Creative_Writer ONLY LASA2: Training and Intervention Program

Module 5 Overview—

This module provides a detailed review of specific ways in which families in a community can make a positive difference in the development of children. You will learn about the resilience of children and how interventions and programs can be designed to make a positive difference in their lives.

Complete the following readings early in the module:

· Child, family, school, community: Socialization and support (9th ed.), read the following chapters:

· Emotional and cognitive socialization outcomes

· Social and behavioral socialization outcomes

· Springer, J. J. (1997). Family interventions and adolescent resiliency: The Southwest Texas State High-Risk Youth Program. Journal of Community Psychology, 25(5), 435–452. (EBSCO AN: 11771647) http://thecampuscommon.com/library/ezproxy/ticketdemocs.asp? sch=auo&turl=http://libproxy.edmc.edu/login?url=http://searc h.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&AN=11771647 &site=ehost-live

· Wadsworth, M. E., & Santiago, C. D. (2008). Risk and resiliency processes in ethnically diverse families in poverty. Journal of Family Psychology, 22(3), 399–410. doi:10.1037/0893-3200.22.3.399 (ProQuest Document ID: 614487944) http://thecampuscommon.com/library/ezproxy/ticketdemocs.asp? sch=auo&turl=http://search.proquest.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/do cview/614487944/137C647B43B1103C4ED/7?accountid=34899

As our focus for this module is on the influence of families in a community on children, pay special attention to the assigned readings that deal with the topics listed below. You can even use the search feature in your digital textbook to help pinpoint specific text sections to review.

Keywords to search in your digital textbook and journal articles: resilience, development of attitudes, changing attitude about diversity, achievement motivation, locus of control, learned-helplessness, self-efficacy, self-esteem, moral development, gender roles, and antisocial behavior.

Module 5 Learning Resources:

Use Module 5 learning resources provided on the pages that follow to enhance your understanding of the dynamics between families in a community and children. Take a moment to check out some of these featured learning resources:

· Developing Self-Concept: This case study highlights how a child’s self-esteem can be shaped by the way parents interact with the child. A mother’s praise builds confidence, while a mother’s disapproval could lead to a negative self-concept.

· Promoting Resilience in Children: Children need resilience to cope with adversity, trauma, threats, and stress. This section gives a few useful tips on how to promote resilience in children.

· Test Your Knowledge: This quiz helps you gauge your understanding of the content presented in this module.

Learning outcomes:

· Evaluate and promote factors of child and family resiliency as preventative measures to manage stressors in life.

Module Topics

· Resiliency of Children and Families in Community

Module 5 Overview

In this module, you will learn about specific ways in which families in a community can make a positive difference to the development of children.

Children have a number of crucial developmental tasks that must be successfully mastered to enable them to live healthy and productive lives as adults. Often, we look at what has gone wrong and what was disrupted during development and forget to look at what has gone right.

We need to completely understand the emotional, cognitive, social, and behavioral socialization of children to be able to make a difference through our interventions and programs. The more positive tools and influences children have, the better their chances of transitioning smoothly from childhood to adulthood (Gonzalez-Mena, 2012).

In the assignments for this week, you will, based on the assessment of the child you prepared in Module 3, create a training and intervention program for the adult in the child’s life to share with the school authorities and family. You will also design a training to teach a child a specific resiliency factor or prosocial behavior.

Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2012). Child, family, and community: Family-centered early care and education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Incorporation.

Developing Self-Concept

A person’s self-concept and self-esteem start to develop as soon as he or she is old enough to start exploring the world and understanding the messages received from the adults in the person’s life. In the very early years, the key to young children’s views of themselves is directly related to the ways in which their parents interact with them.

Emily’s Case

Emily’s mother tells four-year-old Emily that they need to run to the drugstore to buy a few items and asks her to get dressed. When Emily gets to her room, she notices that her mother has laid out some clothes for her. However, Emily wants to show her mother that she can be a big girl and dress herself. So, Emily gets her favorite flowered shorts and plaid shirt out of the dresser and puts them on. She also pulls out two socks, one that matches the colors of her shorts and a different colored sock that matches her shirt. Emily then gets dressed all by herself and excitedly runs to the kitchen to show her mother that she is a big girl now.

