Community Influences
Parents alone do not shape a child
as an individual. Children are affected by extended family, relatives,
siblings and people in their community.
As well, the outside world enters the child's life through the
media. One of the first encounters a child may have with the outside
world is through day-care. Day-care
in North America is divided into two categories - Family day-care
and day-care centres. Family day-care involves a licensed homeowner
running a day-care out of their home. Day-care centres are licensed
as well, however they offer more of a variety of formal learning
experiences.
Characteristics of a High Quality Day-care:
A good day-care should include:
children who are enjoying themselves in their play and learn,
small groups of children and a low ratio of caregivers to children,
organized and appropriate activities, equal attention devoted
to cognitive, social, emotional and physical development, staff
meetings and progress evaluations, and the inclusion of parents
to observe, discuss and suggest changes about the program.
The Effects of Day-care:
Day-care centres are more
effective than home owner day-cares with respect to intellectual
learning. Positive effects of day-care include an increase of
intellectual development, a lessening of the decline in intellectual
performance that would be due to poor environments and gains in
cognitive and language developments. Socially,
children are more self-sufficient, independent, helpful, co-operative,
verbally expressive, knowledgeable about the social world and
more comfortable in new situations. However, there are negative
consequences to day-care situations. Children can be less polite,
less compliant and more aggressive when involved in day-care.
These effects are due to the amount of time spent in full-time
day-care - with more aggressive behaviour being related to more
time spent in day-cares.
Related Links
Child Psychology
Infancy
Learning
Attachment
Early Childhood
Mental Development
Social development
& Identity
Aggression
& Prosocial Behaviour
Parenting
Middle Childhood
Adolescence
Developmental
Psychology
Problems
of Children & Teens
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