Early Childhood Influences Your Outcome in Life Essay

In the early years of your childhood, is the time when you learn most of your traits that will make you who you are for the rest of your life. Whether your parents held you enough when you are a child can determine if you are successful in life, or if you drop out of high school and start beating your wife and kids. If you teach your kids when they are little to tie their shoes or to spell their name than they are more likely to like school, your culture can determine whether they do well in school or if they don’t understand from the beginning. Some researchers say that if you have a good parent that loves you, spends time with you, or well if they really just help you out while you are a child your child has a better chance at doing well at school because they aren’t starting so far behind. If you have a low economic standing than child usually just fall back into the gangs, or drugs because they don’t have the support to stop and get out. Your outcome in life almost always stems from how you are treated as a child. When you start school you are thrown into a mix of people, some can read already and write while others don’t even know their name. If you start kindergarten and you are already so far behind than it’s hard to catch back up. If the child wasn’t shown their numbers before because their parents didn’t help them very much while they were growing up. If as a parent you isolate your children by not educating them or leaving them by themselves while doing homework than they’re going to have a hard time trying to figure out what to do, and they know that their parents aren’t there to check in on the homework. Michael Thompson, Ph.D. â€Å"A parent may be working out of the home, or need to be working in the home and cooking dinner. So if you are home, stay close, and if you are not there, have another adult check to make sure it’s going OK. And remember that all homework is not equal, so not everything will need your rapt attention.† Research says that you need to have some interaction while the child is doing their homework. Whenever you send the children away to school yes they are away but you need to help and stay informed because it isn’t always the students fault that they are getting in trouble maybe they just don’t understand something or the teacher isn’t explaining it the way they need to learn it. As a parent you need to help your children out because it will affect their outcome in life, because if every time they try and ask a question and the teacher yells at them obviously they aren’t going to ask; but if as a parent they stay informed with the teacher than the parent can help on the home end too. Socioeconomic standing is very important to how a child will develop. In low socioeconomic areas there is very poor education, low parental control, and a high gang/violence rate. If you are brought up with only knowing the life of the streets you have a higher percentage of staying there. This is because you are â€Å"born into it†, if you have the ability to go to a high achieving school get good grades and have peers that do the same then obviously you are going to do better. For an example I inserted the graph above if you are born into a higher-class family you are more than likely going to stay there, but if you are born into a lower class family you are more likely to stay there (graph found on You’re Born Into It America sited in the bibliography). There is the example of gang violence, which is an element that thrives in the lower class; it gives power, brotherhood, family and money. Gangs are a large part of what hold some of the brightest people back. In California alone males ranging from 7th-12th grade 50.9% of males were associated with gangs; that was in 2010. Living in a socioeconomically depressed neighborhood makes it hard enough to get out and make it on your own but the fact that there are gangs influencing these minors left and right make it even harder. A great example of someone growing out of a socioeconomically depressed neighborhood is Julian Castro who was the first Latino keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention. Castro was raised in San Antonio by a single mother who worked her hardest to proved all she could for her two sons. Julian and his brother Joaquà ­n both worked very hard to get out of their depressed area so that they could provide for their mother. They both graduated from high school and were accepted to Stanford, then to Harvard. These to Hispanics made the choice to be hard working and expand their view on living, they knew there was more to life than not having anything. One of the main reasons they were able to do so well is that their mother and grandmother helped them as much as they could. Julian became the first keynote speaker to be a Latino because he wanted to beat the odds; he did not want to end up like the people he saw around him. Another great story is President Barak Obama’s he was born in Hawaii, his father and mother both left him to be brought up by his grandparents. They did not have very much money and Barry had to find his own way to pay for college since no one set that up for him. Obama had a very hard life growing up, working multiple jobs, keeping his grades up, studying for tests and trying to get scholarships so he could go to college. He did it though, and now he is the most important man in the United States and possibly the world. He worked his way out of the life he had as a child and did not want that life for his future children. In president Obama’s speech after the 2012 election he said â€Å"†¦you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the united states of America, the best is yet to come.