Attachment parenting
- Attachment is a lasting psychological bond formed between a child and their parents or primary caregivers. Attachment parenting emphasizes on developing a bond that parents can create with their children.
- Attachment parenting applies at infancy or an early age from 0-5 years.
Attachment parenting promotes quiet alertness, thereby creating conducive environments that help infants learn from their parents. Attachment parenting has various benefits to the development of children. One of the benefits of attachment parenting is that children having solid bonds with their parents tend to develop good communication skills because, during infancy, there was increased engagement and interaction (Miller & Commons, 2021). This is possible where the children learn from their parents depending on how they observe their parents communicate or present themselves. Children with a solid attachment to their parents tend to imitate how their parents behave and communicate and develop good interaction and communication skills.
Another benefit of attachment parenting is learning the emotional regulation skill. Infants or children who receive a highly responsive style of parenting cry less, displaying less distress, and can better control their emotions, including anger, fear, and despair. As a result, their exposure to stress is reduced, which affects their brain development positively, and they receive the ability to deal with stress later in their lives (Leblanc et al., 2017). Stress control is essential for learning, exploration, effective relationships, and independence.
Last but not least, children that received attachment parenting tend to learn how to be independent or self-reliant and develop stronger self-esteem as they continue to grow. As an infant grows older, he will depend less on the caregiver for close maintenance though he does not abandon it completely. An infant develops the courage to explore away from the parent once he experiences the security of this physical closeness (Miller & Commons, 2021). Due to this, the children end up being more independent and perform better in life and school.
Successive attachment parenting in the infancy stage can be implemented through breastfeeding, in which a parent feeds her child with love and respect. This teaches infants that their parents will always attend to their cues and satisfy their needs (Santrock, 2017).
Another way attachment parenting can be implemented by ensuring that parents respond to their children with sensitivity. Parents should make an effort in considering emotions such as genuine efforts of communication, repeated tantrums (Santrock, 2017). The parents should not punish or dismiss their children but instead, take them seriously and understand them. Another way in which successive attachment parenting can be implemented is through engaging in nighttime parenting. This can be done by making co-sleeping arrangements that allow infants to sleep in the same rooms or bed-sharing with their parents to enable parents to feed them and soothe them emotionally during the night (Santrock, 2017).
Supportive education
- Fostering a supportive environment that creates a strong relationship among the students, staff, and families.
- This applies to adolescents and children from age 5 to 10 years.
Brain development is molded by a consistent, supportive relationship such as modeling productive behaviors and responsive communication. The brain’s capacity of children develops when they are physically and emotionally safe, challenged, connected, and engaged (Zhu & Shek, 2020). Learning involves academic, emotional, and social (Santrock, 2017). The positive relationship such as open up to studies, interest, and excitement in children is developed when trust is created between the teacher and the children. Negative emotions such as self-doubt, anxiety, and fear of failure impact the brain’s capacity for information processing and learning.
Developing a supportive school environment basing on a strong relationship forms a core foundation for learning. Students require a sense of safety to thrive positively in school (Zhou et al., 2020). Some of the activities that promote a sense of belonging and allow the teachers to know their students well include; first, looping, this is where the teachers interact with students for more than one year, thereby creating a sense of security for the student to feel safe and communicate openly (Santrock, 2017). Second, advisory classes where teachers check students and parents consistently. Third, cultural competence enhances the sense of belonging among all the students. Lastly, home visits and parent-teacher-student conferences create a strong connection of safety among students at home and in school.
By implementing instructional practices that provide students with skills to manage their learning activities, students develop a craving to learn things that are important to their lives. The instructions help the student’s understanding expand as it builds on their prior experiences (Santrock, 2017). Teachers can use mathematical lessons to connect everyday tasks to skills such as sports, artwork, cooking, etc., to engage students. History units can resolve current life issues like racial attacks and brutality against a particular ethnical background.
This assignment reminds me of my primary school life. The mathematics teacher used to visit me at home and discuss every progress that I made in school. She used to engage my parents, which pushed me to improve on school performance and my behavior because of the close monitoring I was subjected to.
Governmental and non-governmental transformative intervention
- The transformative intervention has great importance to adolescent teenagers as they begin facing times of quality decision-making.
- Applies to the adolescent youths.
Supporting and protecting the health of children and young people by putting an end to abuse, childhood neglect, and gender-based violence helps nurture the well-being of adolescents. Having good physical health as well as mental health helps adolescents develop in a positive way (Innocenti, 2021). Mental well-being helps them deal with the adolescent challenges and ease transformation from childhood to adulthood (Santrock, 2017).
More than half of the mental well-being in adults is due to mental health problems in childhood. Governmental interventions such as cash transfer programs help low-income families manage their children, enhancing their school performance and general behavior. Creating programs such as social club activities with a gender-based curriculum will help the girls and boys speak freely. Girls may find it difficult to speak on issues that affect them in groups where boys are present, but they will open up to their peers when in separate groups.
Government can enhance positive development through psychosocial and mental health funding that will help children from poor backgrounds and in times of crisis. Prioritization of gender-based violence prevention helps the youth grow positively as gender-based crimes result in long-term trauma (Santrock, 2017). Through investments in these sectors, the caregivers help provide parenting support to adolescent youths, thereby strengthening the bond for easy communication between the youth and the caregivers (Innocenti, 2021). Formal and informal social service workers need to be incorporated to enhance child protection against gender-based violence (Santrock, 2017).
The creation of programs that enhance awareness among the public members on the importance of good communication among the youths, parents, and society helps the adolescent bond strengthened; hence they open up on the matters affecting them.
During my early secondary school education, I used to attend a boys club where we were given chances to speak of anything that is happening around us. Everyone was assured safety, and most of the students used to speak of the bad things that happened to them. The social workers used to help us tackle any problem that we were facing during that time.
References
Innocenti, U. (2021). Adolescence: policy opportunities and challenges. UNICEF-IRC. Web.
Leblanc, É., Dégeilh, F., Daneault, V., Beauchamp, M., & Bernier, A. (2017). Attachment security in infancy: a preliminary study of prospective links to brain morphometry in late childhood. Frontiers In Psychology, 8. Web.
Miller, P., & Commons, M. (2021). The benefits of attachment parenting for infants and children: A behavioral developmental view. Web.
Santrock, J. (2017). Essentials of life-span development (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill publishing company.
Zhou, Z., Shek, D., Zhu, X., & Dou, D. (2020). Positive youth development and adolescent depression: a longitudinal study based on mainland Chinese high school students. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(12), 4457. Web.
Zhu, X., & Shek, D. (2020). Impact of a positive youth development program on junior high school students in mainland China: A pioneer study. Children and youth services review, 114, 105022. Web.