Week 3: Research that Benefits Children and Families

This is hard to choose. Two tough choices and I think I'll do both! Option number one: a positive example of research on children and families. One thing I see that research has aided in is children with ADD/ADHD. They have come out with medications that help these children. I do now that it is a tough decision for parents to put their child on medication, but when teachers and doctors bring in all the research that has been done and the positive has came out of the medication, this helps the parent make a decision. I have also heard that Diet Mt. Dew can help children with ADD or ADHD and this is one thing I'd like to research more into also. Now one thing that I would love to research is the causes of Autism! There are so many children born with autism with no known reason why. Also with down syndrome, I know that just has to do with a gene or chromosone or something but I just wonder and would love to research what causes this and how to prevent it. I also know a family who had a set of twins they are 18 now and the girl has never had use of her legs, shes been on crutches her whole life. They just recently started giving her botox shots. I would also love to see some research on this. Why are her legs unable to be used and how could this have been prevented and what can make it better? There are some amazing things that could be researched in early childhood. I know that parents still love their children the same no matter if they have ADD, ADHD, Autism, down syndrome or any other disability, but I also know that if some of these things could be prevented it would save a lot of stress!

My Personal Research Journey

I chose to study Play in Early childhood! This subjects peaks my interest because people are trying to take away childhood! At the beginning of the year, we were told to only stay at recess for 10-15 minutes. Really? How can we do that? I'm going to say this is why there are more children with ADD/ADHD! They are forced to sit in chairs and do paperwork and not allowed to play, like children are supposed to do! Pre-K is now teaching what Kindergarten once taught. We are forcing these children to lose childhood earlier and earlier. I am a teacher who will stand up for the rights of my children. 4 year olds have an attention span of like 15-20 minutes at a time. They are unable to focus any longer than that, yet we are forced to keep them inside and busy. Just busy work. That term gets on my nerves. When I interned the teacher even called it "busy work". Why do we just want to keep children busy, instead of allowing them to play, or teach them something else? This just doesn't make sense to me. Children learn more by playing outside and socializing than doing busy work. They learn socialization skills, gross motor skills and many more skills. I want to research to find more out and let others know Why Play is Important in Early Childhood!