As one studies and learns about a child, they can discover some of the factors that have an impact on the child’s behavior. Some of these factors are external and exist in the child’s environment while some of them are internal and may have a neurological underpinning (National Research Council, 2011). While some of these factors can be controlled and therefore reduce the pressure on the child’s behavior, some of them are quite difficult or completely impossible to control. This paper discusses some of the main factors in the child’s environment that can influence behavior in both a positive and negative way.
Family
It has been found that effective parenting can help prevent negative behavior among children and even encourage pro-social values. Children need nurturing, supporting parenting that offers deliberate and constant discipline in order to gain positive behavior (National Research Council, 2011). Additionally, parental supervision often prevents children from interacting with other children who are deviant. On the other hand, too many instances of family conflicts and ineffective communication skills hinder proper parenting and family relations. As a result, children growing up in such families are often emotionally insecure and hostile, which are indicators of negative behavior.
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Peers
Studies have shown that there is a relationship between a child’s behavior and the kind of children with whom they socialize. There are two accounts of this assertion. First, it is possible that children tend to identify themselves with others who are already similar to themselves (National Research Council, 2011). Second, when the child socializes with certain children, then they are likely to take up the behaviors of these children. It is therefore expected that if a child socializes with other children who demonstrate positive behavior, then the child would also adopt this behavior. Otherwise, the child is likely to demonstrate deviant behavior.
Neighborhood
The neighborhood is an important context in this discussion even though it is quite broad. The neighborhood is the place where peer and other social relations occur and where children gain access to institutional resources. Given that residence in a given neighborhood is rarely random, similar traits may lead families to certain neighborhoods and at the same time predispose their children to certain outcomes (National Research Council, 2011). If the overall neighborhood environment promotes positive behavior, then a child is likely to behave positively. Otherwise, the child would demonstrate deviant behavior.
Media and Technology
Of the environmental factors that affect children’s behavior, the wide and ever-changing array of media they are exposed to is arguably most difficult to study. Young people today, some of them as young as six years old, as exposed to media and the latest technology more than in any other generation. In fact, eight- to eighteen-year-olds tend to use media for more than six hours per day on average, and sometimes use multiple media at the same instance. With such a prevalence, media use can be considered to be an environmental factor influencing children’s behavior (National Research Council, 2011). According to Burt (2009), while media are not always bad or good, they are very powerful in any form. They can be used for the benefit of the community, or they can cause harm. The impact of media on one’s behavior is often dependent on how an individual processes the information. In the case of children, emotional and other nonverbal cues tend to be the most influential.
Community and Socialization in Children
Communities with a high social capital tend to possess accessible information networks that help members and make them feel valued and provide clear norms about behavior. Constructive social relations between community members help in parenting since positive behavior is considered and illustrated as the norm in that community. In such communities, children tend to learn desirable behavior and appreciate the community’s expectations regarding education and employment (Belsky et al., 2007). However, the low social capital in many communities today has made families quite isolated. Such factors as poor housing and low income have led to many communities being disconnected. This social isolation has been found to have an adverse effect on family functioning and child development. As a result, children living in disconnected communities tend to exhibit negative behavior.
Community development is a broad approach to improve the social capital of a community and promote the well-being its members. Any program aimed at increasing socialization in the community is based on the creation and strengthening of cooperation between governments, families, family support, child welfare, religious organizations, business, and health and education agencies (Belsky et al., 2007). Partnerships between these parties would ensure the integration of private and social responsibilities for families.
Community Program Plan for Improving Socialization
This is a prevention program that offers communities the tool to respond to child and adolescent behavior issues via an emphasis on empirically determined protective factors. This program rallies community leaders to plan and execute a series of interventions to mitigate risk factors and stimulate protective factors in the community. This program takes from 3 to 4 years in order to realize community-level changes regarding risk factors, and from 6 to 8 years to realize changes regarding children’s behavior. The execution of this program is formulated into five stages, every one of which possesses “benchmarks” and “milestones” to help follow the application progress.
The first stage is a Community Readiness Evaluation phase. At this stage, organizational and attitudinal traits of community organizations, leaders, and members that are considered to have an impact on the rallying process are evaluated. Significant organizations and people that would be needed to initiate the program are determined.
The second stage introduces the community to the program via one training session which familiarizes the leaders identified at the first stage to the community activation methods of the program. The training would also define the responsibilities of these leaders and the other community members. The leaders then invite the rest of the community and determine one organization in the community that would act as a “prevention board.” The role of this board is to plan and carry out the rest of the program and to gather the required resources for the proper execution of preventative measures.
The third stage involves a training session for the prevention board members regarding behavior evaluation of children in the community. The board is then tasked with prioritizing the risk, and protective factors identified in the first stage and identify gaps in existing policies.
The fourth stage involves the development of a community action plan by the prevention board. All the members of the community are required to attend a three-day training that reviews effective policies and past action plans that have yielded desirable results. Overall, the program covers preventative actions from the prenatal stage through young adulthood.
The final stage of the program involves the implementation of selected preventative interventions. The prevention board monitors the execution quality of these interventions. From the the third year and continuing into the fourth one, the program providers monitor the execution of the program.
Conclusions
The experience of children is quite complex due to a range of environmental influences that affect them either positively or negatively. This paper discusses family, peers, neighborhood and media and technology as some of the most prominent environmental factors affecting children’s behavior. Additionally, it has been found that communities with a high social capital tend to possess accessible information networks that help members and make them feel valued and provide clear norms about behavior. Therefore, to increase socialization for children in the community, community programs should focus on increasing social capital.
References
Belsky, J., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2007). For better and for worse: Differential susceptibility to environmental influences. Current directions in psychological science , 16 (6), 300-304.
Burt, S. A. (2009). Rethinking environmental contributions to child and adolescent psychopathology: A meta-analysis of shared environmental influences. Psychological bulletin , 135 (4), 608.
National Research Council. (2011). the science of adolescent risk-taking Workshop report National Academies Press.
