How family relationships affect child development

Role of Family in Child Development-Children's Bureau

Blog

12/11/2017

Humans rely heavily on learning for child development. Because we are not born knowing how to behave in society, we have to learn many of the behaviors from the environment around us growing up. For most of us, this learning starts with the family at home.

Learning comes in many forms. Sometimes children learn by being told something directly. However, the most common way children learn is by observation of everyday life. A child’s learning and socialization are most influenced by their family since the family is the child’s primary social group.

Child development happens physically, emotionally, socially, and intellectually during this time. To make an analogy, if you were constructing a large building, you have to make sure that it has a solid foundation so that the rest of the building can stand tall and strong for many years to come. If the foundation is not strong, the building will have trouble standing on its own. Just like people, if our foundations are not solid, we find it more difficult to be successful in our relationships with others, work, health, and ourselves. So, it cannot be stressed enough how important the family is in development of a child.

Ultimately, the family will be responsible for shaping a child and influencing their values, skills, socialization, and security during these childhood development stages.

Values

We generally understand values to mean an understanding between what is right and what is wrong. As a society, we have norms and values, and these function in conjunction with personal values and norms.

One way to see what a society values is to look at whom a society respects. Usually, people show more respect to people and to things that they value highly. Whenever you treat people with disrespect, your child will certainly notice. Children are sponges that soak up everything around them, and many times we forget that they are watching us.

However, as a whole, many of us agree and desire to share with our children values of respect, compassion, fairness, and responsibility to name a few.

A good way to teach your child values is to discuss with them the importance of healthy and unhealthy values. Even when your child is little, giving them some responsibilities, such as cleaning the table or helping to cheer up a friend or sibling when they’re sick, will begin to teach them the importance of these values. Additionally, explaining the importance of values will help your child understand consequences.

Within the world we live in today, where media is a dominant, it may be appropriate to block some forms of media from your child. For example, a 4 year old may not be learning the best values from watching rated-R movies. As adults, we can more easily separate right from wrong, whereas little children are still trying to understand where the line is.

So, as the family, it is your job to teach your children about the values that they will use to guide their own lives. This requires a lot of work for you because not only do you have to directly teach these values to your children, such as through explaining and tasks as mentioned above, but your children will look to you as a role model. Your child will notice if you do behave in the same way that you expect of them. Your child watches your behaviors to gauge how to behave themselves. When something goes awry, having a level-headed response is very important.

Trying to always exhibit your values is important more than ever with a family because a child’s presence must then always be taken into consideration.

Skills

Once your child is born, they start learning motor skills, language skills, cognitive skills, and emotional skills.

Regarding motor skills, it is largely the family’s responsibility for teaching these skills. Even if your child is in daycare, the work that parents put in at home to teach these skills is much more effective than in the few hours your child is under someone else’s care. Your child will learn how to sit up, walk, run, climb, hold a spoon, and so on. These seem so natural to us as adults, but they are skills that have to be fine-tuned at a very young age, and they also reinforce your child’s independence which is essential for their development.

Language skills are another essential component of the role of family in child development. If you do not speak to your child and teach them your language, they will never learn. One infamous example of this occurring is with Genie, a child who was locked in a dark room with extremely little human contact until she was rescued at age 13. She was never able to develop language fluency because it was never taught to her. So, teaching your children language skills from a young age is also essential to child development.

Another skill that is very important for child development is emotion. Emotional skills are important throughout your child’s entire life as they teach them when to have sympathy and compassion for others as well as teach them how to deal with the highs and lows that come with life. If your child does not have proper emotional skills, they will not be able to deal with bad outcomes. If they lack emotional skills, it could lead to destructive choices when they are older.

To help develop your child’s emotional skills, teaching them to smile and wave when they are babies is a good place to start. When they get a bit older, teaching them to share is very important. In a family, because there are multiple people, the family can be very helpful in developing a child’s skills with the multiple perspectives.

