When I Think of Child Development

When I think of child development I always envision how everyone has a specific idea about how every child should be as they grow up, that they should follow the developmental milestone checklists, do the same things that every other child, every sibling, every cousin, every etc. does as the grow....what we know in early childhood development is there are guidelines and checklists but no child develops the same way or at the same rate as another. This is a poem about what happens when the "norm" is not what you get.

Welcome to Holland

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this…

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland”.

“Holland?!?” you say, “What do you mean “Holland”??? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills…Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy…and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned”.

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away…because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss.

But…if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things…about Holland.

by Emily Perl Kingsley

Assessments in Education

The measurement of a child’s current level of development, present levels of educational need and potential for the future is something that should be done with great integrity. I work with individuals everyday whose job it is to evaluate children for delays and also to assess families to determine the strengths of the child and the family concerns for the child. A large part of the evaluation and assessment process that I see lacking is the part including the family and the way the child engages in their community and world outside of school. In the early childhood field we work with children and families from birth to kindergarten and have more exposure to the family than the typical school-age child teacher does to the family of the student. I believe that there needs to be more interaction and contact with the family of the child and the child in the world outside of the school environment. In order to really assess the “whole child” the child needs to be assessed in every environment to capture a full picture of who the child really is in relation to the disability and how it affects the child’s relationships.

      Robin McWilliam is a leader in the area of early intervention and early childhood special education. His work in the area of early intervention has been inspiring to me and I utilize his work during my intakes with families. The Routines-based Interview is an evidence-based protocol that I utilize to establish with the family their daily routine and how the delays the child may be experiencing affects the family routine on a daily basis. More information on the routine-based intervention/interview you can review information at www.siskin.org or Google Robin McWilliam.

      I reviewed information concerning the assessment process in France and they utilize similar assessment testing to the United States, however, while reviewing information I began to question what good does it do for me to research how a different country utilizes assessments when I don’t really know how their school system is set up, what the daily routines are within the school, what type of paraprofessional support is offered and how involved the family in the schooling process.

      This questioning made me reconsider the school-age child assessments in the United States, not only in my area but also in the whole of the states. I think that there needs to be a redesign in the evaluation process when it comes to the involvement of the family. I know that everyone talks about how the family is involved in the process, the IEP and the daily interactions with the teacher in relation to what happens in the classroom but with my experience on a daily basis, the mainstreaming society and the trickle-down curriculum of today’s schooling we need to make a more in-depth family assessment a required part of the special education and education process.

Stress of Poverty on Child Development

Open your cupboard door, grab a can of soup, warm up and eat; sounds simple enough but for many individuals that is not simple at all. In today’s society hunger is an ongoing issue for many individuals and families. According to the article “Spatial variation in poverty-generating processes: Child poverty in the United States” (Katherine J. Curtis, 2012) there are 43 million Americans that live in poverty everyday.  There has been an increase in the levels of poverty among the younger population since the 1990’s and I was one of those populations.

      One of my earliest memories of shame is of a Friday in second grade, I was getting ready to go home and a teacher asked me what I was doing for the weekend. I tell her that our food stamps have arrived and we are going to get groceries this weekend. She leaned in and whispered to me that maybe I shouldn’t say that so loud.  I fled home with cheeks burning, eyes blurred from tears and a heaviness in my chest. I have always remembered that day, the feeling that I need to hide my life from others,

     I remember throughout my childhood and life hiding my poverty from friends and co-workers, the embarrassment I felt when discussing weekend plans and not being able to join because of no extra funds. The first time I went to a food shelf I had to sit in my car for 2 hours crying before I could actually go in to get help and it took me two days before I could decide to eat the food and not return it to the food shelf.

      I worked my way up economically and was doing well until I became pregnant and the pregnancy sickness required bed rest leading me to lose my job and go back to being one of the populations affected by poverty.  This time I was able to utilize WIC (Women, Infants and Children) food supplements and once the baby arrived I qualified for food assistance through the SNAP program and cash assistance. In the state of Minnesota the maximum amount of cash assistance a 2-person household can receive is $437.00 and food stamps is $327.00. It was difficult to provide a stable environment for my child and myself with that amount of assistance even living with a relative who owned a home and provided economic assistance.

