, it is prudent that there is bound to an increase in the levels of poverty among the population. Increase in the poverty has various detrimental effects and negates the efforts that the population makes to improve their living conditions. It is apparent that the poverty has detrimental effects on the lives of citizens, however, such effects are more diverse on toddlers as evident in the way they affect development stages of toddlers. There are various articles that highlight effects of poverty on development of toddlerhood and the same play a critical role in enlightening the population on the effects of poverty. One article that provides concrete analysis of effects of poverty on the developmental stages of toddlers is "Early childhood development coming of age: science through the life course" by Black et al. thereby proving the need to examine the same and help the population to acquire new ideas on the same.

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The book highlights the findings of a study conducted by a team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine on how poverty affects developmental stages of toddlers. The research carries the analysis of brain scans of a total of 145 children between the ages of 1 and 12 years old whom the researchers have been tracking since preschool (Black et al, 2017). One issue that stands out from the study is that poverty alters the physical makeup of the brain of a child. In this case, the study found out that children that are exposed to poverty a tender age have smaller volumes of white and cortical gray matter. Additionally, such children tend to develop hippocampal and amygdala volumes which have detrimental effects on psychological development of children (McCoy et al., 2016). With the finding that poverty during the early childhood has material impacts on brain development during the school age serves to underscore the importance of attention to the identified injurious effects of poverty on the development of children.

The social and emotional growth of children

Other findings that the team of researchers made is that poverty affects both the social and emotional growth of children and the same, and such have lasting effects on the children. Depression on children have short-term effects on the way preschoolers understand emotions. The early emotions of children elicit later non-compliance; this is because children that have a better understanding of emotions leads to less non-compliance of children. Such means that the high levels of poverty in the modern society makes children to be more non-compliant and which has affects their developmental stages (Black et al, 2017). Such also affects their education as they get it a challenge to focus on education and acquire knowledge that they are taught in class. Moreover, effects of social skills that children exposed to poverty experience include poor interpersonal skills as evident in that such children get it challenging to associate with one another and develop proper interpersonal relationships.

Nutrition is another element that is closely related to the poverty and which is associated with the development of children; this is because poverty affect the ability of parents to provide the right foods to the children thereby exposing toddlers to poor nutrition. Poor nutrition affects proper development of children. Toddlers who are exposed to poor nutrition in developmental process of toddlerhood, there is a need for the society to understand effects of poverty on toddlers and take steps that can help to mitigate the challenges thereof (McCoy et al., 2016). Such would ensure that children have proper development and that such effects are eliminated.

References

Black, M. M., Walker, S. P., Fernald, L. C., Andersen, C. T., DiGirolamo, A. M., Lu, C., ... & Devercelli, A. E. (2017). Early childhood development coming of age: science through the life course. The Lancet, 389(10064), 77-90.

McCoy, D. C., Peet, E. D., Ezzati, M., Danaei, G., Black, M. M., Sudfeld, C. R., ... & Fink, G. (2016). Early childhood developmental status in low-and middle-income countries: national, regional, and global prevalence estimates using predictive modeling. PLoS Med, 13(6), e1002034.