Impacts on Early Emotional Development Week 8 EDUC 6358

Impacts on Early Emotional Development:

My Greatest Hope

My greatest hope for that future as an early childhood professional for the children and families with whom I work and will work is for all to see the strength in our diversity. In order to see the strength in our diversity, I will do my best to teach, demonstrate, and emulate compassion, respect, and empathy for all I come in contact with. I want them to see that despite our differences, we also have similarities (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010). I want them to see that despite conflicts and differences we all can seek the common ground of respect. We all want to be treated fairly and respectfully.

Thank you to all of my colleagues. I appreciate all of your input throughout our coursework. I have learned so much from all of you. I also want to thank you all for allowing us to see into your lives and experiences. Sharing our life experiences helped me to not only see and appreciate our diversity but to also appreciate another person’s perspective. It’s through our understanding of others that help us to see the importance of our anti-bias work. I would not have grown into the anti-bias educator I am today without your stories, input, and guidance. I wish all of you the very best in your future endeavors. Julie Olsen Edwards said, “You need a community both of around you at home and online so that you have people to keep you growing as an anti-bias educator” (Laureate Education, 2011). That is what all of you are for me and I cannot thank you enough for the connections we have made with each other.

References

Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Laureate Education, Inc. (2011). Strategies for working with diverse children: Your commitment to anti-bias work. Baltimore, MD: Author

Impacts on Early Emotional Development Week 7 EDUC 6358

Impacts on Early Emotional Development

UNICEF Eritrea

I chose to research East Africa on the UNICEF website. I chose the country of Eritrea because I was born there when it was still a part of Ethiopia. They became their own country in 1991 after decades of war. I decided to focus on education and the barriers to education. Along with UNICEF, Eritrea’s government has been working on an education plan to increase the number of children in school, especially girls. Children in Eritrea face many hardships such as being orphans due to losing both parents from the struggles of war and disease or only have one parent for the same reasons. Other children are not in school because they are working to help their families or of marrying age (for girls) between the ages of 11 to 13 (UNICEF Eritrea, 2012). Health concerns such as malaria, HIV/Aids, food security, and malnutrition are other hardships children in Eritrea may face (UNICEF Eritrea, 2012). Children from the nomadic regions of the country are also hard to reach to receive an education and many will walk one to two hours to get to school. Although it isn’t part of UNICEF’s policy to help with infrastructure (building schools), the Eritrean government persuaded UNICEF to help build schools and repair damaged schools and saw a “28% increase in net school enrollment from 1993/1994 to 42% by 2000/2001” (UNICEF Eritrea, 2012). The other notable thing I read was with the help from UNICEF Eritrea (2012) they worked to place orphaned children with other family members and by the end of 2010, “fewer than 500 children were either in orphanages or community-based living nationwide” (UNICEF Eritrea, 2012). In 2006, there were approximately 105,000 orphaned children (UNICEF Eritrea, 2012).

It is extraordinary to hear how hard they have worked to become a more sustainable country and have also worked to be more holistic by recognizing children need an education, family, and better health care. They have also worked to change cultural norms such as children working or marrying early rather than getting an education. Lack of education, family trauma, war trauma, malnutrition, poverty, and lack of health care are all factors that affect emotional development negatively. All of the things I listed lead to toxic stress and affects social-emotional development and brain development (Center on the Developing Child, n.d.). By working to locate homes for the orphaned children, they were able to diffuse most of the toxic stress in their lives assuming they went to homes with supportive families/relationships. I am somewhat relieved that UNICEF has been there to help them recover and build but I am left wondering how well it is still going since the information is from 2012 and later. They’re still a relatively young country so I hope they keep building and working towards a brighter future. Looking at the obstacles that these children have had in their lives and all of the factors that were implemented to improve their lives shows me the importance of effective early childhood and early intervention. Another thing that it brings to mind is resiliency. Even when children are exposed to toxic stressors, if they have loving relationships and early interventions, they are able to repair the damage and will become stronger than they were before (Center on the Developing Child, n.d.).

