Meeting the child’s health and developmental needs
The term effective parenting can be defined as the ability of both the parents to interact as well as engage with the children in a way that they undergoes a holistic developing while growing up as remarkable adults. Effective parenting possess the potential to promote the mental, emotional as well as linguistic development of children along with developing the ability of a child to exhibit confident as well as optimistic social behaviors. In this essay, effective discussion has been done on the challenges associated with parenting in the contemporary society based on two key themes from the Kellet and Apps (2009) that are, meeting the child’s health and developmental needs and putting children’s needs first. Along with this, demonstration of an understanding of the role of the child as well as family health professions, including the importance of using strengths and partnership based approach has been done.
Meeting the child’s health and developmental needs
With the advent of technology and globalization the society has changed from almost every aspects and this changes has imposed high impact on parenting. While every parent is aware of the fact that effective child care can result in appropriate development of both mental, and physical wellbeing off the child, a series of challenges are faced by parents that affects their ability to met the health and developmental needs of the child along with putting the children’s need first. For example, lack of nutrition and higher rate of obesity amongst children between the age of 3 years to 7 years has been found to be a major issue. As per Kellett and Apps (2009), with the change in social construct, the number of single parents are increasing with time. The percentage of single mothers have got increased in Australia within the last 5 years by 8.2 percent. One of the adverse impact of single parenting in scarcity of time and money of the parents, which in turn impose highly negative impact on both physical as well as mental wellbeing of the children. Lack of financial capability of single mothers, affects their ability to provide the required nutrition to the children, which in turn not only affects their physical growth, but also affects their cognitive development to a great extent. Both single mothers and single fathers are found to be working more than average parents with partners which in turn affect their ability to spend time with child. Tang et al. (2021) have highlighted that this true for both single and partnered parents. Majority of the patients in both developed and developing nations are working and significant number of them are fulltime workers and hence often ends of juggling between office works, performing household responsibilities, and looking after the children. Lack of time spent with children affects the development of attachment with parents. Kellett and Apps (2009) have highlighted that children who suffers from lack of time from parents often tends to develop inferiority complex from constant ignorance an lack of attention from the end of the patents. This in turn affects the emotional development of the children. Romero et al. (2020) have highlighted that lack of time given from the end of the parents is directly proportional to the obesity of the children. Parents who lacks ability and time to play with children often encourages them to play virtual games. Lack of physical activities along with increased consumption of junk food results in obesity amongst children. High obesity affects both metal as well as physical wellbeing of the children by introducing a range of illness, like cardiovascular illness, diabetes and depression.
Putting children’s needs first
Putting children’s needs first
It is highly crucial for parents to understand that their offspring should be their first priority. Ferri, Grifoni and Guzzo (2020) have highlighted that in contemporary days, often parents end up prioritizing their needs that makes the child feel undervalued and not being loved. The author highlighted that more than 12.6 percent of parents has left their child to either grandparents or any other primary care givers, for professional or personal reason. Cabrera et al. (2018) however have argued that in this era of globalization, parents working in MNCs are often forced to move to other nations. Additionally, often millennial parents end up prioritizing professional life over the needs of the child. According to attachment theory, a child develops strong bond with their primary care givers and the care given to the child during this phase impose high impact on his social, emotional as well as physical development. Lack of attachment with parents impose long term adverse impact on the child.
Another major factor that acts as a challenge for parents to meet the child’s health and developmental needs includes social media platforms. Holden (2019) have highlighted that millennial parents are found to be highly attached with their social media accounts as a form of entertainment as well as communication with other individuals. However, excessive usage of social media platforms has shown adverse impact on parenting, which in turn, has led to parental distraction, diminished level of everyday parental engagement along with making a child more likely to be at the risk of injury. Coyne et al. (2021) have highlighted that that maintaining a stable relationship between such a parent and his offspring’s requires frequent visual contact, one-on-one time, as well as complete attention. Excessive attachment to social media affects the ability of the parents to do so and this in turn affects the feeling of being and belonging of the child. Russell et al. (2020) have highlighted that constant engagement to social media often leads to the notion to the child that they are not valued enough.