† He was speaking of each persons individual journey in this country, you have the choice to grow up and try and your hardest to make a better life for yourself even if your parents are not there all the time. The U.S.’s census bureau reported that around 30% of families in America are being headed by a single parent. These houses may be dysfunctional and â€Å"doomed to failure† (usg.org) but many people that have grown up in a single parent home have had just as much attention as someone that has two parents. In America, 22 million children have a one-parent household, a mother runs 83% of those houses and half of those mothers do not receive any type of child support to help out. Not receiving child support have put 70% of single parent moms in poverty making on average $13,00 annually. Currently there are over 9.8 million mothers as a single parent. Living in that type of poverty is hard to do but plenty of people are able to do it and grow up and become an amazing person with a great future. The people who say that because they live in poverty they are always going to be poor are going to stay there because it takes hard work and dedication to grow out of the socioeconom ically depressed neighborhood you grew up in. In 2000 the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that 90% of 4th grade parents participated in parent-teacher conferences among the 8th grade that number dropped to about 57%. Parents believe that once you are in middle school you can do your homework by yourself because the parents are not helpful since they do not remember it themselves. In elementary school parents are totally involved since everyone is still a â€Å"child† but you do not grow out of adolescence till you are 18 because you are not a legal adult so parents should be helping their children out till they are a senior in high school because that is why you have parents. Many schools do not even reach out to a parent if their child is failing or being suspended, because well they are an adult now. It is said that most children who have a strong parental backing through high school will do better in college. The students who have a parent helping them choose the road they follow 97% of the time make better choices when it comes to drugs, sex and partying in college. In Isanti County only 69% of parents attend conferences while the percent for lower grades is higher. Researchers say its because in elementary schools teachers have on average 20-30 children total while middle and high school teachers have over 120 students so its a lot harder to keep in touch with parents. That is why parents need to stay involved with their child’s education. Your childhood has influences on your outcome in life of course but you can change the out come of your life and make it what ever you want it to be. Being born into poverty does not mean you have to stay there the rest of your life. Parental involvement and personal goals are how you change your outcome. Obama and the Castro twins are perfect depictions of how goals that are met can make you what ever you would like to become. References Barack Obama Biography – Facts, Birthday, Life Story – Biography.com . (n.d.). Famous Biographies & TV Shows – Biography.com. Retrieved November 11, 2012, from http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369?page=3 Julian Castro Biography – Facts, Birthday, Life Story – Biography.com. (n.d.). Famous Biographies & TV Shows – Biography.com. Retrieved November 12, 2012, from http://www.biography.com/people/julian-castro-20967527 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" Emerging Trends. (n.d.). FBI. Retrieved November 11, 2012, from http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment 774,000 gang members and 27,900 gangs active in the US: Crime News à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬  Crime in America.Net. (n.d.). Crime in America.Net: Crime, Violent Crime, Criminals, Crime News, Statistics and Research. Retrieved November 11, 2012, from http://crimeinamerica.net/2010/04/01/774000-gang-members-and-27900-gangs-active-in-the-us-crime-news/ Adolescence: Are Parents Relevant to Students’ High School Achievement and Post-Secondary Attainment? / Browse Our Publications / Publications & Resources / HFRP – Harvard Family Research Project. (n.d.). HFRP Home / HFRP – Harvard Family Research Project. Retrieved November 11, 2012, from http://www.hfrp.org/publications-resources/browse-our-publications/adolescence-are-parents-relevant-to-students-high-school-achievement-and-pos t-secondary-attainment Elementary, r. U. (n.d.). Reports of Gang Membership, by Gender and Grade Level: 2008-2010 – Kidsdata.org . Kidsdata: Data and Resources about the Health of Children . Retrieved November 12, 2012, from http://www.kidsdata.org/data/topic/table/gang-gender.aspx?f=1&loc=2,127,347,1763,331,348,336,171,321,345,357,332,324,369,358,362,360,337,327,364,356,217,353,328,354,323,352,320,339,334,365,343,330,367,344,355,366,368,265,349,361,4,273,59,370,326,333,322,3 Helping With Homework. (n.d.). PBS. Retrieved November 12, 2012, from http://www.pbs.org/parents/goingtoschool/helping_homework.html Living With One Parent – Vertical Thought | United Church of God. (n.d.). United Church of God. Retrieved November 12, 2012, from http://www.ucg.org/marriage-and-family/living-one-parent/ President ObamaÃÆ' ¢Ãƒâ€šÃ¢â€š ¬Ãƒâ€šÃ¢â€ž ¢s Election Night Speech – Video Feature – NYTimes.com. (n.d.). The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & M ultimedia. Retrieved November 11, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/06/us/politics/06-obama-election-night-speech.html Sias, E. (n.d.). Concerns discussed with low parent-teacher conference attendance in Braham | The Isanti County News. The Isanti County News. Retrieved November 8, 2012, from http://isanticountynews.com/2012/11/20/concerns-discussed-with-low-parent-tea