References

Center on the Developing Child. (n.d.). Toxic Stress. Retrieved from: https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/toxic-stress/

UNICEF Eritrea. (2012). D’Hnet H’Tsanat: For the welfare of children UNICEF in Eritrea: Two decades of collaboration. UNICEF Eritrea: Publisher. Retrieved from: https://www.unicef.org/eritrea/ECO_resources_20years.pdf

The Sexualization of Early Childhood Week 6 EDUC 6358

 The Sexualization of Early Childhood

While reading the book excerpt, So sexy so soon (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009), there were many things that I found alarming even though I am aware that the various types of media use sex to sell products to even the youngest of consumers. Even with the realization that companies use sex to sell their products, it was still shocking to read the examples of how it has affected our children and how young it occurs. “Children growing up today are bombarded from a very early age with graphic messages about sex and sexiness in the media and popular culture” (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009, p. 2).

I have observed sexualization of early childhood in my own personal and professional experiences. I have raised four girls and now have three young adults and one still living at home. I have witnessed the progression of sexualization and how it has affected my own children. My oldest child is now 23 and went through the Bratz doll stage. She also liked Britney Spears. Luckily, we had open communication and often had talks, mostly about how body-conscious she was compared to her friends. Because she felt safe to talk to me, I was able to guide and support her through the confusing world she lived in. Fast forward to my youngest and I can see a huge difference especially in how much younger she was exposed to sexual messages. We contributed some of this due to having three older sisters and we would have family talks about what they were allowed to do and say in front of our youngest. I feel having the early experiences with our older girls and seeing what I have seen in my professional life has helped me to raise our children to see sex and violence so prevalent in popular culture. In my professional life, I have seen girls as young as 4 have their hair highlighted and wearing clothes that are not age appropriate. I did not witness boys expressing any negative views but I did witness other girls idolizing or looking up to the girls who had highlighted hair and “sexy” clothes.

“Gender roles modeled for children have become increasingly polarized and rigid” (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009, p. 2). Like the example above where the two girls dressed and accessorized their hair as a teenager or adult might do, girls learn that the way they look and dress equals to success (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009). Boys learn to judge girls based on this ideal and become insensitive (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009). The messages they receive about their gender roles and the sexualization related to these roles deeply affects later relationships, attitudes, and identity (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009). Without proper nurturance and guidance, children grow up lacking “healthy attitudes about themselves and their bodies, and to have caring relationships in which sex is an important part” (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009, p. 4). After reading this, I can remember examples from my youngest daughter that she tells me about friends at school being sexually active or wanting that type of attention from boys. These kids are around 11 to 12 years old. I am happy that she talks to us about what she hears so we can help her understand what she hears and why it is unhealthy. We also let her know that we are saddened to hear what her friends are going through. It is really difficult to tell her what to do or to tell her that it is unhealthy for her to maintain close relationships with friends who exhibit sexual behaviors. We also tell her how important it is to report things that seem unsafe or abusive to school officials.

Another thing I have noticed in my professional life is how young children seem to become attracted to others by saying things like “he/she is cute” and “I like him/her”, or wanting to kiss another child. I have never looked at this as harmless and have done what I can to curtail such behavior by letting children know that these things are not appropriate for them to say and do. After reading So sexy so soon (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009), I have a deeper understanding that they are repeating what they hear from popular culture, advertisements, television, and movies.

 Curious about what more I could do besides having honest conversations with my own children, making my classroom environment safe, and having honest conversations with families in my program, I looked on the So sexy so soon website for more ideas. While the suggestions are for parents, I feel some of them could apply to teachers in early childhood programs. What I found to be most important is to go beyond saying no because it can be harsh, does not tell them why it is wrong and can cause harm through shaming them (So Sexy So Soon, 2010). Their tips to help parents and teachers to work together include, “Build parent-teacher relationships based on mutual respect and collaboration, share concerns with each other when problems come up in the classroom with individual children or a larger group, work to create a school-wide community that makes dealing with the sexualization of childhood a community-wide affair, and to ask your children’s teachers and school to keep parents informed about issues that come up in school related to the sexualized culture and what is being done about them” (So Sexy So Soon, 2010).

