Timothy’s Story, Child development
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Timothy’s Story
Introduction
Child development is imperative to understand so as to appreciate physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and educational growth in children from the time of birth through to the early stages of adulthood (Vasta, 1997). Majority of child development theories are known as grand theories, which describe all the aspects of development in stages. Alternative, mini theories focus on limited developmental aspects, for example, social growth and cognition (Thomas, 2005). Notably, development of a child is strongly influenced by their relationships with parents or caregivers and shapes their social relationships for the rest of their life.
Again, human growth takes place throughout the whole lifespan; for instance, for a child to acquire the ability to resolve primary conflicts at the early stage of adolescent, he, or she must have developed a sense of personality or personal identity during the early stages of development. Therefore, in the event of failure for a child to have self-identification, it leads to role confusions and consequential failures or poor performance in almost all the parameters of growth. Particularly, child’s ego development is achieved through social interactions, which continually change according to the experiences or new information from daily interactions with others (Vasta, 1997).
In addition, behavioral theories about development of a child explain on how behaviors are influenced by environmental interactions. However, most of the theories only focus on behaviors that are observable (Vasta, 1997). In this regard, development is defined in relation to reactions to punishments, rewards, reinforcement, and stimuli. Nevertheless, behavioral theories differ from other forms of child development since they do not consider internal feelings or thoughts, which are responsible for the intrinsic nature of children (Lindon, 2012).
Conceptually, attachment shows a special emotional relationship, which entails an exchange of care, comfort, and pleasure and is expressed to as an aspect of love. It is a prolonged psychological connectedness or linkage between persons, in this case, the parent or caregiver to Timothy. Similarly, infant/caregiver relationship establishes the attachment styles in childhood (Thomas, 2005).
Timothy’s Attachment to the Parent or Caregiver
Attachment defines emotional bonds and relationships between people on a long term basis, which contribute tremendously to the life of a child. Additionally, attachment keeps the child close to his or her mother so as to improve survival chances for the child. The central theme learnt from the attachment theory is that first caregivers must be available and responsive towards the child’s needs that are essential for the infant to gain benefit of security. However, in the case of Timothy, his attachment to the mother or the caregiver is limited, worrying, and questionable.
First, just at a very tender age, only two years and two months, the parents already have tagged Timothy as “out of control.” It is ridiculous to presume a child on that perspective at that stage of infancy, which also brings the questions on how the Timothy was brought up during the earlier stages. Again, at the age of 26 months children have a tendency of kicking or hitting objects not only to play, but also to express their feelings, which questions the parent’s second tag of the child as a “holy terror” (Lindon, 2012). The nicknames that Steve and Alice give to their child are an indication of lack of full responsibility and commitment to groom the child as the parents have more or less given up.
Again, attachment is only effective on a long-term paradigm; however, Timothy has a little time with the mother. The mother who is supposed to be close to Timothy is always away, either working 10 hours as he is taken to the daycare or goes to for an overnight shift. Unfortunately, at the daycare, the caretaker is overwhelmed by the number of assigned babies or may be acts with negligence as evident when Timothy is picked when chewing a pacifier or in a dirty pamper.
Research reveals that the attachment patterns that are established at early life stages results to a variety of outcomes. In a nutshell, infants securely attached to their caregivers always develop a high self-esteem and grow older with a better virtue of self-reliance (Lindon, 2012). Also, the children become more successful in terms of social relationships, school performance, and experience less depression. It is totally opposite of what is seen in Timothy who in the elementary years and adolescence stages has a problem of making friend and playing with them too. In addition, he occasionally becomes frustrated in class and worse still, Timothy scores far below the expectation in his fifth grade.
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model
Urie Bronfenbrenner purports that to understand the concept of human development; it is paramount to take into account the whole ecological system where growth occurs. The system is a composite of several socially organized subsystems that guide and supports human growth. They vary from the microsystem that means the relationship between the immediate environment and the developing person; for example, family and school to the macrosystem (Vasta, 1997). Macrosystem is the institutional culture patterns; for example, customs, economy, and knowledge bodies. Therefore, the different environments influence the behavior of people throughout the lifespan. Explicitly, the whole ranges of the subsystems are the microsystem, the exosystem, the mesosystem, the macro system, and chronosystem (Thomas, 2005).
Fig 1: shows diagrammatic representation of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model
At the micro system through to the micro system, Timothy lifestyle had been shaped towards inferior social behavior due to inadequate child care and family environment (Vasta, 1997). Both at home and daycare, Timothy experiences inadequate direct social interaction with either the mother or the caregiver. As the primary caretakers, Alice and Daycare should have devoted a lot of time to Timothy; unfortunately, the situation is worsened by the economic status of the parents (Lindon, 2012). The mother is forced to go for an overnight work shift to raise the family income at the expense to time for the child. Again, Timothy could not enjoy the services from a better daycare because the expenditures were far much higher than the family’s capability.
In particular, at the mesosystem and exosystem, Timothy is neglected at home when the mother goes for night shift and at the daycare. Consequently, as Bronfenbrenner argues leads to a child’s poor relationship with the teachers and peers coupled with withdrawals. The results are evident in Timothy as he performs poorly in school, occasionally react with anger or frustration to the teacher, and has few friends.
