Consequences of Stress on Children's Development

On September 16, 1999 hurricane Floyd hit Greenville, North Carolina flooding mostly everything in sight. This hurricane was the biggest we had ever seen and displaced over 4,000 people. As a child I wasn’t gravely affected by this but my cousin was. I was only eleven years old but I remember like it was yesterday. The flood spread throughout over half of Greenville and destroyed many homes. My cousin had to live with my family and I for a year. His family lost everything so they had to start over from scratch. He had many issues and didn’t deal with this every well because he had no clothes, shoes, or a place to call home. He started getting into trouble because of this stress but eventually calmed down. FEMA and the Red Cross stepped in to help and the city as a whole pulled together during this tragic time.

View of inland flooding

Poverty is a major stressor for children in Africa and they suffer from malnutrition as well. They have numerous of ways to help with these stressors dealing with children such as sponsoring a child and send items over to help. Most people donate money to help children in Africa and clean drinking water. I feel as though more should be done for them because children die daily over there due lack of food and clean water.

Child Development and Public Health

SIDS is important to me because I work in an infant room and parents are always asking us to put their child on their stomachs. The parents know about SIDS but they always say their child sleeps best that way and I have to explain that we as childcare workers aren’t allowed to let them sleep on their stomach if the child rolls on their stomach their self then its fine. I also chose this topic because I person that I knew lost her child to SIDS when he was three months and she blames herself for his death. Parents need to be more educated about this because we say this could never happen to our child. In 2010 this was considered to be the third leading cause of death among infants.

Each year in the United States, about 4,000 infants die suddenly of no immediately, obvious cause (center for disease control and prevention). Compared to other developing countries the United States has the highest rate for SIDS. For example, in 2005, the U.S. rate ranked second highest (after New Zealand) among 13 countries in a research study by Fern Hauck and Kawai Tanabe (national SUID/SIDS Resource Center).

These decreases range from 40% in Argentina to 86% in France (ispid.org). The highest SIDS rates in 1990 (>2.0/1000 live births) were in Ireland, New Zealand, and Scotland (ispid.org). More recently, the highest SIDS rates (>0.5/1000 live births) are in New Zealand and the United States (ispid.org). The lowest rates (<0.2/1000) are in Japan and the Netherlands (ispid.org). My plans for the future are to open my childcare center and inform parents along with caregivers about SIDS and how they can help. I would love to start teaching the trainings for this class as well to empower other childcare givers.

I found this chart at http://www.sidscenter.org/Statistics.html

Resources

http://www.ispid.org/fileadmin/user_upload/textfiles/articles/CPR17_Hauck_SIDS_Trends.pdf

http://www.cdc.gov/sids/

http://www.sidscenter.org/Statistics.html

Childbirth

I haven't experienced childbirth yet, but I was there when I friend went into labor with her son. Her water broke at around 4 in the morning and she went to the hospital they told her she was 7 centimeters dilated. They gave her and epidural for the pain and she needed up having a c-section because the baby's heart rate was dropping. To me this was a crazy experience because she hoping to push her baby out but couldn't. In China they expect you to drink strong herbal tea for the pain, there customs dictates that women should fear birth since it's considered a woman's career. They don't use a hospital bed, traditionally they give birth in an armchair or a futon. The Chinese traditions are totally different from American traditions.