Q1. How should Emily’s mother react? What message does the mother send if she praises Emily for picking out her own clothes and lets her go to the store in her creative outfit? What message does she send if she criticizes Emily for not matching and tells her to go back and change into the outfit originally laid out on the bed?

Response: Since this is only a trip to the drugstore where appearance is really not important, the best strategy for Emily’s mother is to praise her for being so creative and for getting dressed all by herself. If the mother communicates an approving message, Emily will interpret it to mean that she is smart, good, and can make good decisions on her own. This will help Emily build a positive self-concept and self-esteem.

Resilience

Resilience is defined as the ability to withstand and rebound from crises or permanent challenges. Children are naturally very resilient and can withstand many pressures and difficult situations. Research teaches us about the key aspects of resiliency and ways to promote that resilience in children as well as in ourselves. Many research studies demonstrate the protective factors and personality traits common to resilient children (Gonzalez-Mena, 2012). Refer to you module readings for more detailed information on resilience.

One vital factor is a sense of connectedness to someone in the early years. This refers to a single attachment to an adult (not necessarily a parent) that can make a world of difference in a child’s life. It is important to note that resilient children are attracted to these attachments, as they are able to elicit positive responses from other individuals. There is something special or clever about their abilities to gain positive attention from others.

Another very important commonality found in the research on resiliency was that children are inclined toward helping others or being responsible for someone else. This may be because they have to help a younger sibling or even manage tasks around the house with the guidance of a parent (Gonzalez-Mena, 2012).

The most common trait of resilient children is the tendency to view all situations they endure as positive. They are able to be honest and not deny struggles, but use experiences in a constructive manner to help life make sense.

Parental Involvement

One important component to developing resilience is positive parent involvement. Most social networking sites require members to be the age of at least thirteen years. Despite this, the following facts have been found:

· 25% of children between the ages of 8-12 in the U.K. have a social networking profile (Skinner, 2010)

· 18% of 8-10 year olds in the US have a social networking profile (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010)

This indicates that parents are either not monitoring their children’s activities closely, or they are allowing their children to lie about their age.

Rideout, V.J., Foehr, U.G., & Roberts, D.F. (2010). Generation M2:media in the lives of 8-18 year-olds. Retrieved from http://www.kff.org/entmedia/upload/8010.pdf

Skinner, C.A. (2010, March). 25% of 8 to 12 year olds have a social networking profile. IT World. Retrieved from htpp://www.itworld.com/internet/102990/25-8-12-year-olds-have-a-social-networking-profile

Promoting Resilience in Children

When we build resilient children and teenagers, they develop the ability to successfully cope with adversity, trauma, threats, and stress. According to the American Psychological Association (APA, n.d.), there are key tools and strategies that can help build resilience in children and teenagers. Here, you can learn about some of these tools.

Make Connections

Teach children how to make friends and build their own social support system, which is needed in both good times and in times of struggle.

Help Children Help Others

When a person feels helpless or distraught, it is beneficial for that person to help other people. By helping others, children will feel valuable, effective, and important.

Teach Self-Care

The first step in teaching children self-care is to be a role model for living a well-balanced, healthy lifestyle. When your bodies are healthy and you are well rested, you have more internal resources to persevere through difficult situations.

Nurture Positive Self-View

Teach children to look back at previous times when they managed a challenging situation successfully. This will help them learn to trust themselves to make good decisions and to solve problems effectively.

Keep the Perspective

Help children keep things in perspective and maintain a hopeful outlook. Help them reappraise the situation by looking at the broader context and finding the positives in the situation. Teaching children how to look at situations optimistically will help them keep going when times get tough.

Encourage Self-Discovery

Help children learn to look for opportunities for self-discovery. Children will often learn the most about themselves and how string they can really be when they work through the tough times in their lives.

Accept Change

Help children accept that change is part of living. For many people, change can be scary. This is especially true for children and teens. Helping them become accepting of change will greatly help them be a resilient person. Help them see that change is an opportunity to set new goals and try new things.

