Post Natal - Nurturing or Lack of and Its Efffects on Child

Post Natal - Nurturing or Lack of and its effects on a Child

Jorrel Bond Archuleta

Psychology 101-005

Spring 07

Nurturing a child can be thought of as, in some sense, building a foundation for adulthood. This multi-dimensional subject covers the three aspects of maturation or child development. Cognitive development includes neurological processes including self thought, self awareness, logical reasoning and concepts along those lines. Nourishing physical attributes include brain and motor development, such as neural networks and a maturing nervous system. Social nurturing from a care giver is very important. Human tend to be very social creatures. By showing and teaching a young person what to do it makes an imprint of how they should act socially around public. As stated before the three subjects are interwoven and if one aspect is off then it will definitely affect the child when adulthood is reached. The child's mind is resilient but then fragile at the same time. Undernourished minds produce undernourished results.

What is cognitive development? The term cognitive refers to the mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes. So when a child is born their brain are actually the most under developed organ, and through cognition usage the brain grows and organizes itself in thought. A child's mind is like a sponge soaking up whatever its environment around them is producing. Like programming a computer a child's mind picks up sensory experiences and uses them for future references. Psychologist, Jean Piaget was intrigued with the child mind. He wanted to know why children minds work the way they do. He proposed that the cognitive part of a child's maturation was composed of stages ranging from age. He saw that there was a pattern in the way that children would interact with things at different parts of the childhood. The first stage is named sensorimotor and this is where the child experiences the world through its senses, lasts until around two years old. The second stage is preoperational, the child is able to use simple words and images to communicate, and this stage usually lasts until the age six. The third stage is concrete operational, logical thinking is actually achieved. The final stage is formal operational and this is when the child is able to think abstractly. The stimulation and nurturing of these stages from a parent or adult are vital and without it children can actually get stuck in one of the 3 lower stages. This is because the cognitive aspect is being conditioned and trained as the brain grows. If the brain isn't stimulated past a certain stage it will be more inclined to reference back to that the last stage completed and previous stages. Although Jean Piaget's work did contribute a lot of insight of the subject his teachings are still debated.

Physical development is divided into two sub groups, motor and brain. Motor development consists of the stages of rolling, crawling, and walking. If these stages are not nurtured by an adult, the child can have serious issues concerning muscle usage and coordination. Children who are often neglected throughout this process have problems walking and standing correctly. Brain development is very important in the physical aspect because the child's mind is adapting and organizing neural communication. The function of the brain is what is in play. If a child is not nurtured in this process then mental shortcomings can occur, and often are permanent. The human mind is a complex and very intricate organ, even more so when the brain is that of a child. A human is born with about 100 trillion neuron synapses that are binding together so that different parts of the brain can communicate with each other. If the neural connections are not sculpted then it retards development. There are certain things that the child's body will not achieve until they have reached that part of maturation but once at that point and if they are not trained by an adult there will be no positive outcomes.