Chapter 22nd. Hand Book.Family Context in Early Childhood.

Chapter 22: Family Context in Early Childhood .

I chose to read chapter 22 in Hand Book, I see it as very important topic in our society of multi-cultures . In our schools we see children from different culture and backgrounds. Along with them they bring their cultures and effects of their family life into the class. I admired Buddha’s quote saying,
“ A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another . If these minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden”.
____ Buddha

This chapter explains the importance of family and its influences on children’s development as well as how children affect family’s ecology. Besides child-family interaction to the well being of a child, educators also play an important role. It is important for an educator to learn how they can better understand and interact with families. To develop a connection between school and families, a positive atmosphere must be established between the families and school that conveys the message that “mutual respect and interdependence of home, school, and community are essential to children’s development” (McAfee, 1993,p.21). To establish such environment there should be mutual trust among school and families.
In this matter government has been playing it’s role as well by promoting early childhood programs such as National Education Goals Panel ,1999, IDEA:US Congresss,1999, and Title 1 (US Department of education, 1997) all included in their programs a mandate of family involvement in school issues. In early Childhood programs, home visitation has been promoted to connect families with schools. There are several other early childhood programs that are working to connect families with schools.
I learned in this chapter, how rituals and routines are important in child’s development. As it is mentioned in one section of this chapter, “When routines are disrupted, it is a hassle. When rituals are disrupted, there is a threat to group identity”. Children who experience routines at home also are more likely to have easy transition to school from home. Because if a child is use to of routines at home it will be easy for him to respond to orderly atmosphere as well as children ae raised in families who practice their rituals regularly give their child more stable emotional atmosphere. Which helps a child show better academic performance in later life.
Dr. Benjamin Spock strongly supported the central role of parents (primarily mothers )in directly shaping their child’s development (Spock, 1955). Such as mothers depression, ill health ,poor economic condition, and being single parent does disrupts mother –child interaction.Financial status and emotional distress of mothers doeas effect child’s cognitive and behavioral development. Bronfenbrenner (1997 clearly explained and notified the multiple ecologies that root within each other and play an important role in child development. Most proximal to the child’s experience are interactions within the family context. Bed time stories are good example of parent child interaction and it supports development of learning language. Reading bedtimes stories in early childhood time has been found to be associated with better academic performance in the early school years (Serpell,Sonnenschein, baker, and Ganapathy,2002; Whitehurst et al.,1988). As in Eastern cultures ,the stories themselves usually focus on some message that is to be delivered to children indirectly, such as responsibility, and respect for elders. Myself belonging to Eastern culture reminds me of my childhood time when after dinner the whole family sits together and enjoyed green tea while papa and my mom use to tell us stories and it always had some message of responsibility, courage, respect for elders and love for young ones and also to be a good muslim. Some of the stories are so deeply rooted in me that they became part of my personality. I still cherish those rituals and routines of my childhood times. Also whenever our grandparents, aunts and uncles were with us they would join us in telling family stories/their childhood stories with a message. I also remember we use to wait for our family and religious rituals eagerly and the whole family use to join together and would come and stay in our house. Which made me realize the importance of sharing and tolerating extended family members and taking care of their needs as well. I encourage same rituals and routines in my family and enjoy carrying them as my family tradition. Also I very much encourage family and school interaction. Parents join us in our day care rituals such as Birthdays, summer party, and end of the year party which are few of our rituals that we practice every year. Parents/grandparents and children wait for these celebrations as well as very much enjoy to be together on all these occasions. Our Rochester hills librarian’s quarterly story reading visit, and our mealtimes and nap times ,as well as our everyday reading stories are few of our routines that we regularly practice and I noticed it does bring order in mine and children’s life and children feel relax and happy. After reading this chapter I paid more attention in observing children in my day care and noticed that those children are more whinnie and craby whose mothers worry for their sickness and those who are not regular in their routines and rituals. Specially children with such environment at home show mothers more tantrums than at school .But parent only does not influence the child’s development ,It’s a mutual effect how parent and care givers as well as child himself experience the environment and influence each other. Through our day care routines and rituals we have brought awareness to some extent in our day care parents about the importance of reading bedtime stories and following routines and rituals at home.