Eva Ramirez
Ruth Benander
English 1000
24 November 2015
Children’s lives influenced by their environment
We as the society we are, we should help children. Each child in this world is worth it, each child is different, each child has passed through difficult situations, some harder than others. The people who needs to know this is our society in general, parents, but specially people who work at social services, who are the ones highly prepared with more capacity to help them. Society must help children because in certain way they are the future, if we let children who have been affected by war or by their familiar environment, that is the way that later on people will tend to be and react according with their traumas if they were not helped or attended since childhood. Children with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), who attended to war, have a high rate of traumatize. Also a lot of children have been affected by their social environment and by their parents’ behavior. However, a lot of people such as the social services can argue that it is highly expensive to provide them support, another thing they can argue is that the caseloads are full and it is not possible to take more children. I insist that even though this can be true up to a certain point, there are more solutions that will help adjust more effectively these children, helping members with also make our society even better.
Bullying is done by a tons of reasons, one reason can be that sometimes the person who is doing it could have problems in his/her family environment, which this leads the child to bully his peers. On the other hand, we have the child whose self-esteem is weak, and have none power over himself, he/she do not know how to defend him/herself. As a result, the child is more likely to feel depressed, which this can affect its academic success, and his/her communication skills. The positive about this study is, the fact that parents can help to decrease this problem.
The article, “Does parental monitoring moderate the relationship between bullying and adolescent nonsuicidal self-injury and suicidal behavior?” talks about how Bullying affects someone’s life and how Parents play an important role in the life of a child who is bullied. Bullying can define how a person could tend to be in the future, it affects his/her personality and the weaknesses that person has will get stronger because of the imbalance of power. Bullying has been projected all around the world, there are different kind of ways to bully a person, it can be either by cyber bullying via mobile phone or internet, also bullying in the school environment, or in the family environment. However, this study focuses more about the European children who have been affected by the bullying, leading them to commit nonsuicidal self-injury and to have a suicidal behavior, according to the article, “20 to 30% of all students are affected by bullying as victims, perpetrators, or bully/victims,” in other words in Germany this percent of children have been affected by bullying. As it is shown in this study, bullying affects in a very high psychological way a person, specially a child who is starting to build his/her self-esteem.
On the other hand, parental participation can buffer the negative effects of bullying victimization.
Another common problem that is presented in children is the traumatism or PTSD. Children of war, who have certainly passed through difficult situations, from the aggressive images they saw with a lot of violence until the actions they had to made in order to defend their position during the war. As a result, these children presented traumatism, which is something that someone could expect from someone who attended to war. A very effective solution that can be done in order to help these children is by letting them to express themselves. The fact that children hear themselves saying what happed to them will help them to realize that everything is in the past and that they must be strong and move on.
Million of children have suffered due to the fact that they were part of the war, the most common disorder is the "Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)," but this is not the only one, it also is shown that they present mental health problems due to the violence they saw. The article, “Narrative Exposure Therapy for Immigrant Children Traumatized by War: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial of Effectiveness and Mechanisms of Change,” discuses ways to help children such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET). The purpose of CBT is to engage children to talk to a therapist, and NET is the practice where children must expose their own story about what happened to them during the war. In order to make this study possible they took up to 80 children between the ages of 9-17- year- old immigrant children who suffer and participated in war. They were divided between two groups, one into the NET group and the other one into the CBT group. The children were divided into equal sizes. This therapy appears to be effective helping these children of war as well as the children who did not attend to war. As a result, this study helps the children to achieve the effectiveness in decreasing trauma- related symptoms.
As we can see, PTSD and bullying between children are not the only problems our society can present, the expressiveness is also another factor we must consider it as something very important, we must understand how to deal with it, and by understanding its concept and importance, we will be able to help the children of our community. Communication between the parent and the child is highly important. A child needs to express him/herself freely, if the child cannot express his feelings for any reason, later on he/she will oppress his emotions. As a result they can present difficulties by socializing with others, or they can act aggressively towards their classmates because since those feelings are deeply hidden the only way to let them out is by acting aggressively. However, they probably do not know and there is when they need special help.
Children are sensible human beings, they are growing and developing themselves over time passes. The way they can understand things better is by expressing themselves. Therefore, parents must be there for them, but sometimes this cannot be as easier as it sounds. The article, "Providing Evidence- Based Help to stepfamilies" shows us the importance of parents and the big role communication plays between the parent and the child. This is the case of a 20-months-old child that was diagnosed with autism; a language delay in the child. This child was living in a stepfamily. He certainly needed help from his "parents"; this boy was not able to respond to verbal requests and had showed a low capacity of spoken language. His parents did everything to help him by supporting him with getting more social interaction in his daily life. This is a good example of a stepfamily's behavior towards their child, but not always is the same. A lot of children struggle with the fact that the relationship with the parent is very different as the relationship the child could have with the other parent. Another example is when the child needs a special and fully attention from his or her parent, but sometimes the structure of a stepfamily pulls them apart. These examples are a real and important behaviors that sometimes parents do not realize they are doing it. There are always solutions for this, parents could try to spend more parent-child time in order to decrease these misfortunes that later on the child can resent it, such as showing serious problems with themselves, and having difficult times socializing.