American Psychological Association (APA). (n.d.). Resilience guide for parents and teachers. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/resilience.aspx#

Family Empowerment

Meeting the Challenge of Change

With all the challenges and influences that we have reviewed so far, let us stop and focus on some of the aspects that enable families to deal with change and associated stress in healthy ways.

Empowerment refers to enabling individuals to have control over the resources affecting them. Sometimes, families can feel powerless or may even have learned a sense of helplessness, and it can be hard to fight against some of these factors. However, families and children can be resilient even in the hardest of times, and you have to help them find a balance between stressful life events and protective factors. Some of the ways in which we can do this include the following:

· Provide support for the child and family

· Teach skills for making connections and gaining support

· Teach problem-solving skills

· Give children responsibilities

· Provide good role models

As you have learned previously, functional families display certain characteristics. We can help families learn how to display these characteristics and learn the skills to develop these characteristics. This can be done in the following ways:

· Displaying love and acceptance

· Being communicative

· Becoming cohesive

· Communicating values and standards

· Coping effectively with problems

Values; Attitudes; Motives; and Attributions

Values and Attitudes

Understanding what values and attitudes are and how they develop can also help us focus on ways to provide children protective factors. Values are often evident in the laws of most civilized societies. Factors such as age, experience, cognitive development, and moral reasoning affect values. Values can also be affected by both personal and societal perceptions.

Clarification of values is influenced by various beliefs derived from culture, family, politics, and advocacy groups.

Attitudes are composed of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies.

Prejudice is an attitude involving prejudgment; it is the application of a previously formed judgment on some person, object, or situation. A stereotype is an oversimplified, fixed attitude or set of beliefs held about members of a group.

Development of these attitudes is influenced by age, cognitive development, and social expectations. Prejudices develop in a typical developmental sequence, and, thus, they can be understood and circumvented. This sequence involves awareness, identification, attitude, preference, and then prejudice.

Motives and Attributions

Understanding a child’s motives and attributions can also help us intervene or teach skills that could change these motivations and attributions. A motive is a need or emotion that causes a person to act. An attribution is an explanation for one’s performance.

Understanding the following concepts can also give us reference points to determine a child’s needs in one of these areas:

· Locus of control: Perception that one is responsible for one’s own fate

· Learned helplessness: Passive stance on one’s ability to impact a situation

· Self-efficacy: Belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes

· Self-esteem: Value one places on one’s identity

Motives and Attributions

Locus of Control

Understanding locus of control is important in understanding people’s attributions because it shows how they explain their successes and failures to their own selves. Additionally, people’s locus of control will help predict the level of effort and persistence they will apply to achieve their goals. People who have an internal locus of control will believe that, in large part, they are responsible for their successes or failures; thus, this will support the idea that they must prepare, practice, and persevere if they want to be successful.

On the other hand, people with an external locus of control will believe that, in large part, external factors and concepts like fate or luck play a large role in their successes or failures. Because of this belief, these people will apply some effort to achieving their goals; however, since they believe that outside forces are more powerful, the amount of effort will be minimal.

Refer to your course textbook to learn more about measuring your own locus of control.

Learned Helplessness

When children have had a learned helplessness orientation, they will become passive and lack motivation to change or help themselves, because they have come to believe that they lack the skill to do so. This false perception is developed through negative circumstances for which the children exerted effort to change or escape, but were unable to do so.

Once this orientation has been adopted, this belief often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that further supports the belief that the children are helpless to change. When this orientation is observed in a child, it is important that the adults in this child’s life create and encourage opportunities in which the child can find success. Over time, this will help the child change his or her perception and realize that he or she does have valuable abilities as well as the power to affect change and be successful.

Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is the opposite of learned helplessness in that children with a high level of self-efficacy believe that they can achieve the goals they have set for themselves. When children possess self-efficacy, they will feel empowered to take charge of their actions and take the steps needed in order to succeed. This will also lead to a high level of determination and persistence when working through any obstacles to meeting their goal. The more children succeed because of their own efforts, the stronger their self-efficacy.

Self-Esteem and Self-Regulation

Self-Esteem

There are many influences on a child’s self-esteem: family, school, peers, mass media, and even the community.

