Effects of an Unfavorable Environment on Child Behavior

Unfavorable Environment on Child Behavior.
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Effects of an Unfavorable Environment on Child Behavior
Children are born into the world as innocent and vulnerable beings. It is the parent’s duty to teach the child the skills and values required to survive among everyone else. It is also their job to create a healthy and happy environment during the child’s upbringing. Qualified psychologists like Herland (2017) normally trace most adult mental issues and disruptive behaviors back to a traumatizing childhood event. This essay seeks to discuss how a stressful and aggressive environment affects a child’s behavior and causes long-term defects on their development. I will also seek to explore the various mechanisms parents and children can use to approach these defects.
Stress is a normal occurrence in a person’s life. It stems from not being able to control events and feeling trapped. It is both emotional and physical strain as our bodies undergo certain changes in heart rate and blood pressure (Guzzo et al., 2019). Children experience stress when trying to handle frustrations and confronting challenges. According to Guzzo and various psychologists (2019) they can react to stress by having physical symptoms such as stomachaches and headaches. Their concentration in schoolwork slowly diminishes and they have overreactions and tantrums. They can also get nightmares and become clingier with their parents. This stems from lack of healthy coping mechanisms that a child most likely would not know.
Immense stress leads to greater effects in the teen years of a child. Long term effects of unchecked stress lead to an increase in the probability of getting diseases such as heart complications, diabetes and obesity (Herland, 2017). Cancer is even a possibility as young adults who are stressed develop certain behaviors like smoking, drinking alcohol and excessive unhealthy eating which increase the risk. People who already have Cancer and are dealing with stress may have a poorer quality of life after treatment if they succumbed to these behaviors. Generally, when dealing with any disease, being stressed only adds to the possibility of defeat.
Some tend to argue that anger without action as benign as no one physically gets harmed. However, anger has hordes of emotional and mental implications on a developing child. Parents often get angry at their children when they do not adhere to their expectations (Kerns et al., 2017). They can lash out, shout, threaten and generally demoralize their child to establish authority and instill fear. Anger is normal in daily life but becomes dangerous when it is exhibited too frequently and starts interfering with relationships at school, work and one’s social circle. Society demands normal continued functioning and such behaviors make people reprimand or even isolate the child.
Chronic parental anger may lead to having adult children. These are adults who express no interest in joining the adult world. In his publication, Herland M. D (2017) states that mental issues in adults can make them revert to the familiar cocoon that is childhood. Children raised by angry parents show less empathy and have difficulty in overall adaptation as they...