I pursue graduate study in Human Development and Family Studies program because of several reasons. To begin with, graduate study is an invaluable opportunity for me to pursue my academic interests and satisfy my intellectual curiosity in human development. I have great passion on parent-child relationship and children's social emotional development, and graduate school will offer me the opportunity to fully immerse myself in the subject of interest. In the same time, the advanced skills and background knowledge of my interest area obtained in graduate education can provide me with solid foundation to conduct relevant research in more depth. The second reason lies in preparation for future career development. I would like to pursue academia …show more content…
I find my research interests and experiences regarding parenting and social emotional development would be a good fit with Dr. Douglas M. Teti's current projects. I am eager to join in his SIESTA (Study of Infants' Emergent Sleep Trajectories) Project to further investigate how parenting affect infants' sleep quality and developmental outcomes. I think I am competent enough to make contribution to this project, as I am familiar with the research method, incorporating multi-dimensional measurement into one study, such as physiological measures, biological measures and laboratorial observations. My research during undergraduate focused on the influence of parenting and maternal psychopathology on children's social emotional development. Multi-dimensional analysis, incorporating heart rate, salivary cortisol and behavioral coding, was used to evaluate children's emotion regulation. Therefore, my research experience offers me practical training and background knowledge for future studies. Besides, I am highly interested in Dr. Gregory M. Fosco's Family P.O.W.E.R. Lab focusing on family and adolescent well-being. As my earlier study pay more attention to risk factors in family context leading to children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms, I'm rather curious of family's positive impact on adolescents' health and subjective well-being. My relevant experience, …show more content…
One research idea I have come up with is to investigate whether marital relationship can buffer the relationship between maternal dysregulation and children's internalizing problems. Skills in data collection, evaluation and analysis can serve as solid foundation for my research. Besides, synthesizing concept and research methods from different disciplines and applying them to my research topic are also of great importance. Hence I will also spend time learning these skills during my graduate study. As for my professional development, I'm willing to work as a professional researcher on topics addressing my interests. Therefore, my ability to apply critical thinking and analytic skills to creatively solve practical problems in society should be sharpened. I'm supposed to communicate effectively with families in community and address my research on practical problems, such as family relationships and child development. I am also longing to cooperate with non-governmental organizations to provide counseling services for families and
Families often have a profound effect, good or bad, on an individual’s functioning throughout his or her life. Growing up Joe was left to care for his 3 younger siblings when his Dad alcoholic father would disappear for days and his passive-depressed mother would stay in bed. While in some circumstances children (optimum of three) correspond with increased life satisfaction. Joe’s parents were obviously unprepared for the demands of raising children and ran away, Joes Dad to the bottle and Joes mother to her bed, leaving Joe to raise three sibling a task Joe was obvious unprepared to perform due to his young age. For Joe’s parents, and Joe himself, children added little to nothing to life satisfaction and had a negative impact on Joe’s formative years (Compton & Hoffman, 2013).
The second family that I interviewed was the Lyles family. Both Bro. Scotty, the father, and Mrs. Yolanda, the mother, participated in the interview and three of their children were in the room. Bro. Scotty was born and raised in Alba, Texas on the very same tree farm that he owns and operates today; he is also a deacon at our church. However, Mrs. Yolanda was born and raised in Guatemala. As a child she was raised Catholic, and is part of a large and growing family. She is one of eight children. Their family as well as anybody else in that culture celebrated their daughter’s 15th birthday with a Quinceañera which marked the transition from childhood to young womanhood. This was traditionally the first time the girls would wear make-up, nice
The Calgary Family Assessment and Intervention Model is broken down into three categories: Structural (family composition, race, social class), developmental (stages, tasks, attachments) and functional (activities of daily living, communications, beliefs) (Kaakinen et al., 2015). This assessment is used for outpatients and community based patients. It is a multidimensional approach to assessing a family’s structure, function, affective and behavioral components (Kaakinen et al., 2015). The purpose of this assessment and intervention is to promote health changes that improve family stability or maintain family stability. The assessment is also used to identify how one family member can affect all family members. When assessing Bernetta Bold,
Sweeney, M Megan (2007). Stepfather Families and the Emotional Well-Being of Adolescents. Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Vol 48, No. 1, 33-49
Love, warmth, comforting, encouraging support from parents, siblings and other relatives brings the best out of the children. Every family has own style and beliefs which affect child’s development. Parents Aspirations and expectations have fruitful or stressful effects on development. Changes in family relations by divorce or death, redundancy or family financial crisis changes many things in child’s development. Also a child who has not formed an attachment or bonded with a primary carer, or whose attachment has been disrupted, may also be affected, as their feeling of personal identity and security will not develop as
During college, I mastered abundant theoretical knowledge including psychology, human behavior, social work skills and social work with different communities including youth and elderly. Besides, I did something to enhance my skills and prepare for my graduate study.