When considering children’s self-esteem, we must first consider their age as they will employ different strategies to measure their worth. For example, in early childhood (up to the age of six to seven), kids are comparing themselves on more external, simplistic traits (I’m good at x, y, z). While in middle childhood, they start to internalize more (I’m funny, smart, and a good friend). Finally, as they become older, they can differentiate their strengths more (I’m good at baseball, but not singing; I’m not very pretty compared to so-and-so, but friends trust me more). Based on this understanding, we see that social comparison plays a very important role in the development of a child or teenager’s self-esteem.

One of the ways in which we can help children is to teach parents to apply the authoritative parenting style. Another way is to give children opportunities for success and competence in school and other activities, which can help increase their self-esteem and ultimately give them even more successes at school.

Peers' attitudes and actions can also affect a child’s self-esteem, although their views may be shallow and based on physical appearance alone. In this case, parents can help children with issues concerning physical appearance at a younger age. Looking for community opportunities to engage in worthwhile and responsible activities can also help improve a child’s self-esteem.

Self-Regulation or Behavior

Self-regulation or self-control refers to the ability to regulate or control one’s impulses, behavior, and emotions until an appropriate time, place, or object is available for expression. Self-regulation is a continuous process and an outcome of affective, cognitive, and social forces.

Children need to be taught how to self-regulate, especially with regard to emotional regulation, including the ability to control anger and exhibit empathy.

Social behavior of children can be both prosocial and antisocial. Prosocial behavior refers to any behavior that benefits other people, such as altruism, sharing, and cooperation. Antisocial behavior refers to any behavior that harms other people, such as aggression, violence, and crime.

Development of Self-Esteem – Where it all Starts

The development of self-esteem begins about the same time that the child moves from the infant stage to the toddler stage. Therefore, the key factors in developing a healthy self-esteem from the beginning are the attitudes and actions of the parents or caregivers.

As the child moves from infancy to the elementary years, the actions, attitudes, and behaviors of the parents have a great influence on the development of the child's self-concept and self-esteem.

As the infant becomes a toddler and gains cognitive, communicative, and motor skills, there are new challenges for parents in trying to be sensitive and responsive to create a good fit between their care and the child's needs.

First caregivers are faced with the need to grant some autonomy to the child. The strong dependency characterized in young babies is gradually replaced by the capacity and need for independent action.

Erikson theorized that toddlers’ emerging feelings of worth are benefited when they can use their growing skills to function at least somewhat autonomously, whether it is by feeding themselves or by buttoning their own buttons, or, much more subtly, by saying “no” (as cited in Broderick & Blewitt, 2006).

The infant's trust in others now goes to the next stage as the child develops feelings of worth and begins to experience self-sufficiency, autonomy, or a sense that “I can do it myself” (Broderick & Blewitt, 2006).

Self-esteem is just one area of development among many where the parents and caregivers should make purposeful choices to aid in their child’s development. Another very important area of development on which a parent or caregiver can have a direct effect is moral development as it both teaches and models the difference between right and wrong as well as prosocial behavior.

Broderick, P., & Blewitt, P. (2006). The life span: Human development for helping professionals (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Morals and Community Involvement

Teaching Morals

Morals encompass an individual’s evaluation of what is right and wrong. Our sense of morality involves feeling, reasoning, and behaving, and much of this moral code develops through social interaction.

There are many different types of moral development theories on what helps children learn the distinction between right and wrong. The three major theories of moral development that give us insight on ways to intervene with children include the following:

Piaget’s Theory of Moral Development

According to Piaget, the development of moral beliefs is centered on rules. Young children believe they are subject to external laws or rules that are absolute and must be followed. Then, as the children develop cognitively, they come to believe they are subject to internal laws or rules that are arbitrary agreements that can be altered. Also, they start to see things from multiple perspectives, which allows them to consider the interactionality of their behavior when deciding if that behavior is right or wrong (Berns, 2013).

