Module 4 Assignment 1 Diane McCullough

Connecting With Your Community

My journey in this class Child Development Critical Years has been challenging, difficult, and rewarding at the same time. I found it to stretch my brain little more than I wanted to go but I know this was good and helpful for my brain. The brain is a complex machine that needs to be used daily and if not you could lose some of its snapes. "Your brain becomes less precise in how it's resolving information as you're operating and listening in language, as you're operating in vision, or as you're operating in controlling your actions. And we actually see these other noise processes through the brain as you age. In fact, we can correlate those changes quite directly with the slowing down of your processing. You know, every older person is slower in their actions, slower in their decisions, and less fluent in their operations than when they're younger. They're slower because the brain basically is dealing with information in a fuzzier and degraded form" (Mercola). Therefore it is necessary that we as older adults most practice using our brain daily.

I also found it rewarding by learning more about resilience and empathy. Empathy is important because my class did to demonstrate it very much in their lives. Everyday majority of my students do something to another child that’s harmful. Resilience is important also because children need how to bounce back from pain and disappointments in life. I have one little boy in my class recently experience parents broking up and it has devastistated his life. Therefore I worry about him because he is a shy and intrabrate child and when had just gotten him to relax and open up to us. Furthermore as I read several of my colleagues post questions that arrive from them are:

Brain Development

Resilience

Empathy

How poverty affects academic achievement

Social/Emotional Development in the developing infant:

Resources:

 Center the Developing Child—Harvard University. (2015b). InBrief: The impact of early adversity on children’s development. Retrieved from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/resources/briefs/inbrief_series/inbrief_the_impact_of_early_adversity/

How children brains develop- new insights-UNICEF. (May 14, 2014). Retrieved from

https://blog.unicef.org/blog/howchildrens-brains-develop

Mercola. (December 04, 2012). Retrieved from article.mercola.com. how innate ‘plasticity’ of

            your to improve cognitive performance and age-related decline

Pizzolongo, P. J. & Hunter, A. Retrieved from I am safe and secure: Promoting resilience in

            young children. www.naeyc.or.

Tips on helping your child develop empathy- zero to three. Retrieved from

 www.zerotothree-org/child