How Parental Behavior Affects Infant Development
QUESTION
The growth, development, and learned behaviors that occur during the first year of infancy have a direct effect on the individual throughout a lifetime. For this assignment, research an environmental factor that poses a threat to the health or safety of infants and develop a health promotion that can be presented to caregivers.
Create a 10-12 slide PowerPoint health promotion, with speaker notes, that outlines a teaching plan. For the presentation of your PowerPoint, use Loom to create a voice over or a video. Include an additional slide for the Loom link at the beginning, and an additional slide for references at the end.
In developing your PowerPoint, take into consideration the health care literacy level of your target audience, as well as the demographic of the caregiver/patient (socioeconomic level, language, culture, and any other relevant characteristic of the caregiver) for which the presentation is tailored.
Include the following in your presentation:
Describe the selected environmental factor. Explain how the environmental factor you selected can potentially affect the health or safety of infants.
Create a health promotion plan that can be presented to caregivers to address the environmental factor and improve the overall health and well-being of infants.
Offer recommendations on accident prevention and safety promotion as they relate to the selected environmental factor and the health or safety of infants.
Offer examples, interventions, and suggestions from evidence-based research. At least three scholarly resources are required. Two of the three resources must be peer-reviewed and no more than 6 years old.
Provide readers with two community resources, a national resource, and a Web-based resource. Include a brief description and contact information for each resource.
Refer to the resource, “Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations,” located in the Student Success Center, for additional guidance on completing this assignment in the appropriate style.
Refer to the resource, “Loom,” located in the Student Success Center, for additional guidance on recording your presentation.
While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and documentation of sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.
How Parental Behavior Affects Infant Development
ANSWER
The environment within which a child grows up determines their cognitive and social skills. It also determines their health status and the possibility of acquiring a chronic health disorder later in life. Exposure to various environmental factors have resulted to over 60% of diseases in children under the age of 5. over 3 million children die every year due to various environments factors that affect them from both the family and community setting.
Negative environments pre-dispose the child to a harsh environment that inhibits normal growth and may result in serious physical and biological health. The parents, caregivers and the members of the community should ensure a safe environment is met for a relatively positive growth pattern for children.
The immediate surrounding within which a child is brought up has a considerably huge impact on their growth and development. A child is mostly in contact with his or her parents the most in the first two years of development. It is therefore certain that the behaviours of the parents will be experienced by the child through seeing, doing, touching and experiencing. A parent that engages in smoking, irrational behavior and recklessness will lead to a poorly growing baby that is set to suffer for the rest of its life. Activities like smoking or poor nutrition expose the child to toxic pollutants through inhaling and breastfeeding, thus, impact on its physical and mental health. The environment at home should be positive in terms of behaviours as this will lead to a healthy baby that is set to experience minimal health issues later in life.
Parents should engage in positive behaviour as it influences the home environment, which in turn influences the child’s health and its perception of the world. A child brought up in a loving home that feeds on healthy foods, in vibrant and free from arguments is set up to grow up with a positive mindset that will be reflected on their activities later in life. A home filled with toxic parenting behaviors and problematic situations leads to negative cognitive, social and physical growth. Toxicity within the home setting negatively impacts on a child as they may develop social awkwardness, mental disorders and poor health in their later years of life. The OECD Vulnerable Children Building opportunities report argues that people over 50 years of age are more likely to experience poor health if they had a chronic disease by age 10. This shows that it is the duty of the parent to guide the patient and offer guidance by showing positive routine behavior.
Young parents and those with infants need to actively engage in educational activities that improve their knowledge on handling infants and skills on how to encourage good behavior within the home. Caregivers and healthcare personnel are involved with parents-to-be all through the maternal process and early years of a child’s life. Nurses and maternal health providers need to take advantage of these visits to provide patient education and develop a personal connection with the parents; through this, they will be able to monitor the health and behaviors of the parents, thus, help maintain a healthy and good quality of life for the infant. There should also be lower maternal costs and access to financial help when need be. Easy access to financial help helps ease stress in parents, thus improving their moods when at home.
Parents-to-be should avoid unhealthy eating habits, smoking and alcohol abuse as these negatively contribute to the growth of the fetus. When an infant is exposed to smoke, they may develop respiratory illnesses that may prove dangerous to them. These negative activities by the parent affect the child in their later years of life and increase their risk of early death.
Access to medical journals and reports on communication skills and problem solving strategies will help the parents engage positively when there is a disagreement and avoid unnecessary loud arguments. The environment at home should be clean and orderly. The infant, when playing, will be safe from any dirty materials with harmful germs and will also play in an environment with reduced risk of physical injury.
The obstacles present in parent-parent and child-parents relationships need to be promptly addressed. The relationships between the parents has a he impact on the child’s behavior, learning process and cognitive development. Abusive parents tend to project their frustration on each other and the child. Children who grow up in hostile situations tend to be angry, aggressive and easily irritable as adults, while, children who grow up in loving and authoritative homes have healthy social and emotional connection and are able to progress in their careers.
A healthy diet exposed on both parties ensures good moods due to intake of the right nutrients, hence, a better home environment. Children are able to also grow well physically and mentally. Physical activities help release stress and improve moods. Coupled with frequent social interactions, they help the children gain social skills.
Finances are a key element of a well-functioning home. Adequate income to provide for the basic need ensures a family stays positive and healthy.
Health communication, education and the development of policies within all affected realms helps in the fast and smooth adoption of the health promotion plan. These approaches help in patient negotiation, critical education of the society and development of social, financial and health policies that encourage the parents to engage in constructive activities that help build a good relationship with their children,
Children who are in a good relationship with their parents tend to be in a good state of being and achieve good health.
The community library is a convenient place to access information on parenting behavior and environmental factors that influence the growth and development of a child. It is easily accessible and majority have little to no subscription fee. The community hospital is a good resource as there is easy access to information considered helpful to parenting. The National Health Information Centre is a National resource for access and availability of vital information on environmental factors that affect infant growth and development.
The National Institutes of Health website is a web based platform that offers a wide access to medical reports, journals and articles and is accessible to all.
The families within a given community that the caregivers are set to interact with determine the success rate of the health promotion plan. Their attitudes towards the idea of someone else advising them on how to bring up their own child impact on the values passed on to the child. Receptive parents who chose to accept advice on better parenting behavior uphold good values and bring up children of good physical, mental and social health.
The rate of participation of the families on the health promotion plan will be an indicator on the adoption rates of good values, caregivers should also be expected to provide feedback on their thoughts concerning the plan’s results. The number of children who grow up healthy or not should be an indicator of the outcome of the plan.
Parenting in children greatly differs on character and personality. Character and personality directly influence a person’s behavior. A parent who is both authoritative and receptive will be encouraging and guiding to a child, thus, allowing it to learn. An aggressive and abusive parent brings up an individual who is sad, angry and reclusive; this negatively affects their growth and development in all forms.
It is imperative that parents carry themselves with respect and dignity, while being proactive as children learn from observation.
References
Clark, M. (2020). Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children Ages 0-8.
Jeong, J., Franchett, E. E., Ramos de Oliveira, C. V., Rehmani, K., & Yousafzai, A. K. (2021). Parenting interventions to promote early child development in the first three years of life: A global systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS medicine, 18(5), e1003602.
Yamaoka, Y., & Bard, D. E. (2019). Positive parenting matters in the face of early adversity. American journal of preventive medicine, 56(4), 530-539.