Child psychology, also known as child development, is the study of psychological growth of children; how these mechanisms develop from infancy to adolescence and why they deviate from one child to the next. Child development is associated with biological, psychological, and emotional diversity that occur in humans. Although there is a different advancement for each child, these developmental changes may be greatly determined by genetic factors and experience during prenatal life. The early years of a child’s life are very important for his or her health and development. Parents, health professionals, educators, and others can work together as partners to help children grow up to reach their full potential.
The foundations for a child’s development begins not only in the child’s first year, but also while they are in utero. A child’s development can also be influenced by how much the parents are contributing to the development of the child. A couple that interacts well with one another as well as with the child can have “positive impacts on a child’s cognitive, language and motor development, this can also positively benefit the couple relationship, and the parent-infant relationship,” (Parfitt, Pike, & Ayers, 2013). A parent’s especially a mother’s mental health can greatly impact a child’s development if a mother is less stressed the will be more comfortable around the child creating a better mother-child attachment which also promotes language development. (Parfitt, Pike, & Ayers, 2013). If a father’s is positively involved in a child’s life early on that the child will have a greater reduction in cognitive delays, this is especially true in boys (Parfitt, Pike, & Ayers, 2013). Another positive key in a child’s development comes from the sibling relationships. Siblings help a child learn social, emotional, cognitive and behavioral
A family assessment is a process for gathering and organizing information in ways that can help a family prevent and or solve problems. The goal is to obtain a full understanding and unbiased view of the strengths and problems. A good assessment is about relationship building, engaging families in an exploration of their strengths, values and goals to build mutual trust and respect. Then when problems do arise, this relationship can be the foundation of open communication allowing the doors to open for identification of additional supports needed to reduce or eliminate the factors causing harm.
Dawson, D.A. (1991) Family Structure and Children’s Health and Well Being National Health Interview Survey on Child Health, Journal of marriage and the Family
For the next portion of the interview I asked questions about her family history and experience’s. My mother grew up with her father and mother, she was an only child. She did not have much interaction with her grandparents, but she saw her aunts and uncles on a regular basis. The first question I asked her was how would you describe your parent’s personalities? She said kind, nice, loving, funny, and easygoing.
As children, we depend greatly on our parents to satisfy our basic needs, for guidance, nurturance and for help in shaping our emotions, behaviors and relationships. For children, the family is a highly valued context for understanding and interpreting their development as individuals. As Bjorklund and Pelligrini (2001) have asserted, we are a “slow-developing, big-brained species”, the relatively large size of our brains demands a prolonged period of immaturity, therefore requiring a great deal of support and nurturance from parents (DeLoache, J., Eisenberg, N., Siegler, R. 2011). However, an adaptive consequence to this extended immaturity is our high level of neural plasticity and our ability to learn from experience. Growing up in a stable environment can undoubtedly reap successful development for children on many levels, just as living in an unstable environment will certainly allow for undesirable consequences. Despite great individual differences, research from psychologists such as Erik Erikson and Sigmund Freud, among others allows us to organize and understand the affects of long lasting parental conflict on child development and family. Research has allowed a strong shot at understanding child development, allowing parental conflict to be observed and connected with the development of children across many aspects. It is largely the differences between socioeconomic status, culture, race, gender and level of conflict, support and resiliency, which directly affect children and other relatives over time.
After having attained a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology and a Master’s degree in Gerontology, I felt I should gain some first-hand experience in physical therapy and thus volunteered to work as a caregiver in a reputed Evergreen rehabilitation center Ga. However, while working as a caregiver I realized I needed to learn much more in order to provide better care in meeting the psychological and physical caring needs of the elderly. I have always had the inherent desire to serve the elderly in reducing their hardships and providing them with the much needed physical and psychological support so that they can lead a happy and trouble-free life.
As I personally take the time to have a reflection over the course of “Child and Adolescent Development” I find myself intrigued with the amount of knowledge I gained during this course this semester. I wanted to take the time to concentrate on three specific areas in which I felt I had the most growth, but also came as a challenge to me as well. It is important when reflecting over a course that I look at what I found to be challenging, as this was an opportunity of growth for me individually. In this paper I will review some of the main topics that I found to be interesting but also resourceful for my future aspiration not only as a family life educator but also a mother one day.
After writing about my history and the themes I selected, I have learned a lot about who I am in society. I have realized that I am an average girl that has not experienced much of life. During this analysis I have come to realize I have not had much contact with other family types or other cultures.