Furthermore, in the macro system and chronosystem, spanking is a poor mechanism of imparting discipline to Timothy yet both Alice and Steve employ it. Therefore, spanking could be one of the contributors to abnormal behaviors of Timothy, both at home and school. Moreover, Steve and Alice resolve their own problems in a shrewd way by fighting and quarrelling while Timothy witnesses. The events shortchange the perception of the child on the mode of conflict resolution. He carries the vice to his adolescent stage as seen when he hit a fellow student over a minor misunderstanding leading to his suspension (Thomas, 2005).
Prognosis of Timothy without Treatment
Supposedly, if Tomothy is not treated, he will develop to worst levels since the extent of defiance, naughtiness, and impulsiveness will be extremely difficult to remedy. In some severe cases, he might develop health disorders and high levels of hatred to every person including his parents. All told; Timothy will drop out of school and indulge into other social mischievous conducts such as drug and substance abuse. Supposedly, the conditions can graduate to intellectual disabilities and brain deterioration (Vasta, 1997).
Mentally, he might suffer from conduct disorder (CD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), of which all of them show some common symptoms (Lindon, 2012). Unfortunately, the disorders have proved to be very difficult to diagnose and take a lot of time to reveal the symptoms (Thomas, 2005). In addition to these disorders, Timothy may also fall victim to mood disorders, emotional problems, heavy substance abuse, and family difficulties. Again, such persons are at risk of developing autism, which is characterized by head banging, spinning self, lunging, grinding teeth, biting self, finger flicking, constant humming amongst other awkward behavioral changes associated with autism (Lindon, 2012).
Likewise, the boy may develop social phobia throughout his life because he may suffer from high levels of shyness and great fear to certain social situations. The social situation may be very frightening to him that he will spend most of his time contemplating on how to evade them, which is a direction to losing self-consciousness and personality. Examples of situations that might haunt Timothy include: talking to people, especially the authority, eating in public, taking exams, being teased, public speaking amongst others. Therefore, it calls for timely interventions to help Timothy not to grow to become a dysfunctional adult in the future.
Possible Treatments to Help Timothy
First, diagnosis is recommended to assess the extent of Timothy abnormal behaviors and the root causes traced. In spite of the difficulties involved, it is worth doing it since he has already shown many worrying conditions that will worsen when left unattended. The method of diagnosis can be done by specialist services of psychologist, child psychiatrist or a pediatrician (Thomas, 2005). Also, there should be an in-depth interview and discussions with his immediate persons, as in his case, Alice the mother, Steve his father, the daycare caregiver, the few friends, and his teachers. Not all still, standardized behavior questionnaires or checklist can also be used to obtain primary information from Timothy (Vasta, 1997).
Treatment is recommended, although, it is multifaceted and is executed depending on the type of the disorder exhibited by the symptoms and the factors that caused it. Otherwise, Timothy’s situation is complicated and may require the following interventions:
Parental education – it involves teaching Alice and Steve how to communicate with Timothy at least to build his confidence and to socially motivate and manage him.
Family therapy-the whole family is taught how to communicate and develop problem solving skills. The mode will to some extent enlighten the parents on the repercussions of fighting while Timothy is watching.
Encouragement-self-esteem of Timothy can be build by a pediatrician who continuously encourages him to interact with more friends and to motivate him to excel in his particular talent.
Medication –the pediatrician can refer the boy to a medical centre if the symptoms seem to be severe or endangers his future wellbeing.
Anger management- Timothy can be taught the mechanism of recognizing frustration and instilled with coping skills aimed towards defusing his anger and behaviors that are aggressive. Additionally, he will acquire the virtue of relaxations and stress management.
Social training- He can be taught the necessary techniques, for example, how to converse with his friends. Therefore, it will facilitate his cooperation with other.
Ethical Considerations by Pediatrician
A pediatric provider should always offer his or her services only after informed consent of all the persons involved. For example, in Timothy’s case, the provider must seek for acceptance and willingness of Steve, Alice, and Timothy at his adolescent stage. Further, all the recommendations that he or she gives the family must be accepted before subsequent steps of treatment are considered. However, if the services were to be offered at infancy stages of Timothy, there are legal frameworks that can be followed when the parents do not allow the treatment while the child is in a critical situation (Vasta, 1997).
Child Development Policies
It is obvious why most of the governments are now acknowledging the need and urgency of social policy that will support and monitor the development of children. The policy will outline the guidelines and commitments that the parents or caregivers ought to adhere to enhance survival of children and to reduce deviance from children who are not well brought up (Thomas, 2005). Explicitly, the policy is geared towards child protection and development through parenting programs, refining pre-school services, early childhood programs, and child care facilities (Lindon, 2012).
Conclusion
Child development has a wide array of aspects that are confined as emotional, psychological, biological, cognitive, social, physical, mental, behavioral, and spiritual developments. All the forms of development are influenced by the environments and experiences that the infants are subjected to, and the traits learnt are carried to adulthood. It describes the individual progression that starts from dependency to late stages of life. Evidently, parents play a crucial role in development and socialization of the child; therefore, negligence may lead to future problems; hence to curb the consequences, relevant social policies ought to be enacted to promote child protection and development.
References
Lindon, J. (2012). Understanding Child Development: 0-8 Years. London: Hodder Education.
Thomas, R. M. (2005). Comparing Theories of Child Development. Belmont, Calif: Thomson Wadsworth.
Vasta, R. (1997). Six Theories of Child Development: Revised Formulations and Current Issues. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