To bring this more to foundational building blocks, while your child is very young, something very helpful for family members to do is to teach children basic emotions. When a child is feeling a certain way, naming emotions and describing them are important ways for your child to understand how they are feeling. Once this foundation is set, children can learn how to respond to their feelings and move forward.

Socialization

When you bring your child home for the first time, your family will become their social group. Parents are the first teachers for children.

What your child learns through the interactions between you and them is what they will carry for the rest of their life in regards to how to treat others. Through this socialization with family, your child will learn how to trust, seek friendships from others, and find comfort with others as well.

Generally, we have to learn how to make and sustain relationships. These skills are started and strengthened with the family. Additionally, giving your child the tools for interpersonal development before they learn the skills of technology is vital. These skills can ultimately help your child avoid some of the common effects of technology on children.

Learning how to have face-to-face interactions is critical in a child’s development. Face-to-face interactions require immediate responses, facial expressions, cues, certain tones of voice, and much more that we do not receive through texting or other online message systems. This is exactly what your child is looking to you and their family to learn. By making sure family members are putting away their smartphones and spending at least a portion of the day “off the grid,” it will ensure that interpersonal connection is happening with your child. Simply talking to your child during dinner about their day does a lot more to reinforce person-to-person skills than you may think!

Security

Your child gets their primary sense of security from their family. They rely on you to make sure their basic needs, such as shelter, food, and clothing, are met.

More than that, there is emotional security at home that your child will not find in any other place. Once your child goes to school, they will learn more of public and social skills. But, when they are at home is when your child really learns how to be themselves and express themselves fully. Creating a safe, open home environment is vital so that they can grow.

As a parent, giving your child consistency and structure helps them to develop feelings of security. This can be achieved through schedules. Your child will know that everyday around a certain time, they will eat, bathe, sleep, etc. Therefore, with a schedule, your child will be able to feel comfort knowing their needs will be met.

When your child feels secure, they are able to develop many more skills. Like the mention of Genie above, she was never able to have security before she was rescued. Because of that, she was not able to grow (properly) emotionally, cognitively, or physically.

Security within your child is a lifelong positive attribute. This also happens with building trust between family members and child. When your child feels that they can trust others around them, then they will be more comfortable to be themselves. Trust happens through secure attachment when a child’s basic and emotional needs are met.

Imagine what it would be like growing up without trust, attachment, or security. Key qualities that ensure your child’s security are dependability, consistency, respectfulness, and responsiveness.

As a parent, recognizing your child’s needs is very important. Additionally, knowing how they ask for their needs is essential. Everyone expresses themselves in different ways, and children are no different (especially young children).

Final Thoughts

Raising children can be very difficult, but it can also be extremely rewarding. Remember to not only teach your child, but make sure that you act in the way that you expect your child to act. It’s impossible to be perfect all the time, but you can always strive to be your best when it comes to your role in child development. No one is perfect and no family is perfect.

However, knowing how important the role of family is in the development of children is crucial. As parents, you are your child’s first teachers. More than day care or other caregivers, most of your child’s learning happens at home with their family. Creating an environment where your child can learn the appropriate skills and values as well as learn how to socialize and be secure creates a solid foundation upon which your child can grow.

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Relationships & child development | Raising Children Network

Why loving, nurturing relationships are important for child development

Children’s relationships shape the way they see the world and affect all areas of their development. Through relationships with parents, family members and carers, children learn about themselves and their world.

That’s because relationships let children express themselves – a cry, a laugh, a question – and get something back – a cuddle, a smile, an answer. What children ‘get back’ gives them very important information about what the world is like and how to act in the world – how to think, understand, communicate, behave, show emotions and develop social skills.

For example, when your baby babbles or your child asks for cuddles and you respond in a warm, loving and gentle way, you’re helping your baby or child learn about communication, behaviour and emotions.

When you respond warmly to your child’s needs, you’re also helping your child feel safe and secure, and building a strong relationship between you. And when your child feels safe and attached to you, your child is more likely to have the confidence to explore their world.

