Childhood obesity

I enjoyed reading the sections about obesity and health in both chapters 8 and 11. It was interesting how preschool health and middle childhood health paralleled each other so much. Chapter 8 begins to discuss how prevalent obesity can be in children. Preschoolers are growing so fast, so sometimes it can be hard to monitor their food properly as parent or caregiver. Childhood obesity has become a major topic of discussion in the news, talk shows, and books lately. It almost seems like it is becoming an epidemic. I remember when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was run around outside. Now, all children want to do is play video games or watch TV. We as parents, teachers, or caregivers really need to work on getting our children out to exercise. It is so important to stress to children that if they don’t eat right and exercise, then they could face serious health issues when older. I think a good tip to parents is to not have junk around the house. If you have healthy snacks around then the kids will have to choose those. If you have junk food around, the child is constantly going to want that. Also, limit the fast food trips to a few times a month.

Mollie Lanigan

Attachment in different cultures

I was really interested in reading about Bowlb'ys theory of attachment. I spent last semester learning about children in other countries. It was interesting that Chapter 7 covered some of the same thoughts. Bowlby suggests that the desire for attachment is universal. After learning about the other countries, I would disagree. I know in Japan, parents tend to not encourage independence. This in turn means that the child probably feels very attached to the mother or father. This becomes a big issue when the child has to attend school, and is throwing fits everyday. Children in China tend to go through the same struggles. I learned that children in the United States and in Scandinavia usually don't have such a severe attachment because they both encourage independence at a younger age. I agree with the book in that attachment goes on everywhere in the world, but it depends on how the caregiver promotes independence to the child. I also think that attachment comes from inside the child, one child may be more prone to want to be independent than another child does.

Mollie Lanigan

Early Learning

In Chapter four I came across a scientist that I have learned about in many of my previous classes. His name is Ivan Pavlov and I remember hearing about Pavlov's dog in my first semester of college in Psychology. Ivan Pavlov developed the basic type of learning called classical conditioning. As I have learned more about young children, I see what a benefit classical conditioning can have as soon as the baby is a few days old. A baby can learn to respond to a neutral stimulus that they usually wouldn't respond to, unless paired with a stimulus they are used to already. A baby could hear the cap being screwed onto the bottle and eventually relate it to 'being time to eat." If something is done over and over in the same manner, it could be easily related to what is about to happen next. I really like this early learning capability. After reading about Pavlov, I read about "Little Albert." I don't feel that one should shape human emotions. I know that today the whole test would be unethical, but I just wanted to add in that young children should not be trained to feel certain emotions. Every time I hear about "Little Albert" my stomach churns. How does one make a child afraid of an animal that he wasn't afraid of in the first place?

Mollie Lanigan