My views about the effects of sexualization presented in media and popular culture have broadened because while I did understand that the issues I raised in the blog are troublesome, I did not fully understand the complexity and severity of such issues. I also have a better understanding of how to deal with issues that arise in an early childhood setting. Just like any other issue in the classroom, we cannot brush them off because we are unsure of how to deal with it in the classroom or how to handle later conversations with the families. We need to be able to provide our families with resources on this topic just like we do with many other topics.

References

Levin, D. E., & Kilbourne, J. (2009). [Introduction]. So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids (pp. 1-8). New York: Ballantine Books. Retrieved from: http://dianeelevin.com/sosexysosoon/introduction.pdf

So Sexy So Soon (2010) Proactive Parenting Tips for Counteracting the Sexualization of Children and Teenagers. Retrieved from: http://sosexysosoon.com/tips.html

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

As an early childhood professional, I need to consider any “isms” that may impact my personal life because they can affect my work with young children and their families.  In preparing for this blog, I reflected on the many “isms” that surround both my personal and professional life such as sexism, classism, ableism, and ageism. These “isms” along with the other “isms” such as heterosexism, racism and religion-ism, make maneuvering through society harm-free quite difficult due to the “biases that are built into the system” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p. 3) that provide either advantages or disadvantages depending on where you fit in. The dominant culture in the U.S. that is mostly depicted in the classroom, as well as public policy/laws, is “middle-class, White, suburban, able-bodied, English-speaking, nuclear family” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p.3).

When I assessed myself based on the “My Social Identities Portrait” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, p. 31), I discovered that I identified with half of the groups that experience discrimination and institutional prejudice. The one “ism” from my social identities that I am most passionate and conflicted about is ableism. Ableism classifies a person with any form of disability-physical, mental, emotional stability; learning; behavior controls as being less advantaged than able-bodied, healthy individuals (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p. 31). I am passionate about this “ism” because I am labeled/classified as a disabled veteran and because of my work with people with varying abilities. Because I do not appear to have a physical disability, some people feel comfortable stating their negative, biased views about people with disabilities in front of me which further drives my compassion as well as my feelings of conflict. I am conflicted for two reasons: I did not always openly identify as a disabled veteran or openly admit I have a slight physical limitation and the gap between inclusion and placement of children with varying abilities in the education setting.

My passion and conflict around the fair treatment and inclusion of all children, especially children of varying abilities, directly impact my work with young children and their families. While I fully believe in the inclusion of all children and their families in my classroom, I feel conflicted in my capacity to help them and what is expected through policy. While I am willing to and do accept all children in the classroom, policy directs me to assess the child, inform the parents, and possibly have the child placed in a special needs classroom and that is where the conflict arises. How can I teach inclusion, acceptance, and social justice when the institutional bias/policy outweighs these concepts? My solution is to keep these children in my classroom as long as possible, to openly and compassionately communicate with families about their children, and to work together on a plan to ensure the success of all children in the classroom. As cited in Ballard (2007) “research strongly suggests that being part of ordinary classrooms and schools results in disabled children showing more academic and social learning and more integration into school and community contexts than disabled children placed in segregated special education classrooms and schools” (Crawford & Porter, 2004; MacArthur, Kelly, Higgins, Phillips, McDonald, Morton & Jackman, 2005; UNESCO, 2005). I hope to see policy change to reflect the findings of this research so others like me who feel the conflict of addressing ableism in the classroom can work towards the social justice of all children we so desire.

References

Ballard, K. (2007). Education and imagination: Strategies for social justice. The Herbison Lecture presented to the National Conference of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education, University of Canterbury, 4-7 December 2007. Retrieved from: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.511.3922&rep=rep1&type=pdf

     Derman- Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and                 ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young                         Children(NAEYC).