Parent/Caregiver early childhood guidance Strategies and Newsletter

Early childhood education from birth to 5 years-old

 Introduction

 Parents create a positive impact and children’s  positive experience by setting clear rules, protecting and caring for them from birth. Parents are expected to build a nurturing caregiving relationship to improve the child's well-being, social life, and cognitive development.  These actions promote supportive environments, children's behaviors and help them encounter positive life experiences. However, parenting or providing child guidance is a challenging task as parents feel overwhelmed by various tasks including providing food, shelter, emotional need, teaching, and creating work-life balance. Parents always have higher expectations about their children personality but they lack the knowledge and ability to ensure their children's positive behaviors and well-being.  To ensure positive parenting, parents should support their children and this paper provides parenting-related knowledge, guidance strategies, and practices that will help parents create positive developmental outcomes.

Paternal involvement

 Parents should nurture and support their children during early childhood development. Paternal involvement has a positive influence on a child's behavior in that as parents spend more time to interact and discipline their children, the children develop self-discipline personality and self-control (Kim Man, 2013). Parents play a significant role as they act as the role model and as a result, the children improve psychological development, develops language skills, respect, personality and different virtues of life.  Thus, parents should be at the forefront to build a healthy learning environment by disciplining them and acting as role models.  Many parents do not understand the importance of early learning and interrelationship but they spend more time on their work. It is important to understand should obtain learning opportunity from their parents and so,  parents need to spend more time with their children educating them, giving them counsels, behavior therapy and cognitive therapy (Kim Man, 2013).  These are important elements needed in a child's psychological development.

 Guidance strategies and practices

 During early childhood, a nurturing caregiving relationship plays a vital role in a child's development especially in children living in poverty.  Early adversity affects the damages the child's neurological and immunologic systems and to prevent these negative outcomes, there is a need for nurturing and stable relationships (Morris et al, 2017).  The following are important programs for parenting, guidance and strategies and these programs will help parents promote nurturing and supportive relationships, promote parent-child interaction and improve the child's physical and mental health. 

Social support

  Some families are economically disadvantaged and such families experience chaos, stress and poor health associated with neurological and immunologic effects.  However, parents should provide their children with social support such as emotional support, child-care, personal advice, and positive reinforcement (Morris et al, 2017).  Even though poor families find it hard to access resources and social capital, parents should form social networks to improve mental and physical health and as a result, offer positive parenting, and reduce maternal depression.

 Parent-child  interactions

 In addition to providing social support to children during early childhood development, parents should also build nurturing relationships.  From birth up to 5 years, children depend on their parents or guardians for physical and mental needs. Thus, parents should build healthy parent-child interactions and as a result, children will experience positive cognitive development and have the ability to explore the world (Morris et al, 2017). Note that when children are emotionally secure, they are well-adjusted, unlike children who have insecure attachments. The attachments make the parents become sensitive to children's physical and emotional needs.  In addition, parent-child interaction develops pro-social behaviors and improve their behavioral and mental health (Morris et al, 2017).  Through interaction, children develop reading skills, conversations and cognitive development.

 Praising and rewarding children

 In daily interaction, parents should promote nurturing behaviors and attachments by praising their children. When a child behaviors in a negative way, parents should reinterpret the behavior in a negative way in order to support the child and help him or her engage in pro-social behavior (Morris et al, 2017).  Praising and rewarding is a strategy of guiding children toward their growth and development.  Parents should praise and acknowledge specific good behaviors so that the child can feel motivated, increase performance in doing good activities and learning (Morris et al, 2017).  If a child completes eating food or places toys in a better place, a  parent can praise him or her by saying ‘well done', ‘thank you', ‘great work', good girl/boy', ‘I am really pleased' and so on.  In addition to giving praises, parents should also give a reward such as visiting the park, swimming pool, doing painting, playing together, giving stories and so on. Note that praises and rewards will make the child feel good, develop a sense of belonging and increase the ability in learning and development.

 Ignore annoying behavior

  Parents should ignore annoying behaviors which do not surpass the ground rules or behaviors which are not dangerous or damaging.  It is important to allow children to learn by mistake and solve simple matters (Miller, 2015). In addition, if a parent notices unacceptable behavior, it is important to stop concentrating on the mistake and focus the attention elsewhere to help the child resolve the problem.

Redirect negative behavior to positive behavior

 When a child does unacceptable behavior, the parent should involve the child in positive behavior.  For example, a child who is cleaning her nostrils using her hand can be given a handkerchief or a tissue and teach how to use it. The parents should redirect the inappropriate behavior or undesirable actions by providing an alternative method can help the child learn.

 Maintain objectivity

 Parents should know that child guidance is not an easy task but it needs commitment and hard work.  In providing guidance, parents should avoid the threat of harm and anger since it will not assist in learning but rather it will cause more harm (Miller, 2015.  Note that children at the development stage pays attention to the parents and absorbs the information when they are calm. On shaping the child's behavior, parents should focus on the reality of the situation and avoid, overpowering, negative feelings and expression of anger.

Clarity of expectations

 Parents expect positive behaviors from their children but this cannot be achieved if there is no clarity of expectations. Parents should set instructions and ensure that the children understand fully what they are intended to do (Miller, 2015. In various cases, parents use general terms such as ‘be nice'.  Note that children need specific statements about what to do, how to use objects, how to speak and so on.   After setting clear expectations, parents should maintain consistency. Children cannot behave in a positive way if parents do not maintain consistency. Thus, parents should provide the children with a day-to-day rule to remind them of what they are expected from them.

Part 2

 Summary

The above guidance strategies and activities were selected since they are appropriate in promoting a child's social and cognitive development.  These activities have a significant impact on early childhood development.  The newsletter targets both poor and wealthy families since children from both settings need a nurturing caregiving relationship.  Parents from both settings have been informed about the best practices to perform while raising up their children.  They should offer social support, child-parent interaction, set expectations, and reward and praise the child's behavior (Kim Man, 2013). Parents are also informed on how to address undesirable behaviors, how to reinforce behavior's, and sources of social support.  Even though nursery and kindergarten teachers build a healthy environment for the young ones by teaching them language skills, combination and hygiene,  this newsletter targets parents because they are the first participants in building and shaping the foundation of character and behavior (Kim Man, 2013).  In the first five years, parents have the role of building a good learning environment where the child develops both physically and mentally.

 

Conclusion

 Early childhood development is an important process that shapes the children's behavior and personality through creating a strong bond with their parents.  However, parents encounter several challenges in providing proper guidance. They lack knowledge and effective strategies for effective parenting and children's development. Parents should follow the knowledge provided on guidance and practices for parenting and they will experience a positive outcome. In specific, parents should focus on building a supportive environment to promote social support, promote parent-child interaction and be sensitive. During early childhood, children need stability, guidance, sense of agency, and a positive environment so that they feel secure. All these can be achieved if parents can only provide autonomy and allow children to make choices during development.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 References

Kim Man, M. M. (2013). The Early Childhood Experience In Psychology Development. International Journal of Management & Innovation, 5(2), 89–98. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=93342240&site=ehost-live

 

Morris, A. S., Robinson, L. R., Hays, G. J., Claussen, A. H., Hartwig, S. A., & Treat, A. E. (2017). Targeting

Parenting in Early Childhood: A Public Health Approach to Improve Outcomes for Children Living

in Poverty. Child Development, 88(2), 388–397. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12743

 

Miller F. Darla. (2015). Positive Child Guidance. Cengage Learning