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Share information for one additional topic of your choice from the course that you think is important for parents to be informed about. Describe the topic and what parents should know in a way that will engage them. Include a scholarly source as a reference to support your ideas.

There are several ways a family can keep their kid happy during this highly sensitive developmental time. For example, “major increases in strength and improvements in motor coordination do occur. These changes contribute to the child’s growing sense of competence in relation to his physical abilities and enhance his potential for participating in sports, dance, gymnastics, and other physical pursuits. Monitoring the child’s growth patterns and conducting periodic physical examinations to assess growth and development are important components of health supervision. Families can provide enormous support for healthy physical development. They can also work with communities to ensure that children have access to safe play areas, recreation centers, and parks, in addition to well-supervised play activities. For children to flourish, communities must value children’s physical growth and provide carefully maintained play facilities to help their bodies develop in a healthy way. Health professionals can augment their guidance on physical activity by advocating for such community facilities(pg 1). Kids don’t have to be playing video games or play outside to be happy, just having a healthy nutrition and lifestyle can go a long way and keep them healthy for the long term. A healthy kid is a happy kid and parents love that!

Source: https://www.brightfutures.org/bf2/pdf/pdf/MC.pdf

One source is our own textbook(which is going to be my source as well). Our textbook goes into great detail about the different stages of child development and how there are so many factors that influence it. Whether it’s heritage, what country you live in, have separated parents, nutrition, and so much more. The book describes these things so well and that’s why I enjoyed doing the quizzes because it really made me think about what I was reading. Another book is called Development During Middle Childhood: The Years From Six to Twelve by W. Andrew Collins, which describes how children develop from ages six or twelve, whether it’s cognitive, physical, emotional and social, etc. These different domains can tell you a lot about a child and what they’re going through. Also, give an insight on what their family is like and why it makes them who they are. Another book is called Middle Childhood Development: A Contextual Approach by Libby Balter Blume and Mary Jo Zember, which is also talks about the different aspects of middle childhood but through a different lens or perspective. Children in middle childhood are exposed to all sorts of things and their brain is developing so quickly that it scares them a lot of the times. When something happens that’s inevitable they’re not always ready for it and they’ll have to deal with it, no matter if they like it or not. That’s one of the rough things about life, that it don’t care sometimes and you just got to power through.

One factor that influences middle childhood development is stress. Stress causes problems for anyone at any age, but it can have an even longer and lasting effect on a developing brain. For example, “In particular, on the negative side, the studies are revealing the powerful and lasting adverse effects of early-life abuse and neglect upon the developing brain and body. Such abuse can result in poor self-control and emotional regulation and can impair cognitive development and increase diseases of the cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune systems. Yet the sensitivity of the developing brain provides an opportunity for improving outcomes and is leading to efforts to improve the consistency of supportive parental care”(pg1). Another factor that influences middle childhood development is family structure. For example, “Parental separation has been reported in the literature as being associated with a wide range of adverse effects on children’s wellbeing, both as a short-term consequence of the transition and in the form of more enduring effects that persist into adulthood. Effects reported include adverse impacts on cognitive capacity (Fergusson, Lynskey and Horwood 1994), schooling (Evans et al. 2001), physical health (Dawson 1991), mental and emotional health (Chase-Lansdale et al. 1995), social conduct and behaviour (Morrison and Coiro 1999), peer relations (Demo and Acock 1988), criminal offending (Hanson 1999), cigarette smoking (Ermisch and Francesconi 2001), substance use (Fergusson, Horwood and Lynskey 1994), early departure from home (Mitchell et al. 1989), early-onset sexual behaviour (Ellis et al. 2003) and teenage pregnancy” (Woodward et al. 2001). The third developmental factor is technology. Children these days are consumed by technology and want to be on it every second of every day and it’s a parent’s job to make sure they’re using it responsibility. A phone is pretty much a computer nowadays and it can leave kids extremely vulnerable.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3574783/

https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/journals-and-magazines/social-policy-journal/spj24/24-impact-of-family-structure-and-family-change-on-child-outcome-p111-133.html

One milestone for the social and emotional domain for middle childhood is “pay more attention to friendship and teamwork(pg1). Parents can look to see if their kids are asking to hang out with friends more often, wanting to play outside or go over to someone’s house after school for a play date, etc. They want to take part in sports and stay after school to hang out with friends and play a sport they enjoy. One milestone for the physical domain for middle childhood is more independence in motor function and sports. They want to be able to learn how to ride a bike, hit a baseball/softball, volleyball, etc. Their kids start to develop quickly in this stage of their lives. One milestone for the cognitive domain for middle childhood is “learn better ways to describe experiences and talk about thoughts and feelings(pg1). For example, your kid could come how from school and talk about in good detail about what happened at school today. They struggled in their math class, can’t figure out the order of operations so they asked their teacher to help explain it better to them. Now, they need their parents to help out and give them extra practice problems. They also saw a fellow student getting bullied and instead of just watching it happen, they whet to their teacher or principal and told them what was going on. Afterwards, they went and asked them if they were okay and they said yeah and they asked if they’d want to hang out sometime.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/childdevelopment/positiveparenting/middle.html