Child Care Settings as a Context for Children's Emotional Development

Child Care Settings as a Context for Children's Emotional Development

Introduction

Changes in the consumer dynamics have changed the way families live. Not only has there been a decline in the global rate of fertility but also the parenthood is being delayed by the new generations. The need for women to work and share in the financial burdens of the partner has led to the development of new child care settings. It is very common for both the husband and the wife or the mother and the father of a child to be working. This leaves the parents with very little time to focus on their child as during the time, when both parents are working, they have to leave the child in some child care facility (Olson, 1996). This is reflected in the number of child care facilities that have emerged over a period of time. The paper focuses on the temperament of the child and his ability to adjust in the child care setting. For this purpose, it focuses on the temperament of infants and children up to the age of 12 months or one year.

The first year of life

The first year of life marks the milestone of learning and development. However, there are certain issues that are inherent in this development which is both innate and learned. Hence, in order to assess the key development issues related to the temperament in children in the first year of life, it is vital to distinguish between the innate and learned behaviour.

Innate behaviour is something which remains fixed in terms of development. This does not imply that any change in the environment and circumstances of the person during his life will yield no changes in the innate behaviour. Innate behaviour is triggered by immediate environment. This holds true for both animals as well as humans (Graham, 2001)

. The study of animals and human beings suggested that the innate behaviour is something that the child is born with. However, for this innate behaviour to outshine and reflect in the child's personality, in most cases, it should be supported by external factors too.

Learned behaviour, on the other hand, refers to changes that occur in the behaviour of a person over a period of time. These changes are the consequence of experiences and the person in question's reaction towards the experiences. In this context, it is also imperative to state that there is no clear distinction between innate and learned behaviour in that innate behaviours may improve with experience. This is something which is considered a major defining factor of learned behaviour. These two concepts are coincident with the concept of temperament. Temperament refers to the natural style of the child in which the person reacts with his immediate environment. These include people, things and places. Temperament comes under the innate behavior category of the child (Degnan & Almas, 2010).

The study of temperament in children is very important in that it is something ...