Stress on Children's Development

On a daily basis, I work with children who have experienced trauma, abuse, neglect, etc. in their early childhood years. Due to their experiences in their early years, we see a wide range of behavioral challenges for all of our children including assaultive behavior towards adults, enuresis, hoarding of food, social challenges, and many other behavioral challenges. All of their challenges early on have led to developmental challenges later on. The majority of our children, although 5-13 years old in actual age, present more like a 3-5-year-old developmentally as their experiences have affected their overall brain development. All of their behaviors are learned behavior, they have developed and learned these behaviors as a way to cope with the trauma/stress they have dealt with. They are living with us so we can work to change that behavior, help them learn a new behavior so they can continue to learn and develop through life. Depending on the type of trauma they have experienced, we can see children with behaviors that are defense mechanisms, pain-based behaviors, or behaviors they have adapted to help them survive (neglect).

I chose to look at South Africa and disease when researching different stressors on different countries. Unfortunately, this is what we immediately tie to Africa as what is mainly presented is the poverty and disease that we see throughout the country. When starting my research, the disease that came up was HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The article I found most interesting discussed how most pediatric units in the country are filled with early childhood HIV/AIDS patients (Richter, Chandan, & Rochat, 2009, p. 199). After reading the article, I wouldn’t say that the country is really handling the disease well as it’s reported that “HIV infection is the leading cause of death in children under the age of 5(Richter et al., 2009, p. 199).  This to me shows that the attempts to solve this issue are not successful. This article talked through a new method that the country is trying in regard to the relationship between caregivers and their patients when working in pediatric units with HIV/AIDS patients (Richter et al., 2009, p. 202). It’s clear, after reading this article, that the first step to helping the entire country deal with poverty and disease like HIV/AIDS is to implement a process in the hospital between caregivers and nurses to allow for education to happen while a child is receiving high quality care (Richter et al., 2009, p. 207). After living my whole life in a country that has plenty of continuous research and education on different diseases and always having access to high quality care, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in a country that is still working to develop. Articles like this give hope that countries are working to implement programs that help children with the stressors discussed this week but it’s also evident that they have a long way to go.

References

Richter, L., Chandan, U., & Rochat, T. (2009, August 27). Improving hospital care for young children in the context of HIV/AIDS and poverty. Journal of Child Health Care, 13(3), 198-211. http://dx.doi.org/http://dx.doi.org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1177/1367493509336680