Child Development and Literacy

Question: Understand of what optimal child development might be at any given place and time. Answer: There are several factors that affect early childhood growth and literacy. These factors may be socio-economic or cultural. Literacy is imperative to achieve success in academics. It plays a pivotal role right from the early childhood. Though everyone would like to be literate, there are several impediments on the way because of which children do not education. The socio- economic status is one of the driving factors of low achievement. Students from impoverished families face more difficulties than students who belong to the upper or middle classes. Unfortunately, poverty is a major barrier in which people get trapped and find no escape route. Poverty is one of the most influential factors in the success of a child as children must be ready to read from their very early years (Heath et al., 2014). This eagerness to learn must be nurtured right from the time children begin to understand and speak. However, poverty deteriorates the health, behavior, and achievement of a child thereby leaving very less prospect for the child to associate himself/herself with education. Poverty creates stress within a family thereby undermining healthy growth and development of the child. Deterioration of health, in turn, reduces the school achievement and cognitive ability of the child. Moreover, the environment of a child also affects his/her performance. The child must get proper opportunity to learn. This can be done through child-mother interactions. However, poverty affects the mother-child relationship. Not only poverty but harsh treatment of the child in the hands of parents can also lead to a poor growth of a child. The age between zero and five is the most significant one when it comes to a childs development of foundational capabilities. This is the period when a child learns linguistic patterns and cognitive gains. Social, emotional, moral, and regulatory dimensions are also weaved together at this point of time. It is thus crucial for the parents to become aware of their roles and responsibilities (Wittmer et al., 2016). There are several other factors that affect the growth of children. These include the inability to gain access to various services. Language barriers, transportation issues, stigma, cost, and unavailability of various services and programs wreak havoc in child development (Cherry, 2016). Before developing skills, it is vital to develop meaningful content. When children enter school, they face differentiation and categorization because of their race or class. This very marginalization affects the psychology of a child. Moreover, there are differences between the expressive language and receptive language of a child. The knowledge deficiencies reflect the limited access that children have to informal interaction. There must be compensatory education so that education programs can improve to benefit the children living in poor health and financial conditions (Faitar, 2011). Also, the literacy level and math skills must be improved to ameliorate the gap between the poor and the more advantaged ones. Teachers must be supported and there must be a professional curriculum and development for effective preschool programs and classrooms. Such strategies are important to develop children in early settings of learning. There must be programs to help low-income families' children to overcome the problems of learning in early childhood. References Heath, S. M., Bishop, D. V., Bloor, K. E., Boyle, G. L., Fletcher, J., Hogben, J. H., Yeong, S. H. (2014). A spotlight on preschool: The influence of family factors on childrens early literacy skills. PloS one, 9(4), p.15. Wittmer, D. S., Petersen, S. H., Puckett, M. B. (2016). The young child: Development from prebirth through age eight. Pearson. Cherry, K. (2016). What is child Psychology. A brief Overview of Child Psychology. Retrieve Mar. 2012 from https://theindividualist.hubpages.com/hub/socio-economicfactorsofearlyliteracy. Faitar, G. M.(2011). Socioeconomic Status, Ethnicity and the Context of Achievement in Minority Education. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies. V. 5