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development

According to Kohlberg, a child’s moral beliefs are constructed as a consequence of their experiences. His theory consisted of six stages of moral development that begin around age six and continue into adulthood. The five premises set forth in Kohlberg’s theory of moral development are as follows:

1. The stages of moral reasoning are the same for all persons, regardless of culture.

2. Individuals progress from one stage to the next.

3. Changing from stage to stage is gradual. The change results from many social experiences.

4. Some individuals move more rapidly than others through the sequence of stages. Some advance further than others; for example, only twenty-five percent of US adults were found to reason at stage five (principled morality).

5. Although the particular stage of moral reasoning is not the only factor affecting people’s moral conduct, the way they reason does influence how they actually behave in a moral situation. (Berns, 2013, p. 418)

Gilligan’s Theory of Moral Development

Carol Gilligan took issue with the fact that only boys were used in Kohlberg’s research on moral development. Because of this, she suggested that his moral development theory was based on a justice (individualistic) perspective that emphasizes the rights of the individual, which may not apply to the moral development of females. Through her own research, Gilligan proposed that for females, the focus of moral development is on a care (collectivist) perspective for which the focus is on connectedness with others (Berns, 2013).

Community Involvement: Volunteerism and Advocacy

Individuals can make a difference in their communities in many ways. For example, you can participate in different types of volunteer groups for the betterment of communities and young people in your communities.

Child advocacy is the process of sensitizing individuals and groups to the unmet needs of children and to society’s obligation to provide a positive response to those needs. Advocacy groups can be formed to solve and monitor specific problems. They can be a source of ongoing support for children’s problems in general, or they can be an official government lobby. In addition, people work privately, either paid or as volunteers, as advocates for children with special needs in schools.

Conscience—The Beginnings of the Moral Self

Parenting styles and practices are related to children's self-regulation, including the child's ability to generate socially approved behavior in the absence of external monitors.

This last ability is assumed to be a function of internalization, the process by which children adopt old standards and rules as their own. Internalization, in turn, is associated with the development of conscience, which involves feelings of discomfort or distress when the violation of a rule is contemplated or carried out. Internalization and conscience formation are both aspects of the broader topic of moral development.

Two aspects of parenting seem to promote this process. First, parents’ warmth and responsiveness facilitate compliance or self-control and promote the development of concern for others. Sensitive, responsive parents seem to establish cooperative, mutually responsive relationships with the toddlers as well as an ongoing secure attachment. Toddlers tend to be eager to maintain such relationships.

Second, children's anxiety or emotional arousal seems to play a role in their willingness to comply and in the internalization of standards. Parents’ discipline causes children to feel anxious arousal. Mild arousal helps the children pay attention, but is not really upsetting. When children are aroused enough to take notice, but not to be especially fearful, they are likely to notice, to try to understand, and to remember the parent’s socialization message. They may attribute their own compliance with the rules to their acceptance of it, which is a step toward the internalization of rules. However, if children experience intense arousal during a disciplinary episode, they may pay more attention to their concerns rather than the socialization message. They may notice and remember how scared they were, for example, of the parents’ loud and angry voice, and then attribute their compliance to these factors rather than to the standard or rule that could have been learned (Broderick & Blewitt, 2006).

Broderick, P., & Blewitt, P. (2006). The life span: Human development for helping professionals (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

How Kids Learn Right and Wrong

As you review the development of morals in this module, it is important to understand each developmental perspective as a good developmental strategy that often comes from pulling key points from multiple theories. Additionally, when working with a child who is struggling in this area, knowledge of these different theories can help you develop alternative strategies that could be more effective.

Access the following video that discusses the development of morals in children:

· Ryan, K. O. (Producer). (2011). A child's mind: How kids learn right & wrong [Video]. United States: Learning Seed. Retrieved from http://ediv.alexanderstreet.com.libproxy.edmc.edu/view/1666567

Then, consider the following questions:

· As a counselor or teacher, why is understanding of moral development important?

· How can parents foster moral development in their children?

· How can members of a community help foster moral development in the children within their community?

· What negative consequences could come from a lack of positive moral development?

Now that we have considered moral development, we need to consider situations in which children choose wrong or harmful actions. In the following section, you will look at aggression in children as you examine the differences in aggression between boys and girls.