      I choose to review poverty in the United States because I was and am a person who navigates the poverty cycle of loss and attempts to utilize resources in the United States. The resources available are food stamps, food shelves, some cash assistance for people who are not making over $1100.00 a month, assistance from Salvation Army vouchers, assistance programs through United Way, free and reduced lunch programs in schools, backpack programs that send food home with kids on the weekends and other private funding. There has been a new phenomenon taking place through social networking such as Facebook where individuals in an area create groups connecting them with others to share items such as clothing, furniture, household items and sometimes food. These groups are a great resource of information and place to make friends you can turn to in times of needs.

Reference:

Katherine J. Curtis, P. R. (2012, August 11). Spatial variation in poverty-generating processes: Child poverty in the United States. Social Science Research .

Parental Mental Health

The mental health of a parent and it’s effects on the development of a child is one of the most important issues in today’s society in my eyes. I have studied this in numerous courses throughout college, read articles on-line, and read books related to this topic.  It is important to me in particular because there is an extended history of mental health issues in my family and I have always believed that my exposure to the genetics coupled with the level of functioning of my family has effected my development throughout my life.

There has been much discussion in recent years about post-partum depression, the stigma surrounding it and the effects it has on the child in relation to the five developmental domains with particular attention paid to attachment and social-emotional wellbeing of the child.

I researched this common topic in England and was not surprised to see that studies completed regarding the mental health and stablility of parents and it’s effects on children. According to the article “Parents’ mental health and children’s cognitive and social development: families in England in the Millennium Cohort Study” resulted in finds of lower attainment in communication, language and literacy, mathematical development and personal, social and emotional development among children whose parents were experiencing high levels of psychological distress. …Stronger effects of mothers’ mental health were found for boys than for girls.

Personally, this information meshes with what I already believed and what I try to keep in mind at all times when working with both my child and with the families I work with as an Early Childhood Special Education teacher. I was recently educated that our local United Way provides assistance to families with persistent mental health issues including counseling access and medication management to families that are uninsured. This is a resource that I will be sharing with my families as well as noting for myself in case of an insurance lapse.

Reference:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19823757 (FK Mensah)

Child Birth Experience

In my 37^th week of pregnancy I headed into my check-up appointment knowing that “something” just wasn’t right. I had my check and soon realized that I would be having a baby sooner than expected. I was developing preeclampsia and needed to be admitted immediately. I spent two days in the hospital before my regular obstetrician decided that we should begin helping the labor along and began a low dose of Pitocin. Contractions began but baby wasn’t ready to show so they increased the dosage, gave me an epidural and hoped that would be enough to relax my body and have the baby drop down and increase contractions. After 3 hours of no progress they “broke my water” and within 45 minutes this lovely boy slipped into my life.

Ryan-Michael  Born 2/29/08

6 lbs. 4.5 ozs. at 5:42 pm

18 1/2 inches in length

Situation	United States	Canada	Difference
Pre-natal Care	Comprehensive care with an ob./gyn throughout the length of your pregnancy, regular check-ups, standardized testing, design birth plan, care by the same doctor. Typically covered by insurance or if uninsured there is medical assistance for pregnant women.	Once you have an appointment with a general physician to establish your pregnancy you typically don’t see a doctor again until your eighth month unless you are high-risk than you can be seen more frequently at the walk-in clinic set up for pregnant women.	The level of care, the amount of access you have to providers during the pregnancy.
Cost	Typically covered by insurance or if uninsured there is medical assistance for pregnant women.	Health care is free in Canada to all citizens.	The access to care, the amount of specialized care if classified as a high risk patient
Delivery	Standard Delivery- with a pre-designed birth plan you deliver with your regular dr. in a private birthing suite, after delivery you either stay in the same room or is transferred to a semi-private room depending on your insurance.	You go to your local hospital, the physician on-call pages the obstetrician and you deliver in a surgery suite and then are moved to a ward with up to three other women. You can pay a 300.00 fee for a private   room.	There is a plan going into the delivery in the US. There may be several members of the “birth team” including a mid-wife, doula, private nurse, etc. in the US. The rate of hospital versus home births doesn’t vary as significantly as I thought it would.