Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories

The benefits for involving children in research:

(1) One benefit to research involving children and their families is helping to save lives. Without the help of research many pregnant women would not know what to do during their pregnancy, how to keep their baby healthy, what they can or cannot eat and so forth. Although women’s bodies are different, research try to find general research for all women carrying and then dive deeper for each individual. If miscarriage occurs, a baby is born premature, or a baby is a stillborn, doctors and researchers try to understand what happened and how they can prevent that for the next time.

(2) Article: What do asthma, heart disease and cancer have in common? Maybe childhood trauma

Another benefit is it helps families understand the latter effects of a child’s growth and development. The National Public Radio (NPR) speaks about trauma effecting children, causing lifetime problems. Although there are different levels of stress and different affects of these stress factors, we have to take into consideration that although it may seem little to us adults, every child processes the information differently.

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris is the founder and CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco.

Dr. Burke Harris believes that trauma can

“…tip a child’s developmental trajectory and affect physiology. It can trigger chronic inflammation and hormonal changes that can last a lifetime. It can alter the way DNA is read and how cells replicate, and it can dramatically increase the risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes — even Alzheimer’s.”    (Turner, 2018).

 

Without this research families, educators, caregivers, doctors and more, would not understand the importance of a healthy childhood for children. We would not understand why children can get upset easily, exclude themselves from activities, have a hard time forming relationships with other children or strangers (ie teachers) and so on.

LINK: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/01/23/578280721/what-do-asthma-heart-disease-and-cancer-have-in-common-maybe-childhood-trauma

 

Reference

Turner, C. (2018, Jan). What do asthma, heart disease and cancer have in common? Maybe childhood trauma. NPR. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/01/23/578280721/what-do-asthma-heart-disease-and-cancer-have-in-common-maybe-childhood-trauma

 

My Personal Research Journey

Research Topic: Play based learning

The topic I chose was play based learning. I chose this topic because I believe it is important for a child’s healthy development. As an educator, I would like to further understand the important essentials for a child and be able to help others by passing along this information.

In our society today, play seems to be fading due to technology, everyday life, or some other reason and it is important to help bring that back. Children should be children, therefore, they should be able to explore while learning. Yes, you can place a child in front of a television or tablet all day while you have work to finish, but the child is not building the fine motor skills that comes with play based learning.

My three subtopics are:

Subtopic #1: Ways in which I can foster play based learning in a child’s every day life

Subtopic #2: What is the correlation between a child’s learning and play?

Subtopic #3: What are some methods to encourage children to explore their creativity, imagination, and problem solving skills?

My Personal Experience

I have not been working in the early childhood field for very long, but I have noticed differences among children as the years go on. My Pre-k floor has three UPK (Universal Pre-k) and a Pre-k 3. In one classroom, I was an assistant teacher and we had computer as one of the choice time options, but it was very restrictive: it was not always an option for choice time and children were limited to 5 minutes on the computer.We used the computer as a learning tool and a read a loud option. Children would constantly fight over their turn, stare at the computer when someone else was playing it, or cry when they had to get off. They have said multiple times “can we watch something on the tv” -meaning the smart board.

Then when I became the lead teacher for my own classroom, I had this child who constantly missed behaved and a had a sensory issue. He would spit in someone’s face or food, fight over a toy and get over sensitive about it, hard time listening, constantly moving around on the carpet, kicking anything near him (another child or toy), as well as hitting. I had many meetings with mom about her son, but she did not believe it was happening because it did not happen at home. Long story short, we finally got down to the bottom of the situation and mom admitted that she would leave her kids in front of the tv watching something educational while she finished her work. As well as her son not getting enough sleep. When we agreed on using a behavioral chart, limiting him to technology and having a nice rest period, he relaxed a little. She even decided to do family things on the weekends and enroll him in an extra-curricular activity.

***Any insights, advice, or resources that you can share about my topic and/or this course?