Even though all these facts and truths about what children tend to present over their lifespan, such as are these previews problems, people can indeed contradict it. Although, I grant that providing help to a significant amount of children who have been affected by these problems can be difficult because of the amount of money it is required, or because the caseloads are full, I still maintain that children are the future, children must get help from their society, specially from all those people who have specialized in children’s development. Children are not guilty for what happen to them, it just happens. As well as some of them can have a good life, a family, friends, etc. There are also others that experienced different things, such as experiencing war environments, or bullying in school, or maybe a family that have negatively influenced in the child’s life.
Adults are people with the capacity to provide help to others, some of them have realized that children depend on them, and some have not. However, that does not mean that it cannot be a change in our society, politics can change, Scientifics can change, parents, and teachers can change, everyone can. Therefore, having a higher mentality will help us to wake up and realize that as well as we as adults can, someday need help from professionals, children too. Helping these children who are suffering from these disorders will make us a better human beings.
Works Cited
Kangaslampi, Samuli, Ferdinand Garoff, and Kirsi Peltonen. "Narrative Exposure Therapy for Immigrant Children Traumatized by War: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial of Effectiveness and Mechanisms of Change." BMC Psychiatry 15.1 (2015): 1-14. Print.
Papernow, Patricia L. "Providing Evidence-Based Help to Stepfamilies." Brown University Child & Adolescent Behavior Letter 30.3 (2014): 1-7. Print.
Vanessa Jantzer, Johann Haffner, Peter Parzer, Franz Resch and Michael Kaess. "Does Parental Monitoring Moderate the Relationship between Bullying and Adolescent Nonsuicidal Self-Injury and Suicidal Behavior? A Community-Based Self-Report Study of Adolescents in Germany." BMC Public Health 15.1 (2015): 1-8. Print.
Ruth Benander
English 1000
24 November 2015
Children’s lives influenced by their environment
We as the society we are, we should help children. Each child in this world is worth it, each child is different, each child has passed through difficult situations, some harder than others. The people who needs to know this is our society in general, parents, but specially people who work at social services, who are the ones highly prepared with more capacity to help them. Society must help children because in certain way they are the future, if we let children who have been affected by war or by their familiar environment, that is the way that later on people will tend to be and react according with their traumas if they were not helped or attended since childhood. Children with PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), who attended to war, have a high rate of traumatize. Also a lot of children have been affected by their social environment and by their parents’ behavior. However, a lot of people such as the social services can argue that it is highly expensive to provide them support, another thing they can argue is that the caseloads are full and it is not possible to take more children. I insist that even though this can be true up to a certain point, there are more solutions that will help adjust more effectively these children, helping members with also make our society even better.
Bullying is done by a tons of reasons, one reason can be that sometimes the person who is doing it could have problems in his/her family environment, which this leads the child to bully his peers. On the other hand, we have the child whose self-esteem is weak, and have none power over himself, he/she do not know how to defend him/herself. As a result, the child is more likely to feel depressed, which this can affect its academic success, and his/her communication skills. The positive about this study is, the fact that parents can help to decrease this problem.
The article, “Does parental monitoring moderate the relationship between bullying and adolescent nonsuicidal self-injury and suicidal behavior?” talks about how Bullying affects someone’s life and how Parents play an important role in the life of a child who is bullied. Bullying can define how a person could tend to be in the future, it affects his/her personality and the weaknesses that person has will get stronger because of the imbalance of power. Bullying has been projected all around the world, there are different kind of ways to bully a person, it can be either by cyber bullying via mobile phone or internet, also bullying in the school environment, or in the family environment. However, this study focuses more about the European children who have been affected by the bullying, leading them to commit nonsuicidal self-injury and to have a suicidal behavior, according to the article, “20 to 30% of all students are affected by bullying as victims, perpetrators, or bully/victims,” in other words in Germany this percent of children have been affected by bullying. As it is shown in this study, bullying affects in a very high psychological way a person, specially a child who is starting to build his/her self-esteem.
On the other hand, parental participation can buffer the negative effects of bullying victimization.
