Saturday, November 29, 2014

Salient Points in the course on Clinical and Psychological development of teens and young adults.

1.The  physical development,  the cognitive emotional development,  the interpersonal development and the way the child corresponds and interacts with the context kind etc. needs to be observed.
2. We expect development to be immediate. So we expect, your kids to just adapt to the time. Their capacity and their capability to become greater and you know, for them to just unfold this personal. But do know that development is really funky. That you know we can all identify times in our lives. Where we may have struggled with things that subsequently, became a great strength for us, and, and, and vice versa. Things that we really excelled at when we were younger that,  that, you know, we've lost, we've lost track of kind of things. So, development is bumpy, and we will always see ups and downs in particular areas.
3. Changes in the, in the home setup, causes  changes in his interpersonal development  also some of these relationships going awry, even if it's peers. are there changes in terms  of how his parents are able to support him and, and, so forth. And that would be the first question, is he responding to something or somebody.  Yeah.  The other thing to consider is that, you know, throughout early child. Key kind of physical and neural developmental changes.  Sometimes, you know, we see changes in children's behaviors, interactions. You know, they, they didn't struggle with something, suddenly they seem to struggle with.
4. In light of this, IJzendorrn et al conducted a meta-analysis including 230,000 children who'd been adopted or remained with their birth families, fostered or institutionalized to examine outcomes in height, weight, IQ, self-esteem, internalizing problems like anxiety and depression, externalizing or  behavior problems and attachment security. What they found they described as massive catch-up, particularly noticeable in height and weight, but also IQ and self-esteem showed no difference compared to children who'd grown up in their birth families.
5. Externalizing problems were slightly more prevalent. Attachment security was lower than that for birth children, at 47% compared to 60 to 70% in birth family children. But that's till twice as high as children who had been fostered or institutionalized. They concluded that adoption is a highly effective  intervention, building resilience, and mitigating against the risks of an early, challenging, childhood.
6. Therefore what we can see, is that this relatively low level, non-professional intervention, has dramatic outcomes for children, reducing that risk and increasing resilience.
7. As part of this growth, children have to go through a process of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation, involves the inclusion of new information into existing schema or internal working models. Whilst accommodation, happens when a child is not able to assimilate information into an existing schema, and either has to change the schema or develop a new schema
8. Lorenz, was inspired to conduct a study involving goslings, which ultimately led to the imprinting hypothesis. In this study, Lorenz split a large hatch of goslings, leaving half with the mother, and taking the other half, and raising them himself.
Over the course of their development, the goslings quickly identified him  as their primary attachment figure. And followed him, copying his behaviour. He taught them to swim. He used to call them, with a special horn for feeding time and they always followed him.  When they were given the opportunity to return to their birth mother, they did not recognize her as such, instead preferring Lorenz.
9. This taught us about the importance and the probable biological nature of the bond between mother and offspring, in which the mother, or primary attachment figure, is the one who provides physical and emotional care, and nurturence.
10. Studies suggested, that mammals need reciprocal nurturing and attachment, as much as they need their physical needs met.  Bowlby hypothesised that since humans cannot survive without adult care, our evolutionary history has selected, 'pre-wired dispositions', on both the part of the adult and the child that ensure human survival.
11. From this basis, Bowlby developed model of attachment that is monotropic, that is, has a single attachment figure, is focused on survival of the  individual, and the species, and is integrated with human development, to both influence broader developmental outcomes, and the influence by individual and contextual factors.
12. Tasks were identified for caregiver and offspring that promote reciprocity, and ultimately autonomy. The goal was to maintain emotional and physical equilibrium of the offspring, thus, keeping their attachment system settled, allowing exploration and learning. During periods of distress, the attachment system is activated, and takes priority over the exploratory system. The regulation of emotion and behaviour, a task that the caregiver and infant accomplish together. Through reliable, responsive, and consistent care giving, the caregiver provides the infant with the necessary 'up-regulation', increasing the arousal and emotions. And 'down-regulation, settling of emotions that the infant needs.
13. Parents who are not attuned to the infants needs and cannot reliably, consistently provide care, leave the infant without the necessary external regulatory support. Over time, this develops into a complex system that affects the way that the child and eventually adult responds to their own needs and to those of others.
14. , Research shows that people with an insecure attachment style are overrepresented in the clinical population, and children with disorganized attachment styles, are at high risk of showing behavioural problems in childhood.



15.  Attachment and psychopathology and the relationship between the two of them. - First of all, there are  biological factors, including genetic and prenatal factors such as injury, maternal alcohol use, smoking, or drug use. Then there are  trauma and abuse, which might be physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, domestic violence, severe neglect, or major loss. We also have to consider the parents' own experience of being parented and the trauma, abuse, loss, or positive experiences they may have had. The parenting style might be authoritarian, authoritative, permissive.
16.  Reciprocity and autonomy are also important as well their availability in communication style.   .

17. The infants personality or temperament is also significant . This includes their thinking style, their mood, their preferences, their interpersonal functioning and the unique x factor that makes them just themselves. We have the other direct influences on psychopathology, such as IQ or learning. This might involve things like a global learning or intellectual disability, or specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, or simply access to educational opportunities.

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