Question

. In thinking about the huge jumps in development that take place for children at this stage, describe some of the major health and safety risks that children face? Your answers should vary according to environment, culture, and demographics.

Answer 1

child development is a gradual unfolding of biologically determined characteristics and traits that arises as the child learns from experiences.

factors that affect the development of a child includes the following:

• environmental factors:
• first and main environment that child experiences is the home: since the birth,the emotional environment the child sees and feels around will shape the child's personality.a stable and loving relationship will nurture the child's personality.
• family's financial health: people in poverty face lots of challenges due to underdeveloped areas,lack of nutrition,unclean surroundings. these factors put the child into risk during development. eg:fetus exposed to lead and arsenic before birth may be born early or underweight thus compromising child development. infectious diseases in children can affect development through direct and indirect pathway.dirrohea is particularly prevalent in first 2 years of life due to lack of accessibility to clean drinking water or inadequate sanitation.
• cultural factors:
• traditional practises of feeding babies greatly influences the developmental process
• intoduction of pre lacteal feed delays in some cultures, delays the milk letdown reflex and contributes to lactation failure.
• wrapping the new born tightly in some cultures (swaddling),which does not allow the new born to move and touch people and things freely results in lack of awareness of the environment around the child which can contribute to retarted mental development.
• demographics:
• before birth: lead and arsenic poisoning leads to under weight of the child
• first 3 years of life:malnutrition results in cognitive, physical and socio-emotional impairement, growth retardation,diseases like iron deficiency anaemia pellagra etc.
• 4-6 years of life-malnutrition causes delayed mental development which results in poor school performance and reduced intellectual achievement.