Essay Sample on Child Development

Importance 

The competency being studied is child development. This means studying and understanding the growth and change through adolescence. This can be done through scientific studies, findings and the nature of adolescents. This competency also goes over the important domains of developments through social, emotional and cognitive development. It is important to study this competency because it allows us to understand the foundation of adolescents and supports all aspects of development and learning of adolescents. Two sub-competencies that are mentioned in the powerpoints are life span and child context. These sub-competencies are important to understand in any field of child development. Starting with lifespan this sub-competency explores how we develop and continue through life and how the first years of development can influence your years after that. Just like how as child development majors we study physical and cognitive development, the lifelong process can be studied through the same domains even though the age range is different. As for child context, this is understanding all of the contexts behind the child whether it's their culture, friends around them as well as their parents. This is important to understand when studying child development because not every child is the same. In order to understand the child you must know the contexts behind them. Their experiences and what they are exposed to can then affect their social identity. 

Knowledge 

Overall I feel comfortable with this competency, however I do not feel confident. I feel as though there is still a lot that I need to learn as well as observing these competencies first-hand rather than just studying and reading about it. The one competency I am most familiar with would be child context. I have learned about this competency before in my previous child development classes, specifically the one I am enrolled in right now which is CDEV 3170. One specific aspect we talk about is how culture can teach adolescents what to think and how to think. One sub-competency contec that I am the least familiar with would be theory and research. I feel as though I am learning about all the competencies and sub-competencies and what each one means, however I am lacking with the theories and research behind the ideas. I understand what each one means, however I am not familiar with the theory and research behind it, which is just as important as knowing what each one means. This sub-competency is also one that I would like to learn more about because I lack knowledge about it as well as wanting to learn more about the data and research behind everything. 

Career

This competency relates to my specific career goals because I do plan on working with children in the future and it is important to study the research and developments of children and how every aspect of life can affect a child's health and development. A career option I am looking into would be a child life specialist. One aspect of the job is to help children and their families through the process of health issues they would be going through which may include various injuries or illnesses. Being able to understand the child and their development will help with the issues they are going through. Not only knowing the illness or disease they are diagnosed with, but how to help them emotionally with this process. Two sub-competencies that would help out with my future career goal would be lifespan and developmental domains. Lifespan can help with understanding how the health issues going on can affect the child's health later on as well as how their early years of development have affected their health. As for developmental domains, through this you are able to develop and learn about the child's strengths and weaknesses and how that can affect their health.