Posts

Music can lead to Awakenings (see what I did there?)

Image
Okay, unpopular opinion, I’m not the biggest Robin Williams fan. I know, I know everyone loves him and his movies. Maybe I need to watch more of them, maybe I haven’t given him the right opportunity. I will, alright! His movies are on my list. I think I was more interested in watching the movie Awakenings because it was about people with mental health issues, and these movies intrigue me. Also, that it was based on a true story made me even more interested. Not that we’re reviewing Robin Williams acting but I will say he did a good job and I enjoyed his acting, as well as the movie. I was expecting more music and healing to be involved in the movie, but wasn’t mad that there wasn’t more of it. The subtleness of the affects of music on these patients is something I liked about it. One of the scenes that shows the power of music was before Leonard was administered the drug L-dopa, but after Dr. Sayer figured out what each patient who was catatonic had in common. The commonality was tha...
2 comments
Read more

A Mindful Future Society?

  I really found the lecture on mindfulness and meditation to be extremely interesting. I think the biggest reason is because of the evidence that has been produced to show the positive effects meditation has on the brain. It makes you wonder why meditation isn’t being prescribed by doctors…or why all of our children aren’t participating in it in the classroom? After learning more about it and having a child myself, I think it is something both him and myself could do as there are only positive outcomes to practicing meditation. Before I sat down and started writing this blog, I was looking up guided meditations and I found one that I really liked. It is only five minutes long and is for the morning right after you wake up. Can you imagine if everyone started their day with five minutes of meditation?   5 Minute Guided Meditation Meditation can affect the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the prefrontal cortex. These two parts in the brain work together with the amygdala...
5 comments
Read more

Technology; the Necessary Evil?

Image
  To some parents, the idea of technology and their young child using it, can seem taboo. I live in the mountains and sometimes at my work the conversation regarding kids and screen time comes up. Most of the time, when screen time is discussed, it is talked about in a negative way, which is understandable. People at my work keep saying to let you kids play outside and be kids. But what I don’t think the people at my work, realize (and maybe other people and parents too) is that the world is changing and putting a big emphasis on technology and the advancement of it. We want our children to grow up and be successful adults and whatever that success looks like for them, will probably involve some kind of technology. Now I know we are not teaching our 0-5 year old’s to code programs (although I know this is becoming more popular in schools,) we are able to use the technology we have as a tool when used appropriately. When technology is used in a classroom, “it should only be used f...
4 comments
Read more

Effects of Trauma on Childhood

     I first learned about the effects trauma can have on a child in my Child and Adolescent Development in Context course that I am currently taking. I felt so ignorant to the information I was learning on what trauma can do to a child.  This was where I first heard about ACEs which is Adverse Childhood Experiences. These experiences include: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, mentally ill, depressed, or suicidal person in the home, drug addicted or alcoholic family member, witnessing domestic violence, loss of a parent to death, abandonment by parental divorce, incarceration of any family member for a crime, (Head Start, 2021). A child who endures these adversities in their young life are greatly affected by them. Experiencing this kind of trauma at a young age can result in attachment issues, biological issues, affect regulation, dissociation, behavioral control, cognition, and self-concept issues, (Parrish, 2022). ...
5 comments
Read more
Image
Memory This is one of my new favorite movies, Inside Out. Although it's mostly dealing with emotions, it also deals with memories and is now one of the images I get when I think of memories. 1.      Language plays a role in a young child’s developing memory by putting words to objects, actions, and events that are going on. “Language plays a role in a young child’s developing memory skills by providing both a communicative and a representational tool for remembering,” (Nelson & Fivush, as cited in Wang & Ross, 2007, 661). Studies have been done to show that if an infant is read to in the womb, in the last weeks before they are born, they are able to distinguish between the book that was read to them, and an unfamiliar book when they are born. So infants do have memory as early as in the womb. It is suggested in this reading though, that infants might not be able to remember these early memories, from birth until three years old or so, because they did not hav...
5 comments
Read more

Our First Blog! (Yay!)

According to Brian Kolb and Robin Gibb, there are a few different factors that can affect brain development. One combination of factors are sensory and motor experiences. They explained how rodents, “…deprived of environments such as in darkness, silence, or social isolation clearly retards brain development,” (Kolb & Gibb, 2011, p. 7). Another factor that affects brain development are psychoactive drugs. This can be drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine, or heroin, or also prescription drugs. All of these have been proved to affect the dendrites in the brain in rodents, (Kolb & Gibb, 2011, p. 9). The last factor that I think is really important to discuss, that I find extremely interesting as well as information every parent, guardian, or person that works with children should know is early stress. Perinatal stress in rodents produced different behavioral abnormalities. Some of those include learning and memory problems as well as prolonged stress responses, (Kolb & Gibb, 20...
1 comment
Read more