Another common problem that is presented in children is the traumatism or PTSD. Children of war, who have certainly passed through difficult situations, from the aggressive images they saw with a lot of violence until the actions they had to made in order to defend their position during the war. As a result, these children presented traumatism, which is something that someone could expect from someone who attended to war. A very effective solution that can be done in order to help these children is by letting them to express themselves. The fact that children hear themselves saying what happed to them will help them to realize that everything is in the past and that they must be strong and move on.
Million of children have suffered due to the fact that they were part of the war, the most common disorder is the "Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)," but this is not the only one, it also is shown that they present mental health problems due to the violence they saw. The article, “Narrative Exposure Therapy for Immigrant Children Traumatized by War: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial of Effectiveness and Mechanisms of Change,” discuses ways to help children such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET). The purpose of CBT is to engage children to talk to a therapist, and NET is the practice where children must expose their own story about what happened to them during the war. In order to make this study possible they took up to 80 children between the ages of 9-17- year- old immigrant children who suffer and participated in war. They were divided between two groups, one into the NET group and the other one into the CBT group. The children were divided into equal sizes. This therapy appears to be effective helping these children of war as well as the children who did not attend to war. As a result, this study helps the children to achieve the effectiveness in decreasing trauma- related symptoms.
As we can see, PTSD and bullying between children are not the only problems our society can present, the expressiveness is also another factor we must consider it as something very important, we must understand how to deal with it, and by understanding its concept and importance, we will be able to help the children of our community. Communication between the parent and the child is highly important. A child needs to express him/herself freely, if the child cannot express his feelings for any reason, later on he/she will oppress his emotions. As a result they can present difficulties by socializing with others, or they can act aggressively towards their classmates because since those feelings are deeply hidden the only way to let them out is by acting aggressively. However, they probably do not know and there is when they need special help.
Children are sensible human beings, they are growing and developing themselves over time passes. The way they can understand things better is by expressing themselves. Therefore, parents must be there for them, but sometimes this cannot be as easier as it sounds. The article, "Providing Evidence- Based Help to stepfamilies" shows us the importance of parents and the big role communication plays between the parent and the child. This is the case of a 20-months-old child that was diagnosed with autism; a language delay in the child. This child was living in a stepfamily. He certainly needed help from his "parents"; this boy was not able to respond to verbal requests and had showed a low capacity of spoken language. His parents did everything to help him by supporting him with getting more social interaction in his daily life. This is a good example of a stepfamily's behavior towards their child, but not always is the same. A lot of children struggle with the fact that the relationship with the parent is very different as the relationship the child could have with the other parent. Another example is when the child needs a special and fully attention from his or her parent, but sometimes the structure of a stepfamily pulls them apart. These examples are a real and important behaviors that sometimes parents do not realize they are doing it. There are always solutions for this, parents could try to spend more parent-child time in order to decrease these misfortunes that later on the child can resent it, such as showing serious problems with themselves, and having difficult times socializing.
Even though all these facts and truths about what children tend to present over their lifespan, such as are these previews problems, people can indeed contradict it. Although, I grant that providing help to a significant amount of children who have been affected by these problems can be difficult because of the amount of money it is required, or because the caseloads are full, I still maintain that children are the future, children must get help from their society, specially from all those people who have specialized in children’s development. Children are not guilty for what happen to them, it just happens. As well as some of them can have a good life, a family, friends, etc. There are also others that experienced different things, such as experiencing war environments, or bullying in school, or maybe a family that have negatively influenced in the child’s life.
Adults are people with the capacity to provide help to others, some of them have realized that children depend on them, and some have not. However, that does not mean that it cannot be a change in our society, politics can change, Scientifics can change, parents, and teachers can change, everyone can. Therefore, having a higher mentality will help us to wake up and realize that as well as we as adults can, someday need help from professionals, children too. Helping these children who are suffering from these disorders will make us a better human beings.
Works Cited
Kangaslampi, Samuli, Ferdinand Garoff, and Kirsi Peltonen. "Narrative Exposure Therapy for Immigrant Children Traumatized by War: Study Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial of Effectiveness and Mechanisms of Change." BMC Psychiatry 15.1 (2015): 1-14. Print.
Papernow, Patricia L. "Providing Evidence-Based Help to Stepfamilies." Brown University Child & Adolescent Behavior Letter 30.3 (2014): 1-7. Print.
Vanessa Jantzer, Johann Haffner, Peter Parzer, Franz Resch and Michael Kaess. "Does Parental Monitoring Moderate the Relationship between Bullying and Adolescent Nonsuicidal Self-Injury and Suicidal Behavior? A Community-Based Self-Report Study of Adolescents in Germany." BMC Public Health 15.1 (2015): 1-8. Print.