A wide range of child and family health support services are available in Australia, in order to ensure a holistic development of a child. However, in order to ensure effective development of a child active support and engagement of the patients to healthcare services is highly required.
According to Kellet & Apps (2009), the perceived professional roles and boundaries vary based on different aspect of healthcare needs in parenting and child development. It has been highlighted that the level of help provided to parents by the professionals can majorly be segregated into several categories namely paediatricians, health visitors, and special need support worker. The role of a healthcare service provider such as paediatrician is to ensure that parents and the children are receiving a wide range of continuous and frequent long-term healthcare related support. In terms of parental acknowledgement, it is the responsibility of the paediatricians to provide the support while taking the acknowledgement from parents. According to Dubowitz (2020), The responsibility towards the parents can stretched outside of their clinical responsibilities, and instead referred them to other resources. It includes guiding the parents regarding the process of assessing health related symptoms, providing guideline of health and hygiene related practices through interpersonal communication. The healthcare service provider should also ensure that in every aspect of the care-giving the parents are completely involved.
Role of healthcare professionals in parenting
Another major role of healthcare professional including paediatrician and paediatric nurse is the assessment of gap in the parenting. Different assessment methods are used such as deductive observation, verbal communication and others. According to Lozano and Houtrow (2018), The paediatricians should have the systematic approaches to parenting that include having the knowledge to assess the children and sharing the knowledge to the parents regarding child assessments. It is essential to engage the parents within the process of need assessment of the role, because it enables the health support workers such as paediatrician to understand and consider all other aspects of children behaviour, physical and metal health symptoms that are not currently visible, for the complete assessment children’s health (Triplett, Dyer & Pascoe, 2021). The paediatrician should develop a partnership with parent through interpersonal communication so that the parent can share all aspects of their and their children’s physical and mental health related issues without hesitation.
According to Mattson et al. (2019), special support and care provider should focus on strength-based approach that helps to utilise the existing strengths within the children and the parenting for improving the child development process and closing the existing gaps. Partnership is not only essential between care provider and parents, but also it is essential within different healthcare service provider. For example, is a family centred approach the paediatrician can communicate with the special support and care provider to discuss the further needs in special support and care providing (Tyler et al., 2019). It also helps understand the physical and mental capabilities and limitation of children in measurable way. It is the role of both paediatrician and the special support and care provider to educate the parents regarding the child’s chronic diseases such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and others.
When it comes to Child and Family health visitors, one of their key roles includes parental assessment. Child and Family health visitors, conducts meeting with patents within the family home while conducting a complete assessment of the home, child and family, through the assessment, the physical environment, emotional and psychological support networks for the development of the child is assessment. Additionally, the capability of the mother to provide parenting care along with the financial condition of the home is assessment. On that basis, support is provided to the child. According to Dubowitz (2020) often resistance from parents affects the ability of the health visitors to effectively conduct their role. Often parents view the interventions as unnecessary interventions. In such cases, the entire health program becomes inefficient. Hence, active acceptance from the end of the parents is highly required to provide effective support to the child. Russell et al. (2020) have highlighted that the time available for practitioners to spend with the parents also impose impact on the success rate of the health programs. Parents needs to provide sufficient amount of time to the health visitors and answer their questions without hesitation. This not only ensure effective partnership, but also strengthen health based approach. Clear, transparent and detailed transfer of information from both end, ensures effective identification of the issue and ability of the health visitor to resolve the same. Health visitors needs to communicate with special support and care provider for assessing the physical and mental status of the child through measurable parameters that cannot be expressed by the parents due to limitations of their knowledge in medical science.
Assessment of gaps in parenting
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that While every parent is aware of the fact that effective child care can result in appropriate development of both mental, and physical wellbeing off the child, a series of challenges are faced by parents that affects their ability to meet the health and developmental needs of the child along with putting the children’s need first. Excessive usage of social media, lack of time, prioritizing their professional needs over child’s need and poverty are some of the major reasons that act as challenge to provide effective care. The role of a healthcare service provider such as paediatrician is to ensure that parents and the children are receiving a wide range of continuous and frequent long-term healthcare related support. Another major role of healthcare professional including paediatrician and paediatric nurse is the assessment of gap in the parenting. Different assessment methods are used such as deductive observation, verbal communication and others.
References
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