Aggression in Boys versus Girls

Girls and boys differ in how they express their aggression. Review the following differences and then reflect back on your own childhood. Do these descriptions line up with what you remember? Also, consider how understanding these differences would affect the strategies that should be employed when working with aggressive youth.

Boys

· Tend to harm others through physical and verbal aggression.

· Tend to express their aggression through impulsive acts.

· Are twice as likely as girls to carry out more violent forms of aggression, whether using weapons or resorting to physical attacks.

· Typically make up after a fight much quicker than girls do.

· Tend to let a slight or small issue go without a response.

· Report higher levels of bullying.

Girls

· Tend to focus on relational issues by attempting to harm or manipulate others—They do this through social exclusion, gossiping, spreading rumors, character defamation, name calling, ostracizing others, threatening to end friendships, threatening to disclose personal information, and mean-spirited teasing.

· Tend to be less impulsive in their aggression as they tend to plan their actions, sometimes in great depth.

· If they are naturally aggressive, tend to make friendships that contain high levels of jealousy, intimacy, and exclusiveness.

· Tend to turn their aggressive feelings inward leading to self-injurious behaviors.

· Tend to hold a grudge after a fight or disagreement with a friend.

· Tend to be very sensitive and reactive to acts of relational aggression such as put downs, rolling of eyes, signs of social rejection.

· Seem to struggle academically if they exhibit higher levels of aggression.

· Tend to disguise bullying as gossip or social exclusion, so they may not be reported as bullying.

· Tend to have more conflict with parents than boys do.

Meichenbaum (2006) found that girls who develop aggressive behaviors early and whose aggressive behaviors continue into adolescence are at high risk of suffering the following consequences:

· Lower educational attainment and higher rates of school dropout

· Co-occurring psychiatric symptoms and substance dependence

· Higher incidence of antisocial personality disorders and criminality

· Higher incidence of being victimized in dating and romantic relationships

· Early pregnancy and poor parenting skills with an increased likelihood of rearing children with conduct disorder

· Higher incidence of single parenthood and accompanying poverty

· Poor job histories and high welfare dependence

· Increased mortality (p. 9)

Meichenbaum, D. (2006). Comparison of aggression in boys and girls: A case for gender-specific interventions. Retrieved from http://www.teachsafeschools.org/meich_06_genderdifferences.pdf

Test Your Knowledge

Q2. Mrs. Martinez is interested in fostering a sense of self-efficacy in her children. Which of the following strategies should she try? Provide instruction in specific learning stragegies, such as highlighting their homework. Self-efficacy is the belief that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes.

Q3. An attitude involving the application of a previously formed judgement to a person, object, or situation is called Prejudice. Often, the term prejudice is mistakenly interchanged with the term discrimination. However, these two terms do not carry the same meaning. Whereas prejudice is a negative attitude, discrimination is a negative action.

Q4. Joanne gives her last ten dollars to an elderly neighbor to buy groceries at the local store. What would Joanne’s actions be considered as? Altruistic. Altruism is a voluntary action intended to help or benefit another person or group without the actor’s anticipation of external reward.

Q5. What is the term that refers to a thought process in which one vicariously experiences another’s emotions? Empathy Being able to empathize with other people feeds additional behavior, such as compassion and altruism.

Summary

In this module, you considered the different ways that families, peers, and communities can affect the development of children. Specifically, you explored the developmental tasks that must be achieved in order for the child to move into adulthood and become ready to be a successful contributing member of society. These tasks include resilience, empowerment, attitudes and motives, self-esteem, self-regulation, and morals. You found that when children or teenagers are able to develop a strong foundation in these different constructs, they become prepared to move into adulthood and successfully take on the tasks and challenges that will come their way.

Over the past five modules, you have taken a broad look at the many areas in a child’s life that are connected to and affected by their family, friends, school, community, and society. Furthermore, you considered the child from a systems perspective in which the child was just one piece of a larger system for which the child both shaped and was shaped by that system.

This systems view provided you with a different view of a child’s development than the insights you have gained from previous child and adolescent development courses. With this knowledge, you should now be better prepared to both understand and guide the children you will work with in your future careers.