Stressors

For this week’s blog, I talked with Ms. Lauren, a co-worker of mine, about the stressors she encountered as a child. She grew up during the time when blacks and whites were treated different and attended different schools. During her middle school years, the area in which she lived decided to combine the black and white schools. Children from the black neighborhoods began being bused to the white schools, which were 45 minutes away. Her first week of school was hectic; teachers did not show up just because they did not want to teach black children. Ms. Lauren remembers their being constant fighting not only between the whites and blacks but among rival black neighborhoods. This time was hard for her growing up, she could not understand why the teachers did not want to teach her and the children like her.  Going into high school, things did not get better. There was a constant battle between the white students and the black students.  Mrs. Lauren coped with the situation by joining school organizations and tired to make a difference. She found people that held the same beliefs as she did.  Even though it was a tough time in her life, she still managed to stay strong and pursue the things she wanted not matter what others had to say.

I decided to look at the stressor(s) that impact the development of children in India. The situation in India is fairly dismal and sometimes over looked. The immediate causes of underdevelopment in India relate to inadequate feeding practices, poor prevention and management of illness, and inadequate care. The stressors are primarily caused by the low status of Indian women, poverty, and a vicious cycle of low-weight moms having too many children too early and too close together. More than one in five babies in India (22%) is born with low birth weight, putting them at risk of under nutrition and illness even before birth (Blake, Chand, & Gupta) . More than half of under-threes are deprived of full immunization. Infants do not receive the social and emotional care they need.  A high number of parents work full time from soon after birth, and young siblings often end up looking after children. These are just some of the stressors that children in India encounter and not all children experience these stressors. There are now ECE programs that aid in fighting against these issues and fighting to provide children with the right conditions in which they grow in. Ensuring children get the proper care need to lay down the foundations for a good life. There are even well-established interventions that can help improve child development—from breastfeeding counseling to community based health services to the fortification of staple foods. Early Childhood Development programs have be started to address several components of the problem, typically through a combination of daycare and community-based services.

Reference

Blake, S., Chand, T., & Gupta, G. (2009) Starting Strong: Early childhood development in India.    

New Philanthropy Capital. Retrieved from http://www.forces.org.in/publications/Startingstrongfinal.pdf