Children's Needs – Parenting Capacity - Digital Education Resource ...

Child development and parents’ responses – children under 5 years 119age frequently use a sentence made up of two nouns such as ‘mummy sock’. By twoyears, infants are able to follow simple instructions and are always asking questions.At about the age of two and a half years children’s vocabulary has grown to some 600words, a quarter of which are verbs (Fenson et al. 1994).Children of 12 months are curious about their environment and spend muchtime exploring and manipulating objects, shaking them, moving them along thefloor or putting them in and out of containers. By 18 months, infants are ableto start to play matching and sorting games. By 24 months, physical games andpretend play are enjoyed.Possible impact on cognitive and language developmentParental disorders may impact on children’s cognitive and language developmentdue to a lack of adequate stimulation, parental encouragement and support, orparents’ inability to recognise and respond to their infants’ cues.The child’s cognitive and language development may be negatively affected whenparents are preoccupied with their own feelings and emotions and find it difficult tofocus on their infants and prioritise their needs.I want to be able to ... just be like a normal young mother and be able to get upin the morning, get her ready first thing in the morning, take her up the park andfeed the ducks and all that with her instead of getting up and thinking ‘oh no’,where am I going to get my next hit from before I can change her or do anythinglike that?’(Drug-abusing mother, quoted in Barnard 2007, p.67)The effects of some drugs or mental illness can cause hyperactivity and makeparents impatient with their children. ‘You want people to hurry up ... kids can’t andyou can’t be bothered sitting down and talking to them, like you are supposed to’ (Kleeet al. 1998, p.14 quoted in Kroll and Taylor 2003, p.123). In contrast, feelings ofexhaustion, physical illness, depression and a lack of self-confidence and self-worthmay limit the parents’ capacity to engage with their child, listen to what they say andoffer praise and encouragement and foster learning. In such circumstances, insteadof responding with interest and enjoyment to the infant’s efforts to communicate,the impact of parental disorders may result in parents reacting with hostility andnegativity; thus establishing difficult cycles of relating and longer-term conflictualinteractions (in relation to depression see Murray et al. 2001; see Barnard 2007 inrelation to drug addiction).Parents with a learning disability may find it difficult to support the child’slearning. For example, illiteracy curtails parents’ ability to read simple stories to theirchildren, and problems in learning and recalling information means the repertoireof nursery rhymes and other children’s songs will be restricted. Parents with learningdisabilities may not understand how to play and stimulate their child and will needconsiderable support from wider family, friends and professionals to ensure theirchild receives adequate stimulation.