Exploring the world gives your child new experiences. Your child needs the stimulation of these experiences to learn how to think, communicate, react and socialise. The more experiences your child has with you there to support them, the more your child grows and thrives.

Your relationships with others

The relationships that you have with others also shape your child’s development.

The way you behave and communicate with other people – for example, your partner, family members, friends and carers – shows your child how to be and behave with others.

It also shows your child how other people will behave in return. If your child sees kind and respectful relationships around them, your child learns to be kind and respectful with others.

Why play is important for development and relationships

In the early years, your child’s main way of learning and developing is through play.

Play is fun for your child. It also gives your child an opportunity to explore, observe, experiment, solve problems and sometimes make mistakes.

Your relationship helps your child get the most out of play. That’s because your encouragement gives your child confidence to explore, experiment and make mistakes. Plenty of time spent playing, talking, listening and interacting with you also helps your child learn key life skills, like communicating, thinking, solving problems, moving and being with other children and grown-ups.

And when you play with your child, it builds your relationship. Spending time playing together sends your child a simple message – you’re important to me. This message helps your child learn about who they are and where they fit in the world.

Play and relationships in action: the peekaboo example

A simple game of peekaboo is a great example of how relationships, play and time together help with all areas of child development.

When you play peekaboo with your baby, you hide your face behind your hands and pop out again. Your baby probably reaches out to you, giggles and smiles. Your baby is saying, ‘Keep playing – this is fun!’ You keep going, and your baby is happy. But after a while, your baby might look away. That’s your baby’s way of saying, ‘Enough play for now’. You know it’s time to take a break.

This peekaboo example shows that your baby wants to play with you, which means your baby is attached to you. And attachment is a sign of healthy social and emotional development.

Also, when your baby squeals and reaches out to you to say, ‘Let’s play!’, this shows your baby developing language and gross motor skills. And when you respond, it encourages your baby to keep communicating with you.

Peekaboo helps with your baby’s thinking too. Your baby learns about what comes next when you disappear and then reappear.

And when you respond to your baby’s cues for more play or for a break, your baby understands that they can trust you. This helps your baby to feel safe, loved and secure.

Relationships: benefits for life

Warm and loving interactions between you and your child develop your child’s confidence, resilience and communication. Your child needs these skills later in life for working through problems, dealing with stress and forming healthy relationships with other people in adolescence and adulthood.

Strong attachments and relationships early in life also mean your child is more likely to have better mental health and fewer behaviour challenges later.

By building a warm, positive and responsive relationship with your child now, you’re helping to shape the adult your child will become and giving your child a strong foundation for the rest of their life.

The influence of the family on the development of the child

It would seem obvious that family and social education directly affects the formation and development of the child. But often we do not pay much attention to this, making a big mistake. The family has a special place in the life of every person. The child grows up in it, and from the first years of his life he learns the norms of human relations, absorbing both good and evil from the family, everything that is characteristic of his family. Having matured, children repeat in their family everything that was in the family of their parents.

One of the main conditions is that the family provides a sense of security, which provides him with security when interacting with the outside world. Children gain confidence in their abilities, fear and excitement go away.

Parenting patterns also play an important role. Children often copy the behavior of other people, especially those who are in close contact with them. Partly it is a conscious attempt to behave in the same way as others behave, partly it is an unconscious imitation, which is one aspect of identification with another.

The family plays an important role in the child's life experiences. The extent to which parents provide the child with the opportunity to study in libraries, visit museums, and relax in nature depends on the stock of children's knowledge. It is also very important to talk a lot with children. Those children who have more life experience will be better than other children to adapt to the new environment and respond positively to the changes taking place around them.

Thus, it can be argued that the positive attitude of parents to the cognitive development of the child, support for his cognitive and creative activity, encouragement of cognitive activity and recognition of the success of the child helps to develop their intellectual and creative abilities.

The family is an important factor in the formation of discipline and behavior in the child. Parents influence the child's behavior by encouraging or condemning certain types of behavior, as well as applying punishments or allowing a degree of freedom in behavior that is acceptable to them. The child learns from his parents what he should do, how to behave.

Communication in the family affects the formation of a child's worldview, which allows him to develop his own norms, views, ideas. The development of the child will depend on how good conditions for communication are provided to him in the family; development also depends on the clarity and clarity of communication in the family.

For a child, a family is a talisman, a pantry of knowledge and a springboard to adulthood. It is in the family that the child receives the basics of knowledge about the world around him, and with the high cultural and educational potential of his parents, he continues to receive not only the basics, but also the culture itself all his life. Family is a certain moral and psychological climate, for a child it is the first school of relations with people.

Family education has a wide time range of influence: it lasts a person’s entire life, occurs at any time of the day, at any time of the year.

Also, the family can be fraught with certain difficulties, contradictions and shortcomings of educational influence. The most common negative factors of family upbringing that have to be taken into account in the educational process are: spoiledness and effeminacy, immorality and illegality of the family economy;

• lack of spirituality of parents, lack of desire for spiritual development of children;

• authoritarianism or "liberalism", impunity and forgiveness;

• immorality, immoral style and tone of family relations;

• absence of a normal psychological climate in the family;

• fanaticism in any of its manifestations;

• pedagogical illiteracy;

• illegal behavior of adults.

Based on the specifics of the family as a personal environment for the development of the child's personality, a system of principles of family education should be built:

• children should grow up and be brought up in an atmosphere of goodwill, love and happiness;

• parents must understand and accept their child for who he is and contribute to the development of the best in him;

• educational influences should be built taking into account age, gender and individual characteristics;

• the dialectical unity of sincere, deep respect for the individual and high demands on him should be the basis of family education;

• the personality of the parents themselves is an ideal model for children to imitate;

• upbringing should be based on the positive in a growing person;

• all types of activities organized in the family for the development of the child must be based on the game;

• optimism is the basis of the style and tone of communication with children in the family.

These principles can be expanded and supplemented, but the main thing is that they must be present.

Kononok Valeria Alexandrovna, teacher-psychologist of the city center for psychological and pedagogical assistance of the Moscow State Children's and Children's Department

The influence of the family on the development of the child

E. Zola

The family is the most important factor in the development of the individual. Here a child is born, here he receives initial knowledge about the world and his first life experience. The child must be brought up by the parents, and all social institutions can only help them in providing conditions for the self-development of the child.

The well-being of the child is facilitated by a friendly atmosphere and a system of relationships that gives a sense of security, love and acceptance, stimulates and directs his development.

Love of parents is the greatest and indispensable source of spiritual and emotional development of a child, his moral qualities, self-confidence, positive perception of the world.

ATTENTION!!!

“Parental attitude” has a huge influence on the development of the personality of a child at preschool and primary school age . It is at this age that a favorable parental attitude is important for the development of the child's personality, since on its basis the child's self-attitude, his self-esteem is formed.

What we (adults) donate to another generation and how we do it, affects the physical, mental and spiritual health of the children living next to us.

Five Basic Principles of Parental Influence on Children :

2. Parents influence a child's behavior through reward or punishment methods.
3. Communication in the family is the main factor influencing the development of a child's own views, norms, attitudes and ideas.
4. The child takes over from his parents the basics of behavior in society.
5. The family provides a sense of security, which is one of the main conditions for the normal development of the child. It gives the child the opportunity to interact with the outside world without fear and fear, to master new ways of exploring it
6. The moral and psychological climate of the family is a school of relations with people.

Children learn from what they see around them

HOW TO SAVE THE RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR CHILD

Involvement in positive activities that are adequate to interests, abilities, mental development and sufficient for full self-realization of the personality

TIPS FOR PARENTS

• Find more opportunities to involve your children in work: at home, outside the home, to help school.

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