"PASKO NG PAGLAYA"

5 Early Childhood Common Problems:

1. Temper Tantrum
Occasional temper tantrums are normal in toddlers, and only persistent or very severe tantrums are abnormal. The immediate cause is often unwitting reinforcement by excessive attention and inconsistent discipline on the part of the parents. When this arises it is often because the parents have emotional problems of their own or because the relationship between them is unsatisfactory.
Temper tantrums usually respond to kind but firm and consistent setting of limits. In treatment it is first necessary to discover why the parents have been unable to set limits in this way. They should be helped with any problems of their own and advised how to respond to the tantrums.
Facts and Tips for Temper tantrum
• Temper tantrum includes unintended, unexpected anger frequently with physical and emotional eruptions and this disorder contain activities like crying, beating, biting and frustration.
• Temper tantrum is mostly occurred in children than adults and lasts for 1 to 2 minutes.
• People with behavioral or mental problems, stress may suffer from temper tantrum.
• Divert the mind of your toddler before the beginning of temper tantrum.
• Take help of your doctor for medical treatments.
• Adults should avoid alcoholic beverages because it creates sleep problems and increases stress.
• Admire your child for good behavior will reduce the severity of temper tantrum.

2. Sleep Problem
The most frequent sleep difficulty is wakefulness at night, which is most frequent between the ages of 1 and 4 years. About a fifth of children of this age take at least an hour to get to sleep or are wakeful for long periods during the night. When wakefulness is an isolated problem and not very distressing to the family, it is enough to reassure parents that it is likely to improve.
When sleep disturbances are severe or persistent, two possible causes should be considered. First, the problems may have been made worse by physical illness or an emotional disorders. Second, they may have been exacerbated by the parents excessive concern and inability to reassure the child. If no medical or psychiatric disorder is detected, the reasons for the parents concerns should be sought and dealt with as far as possible. Some parents overstimulate their child in the evening, or condone crying in the night by taking the child into their own bed.
Hypnotic medication may be used occasionally for special occasions but should not be used in the long term.
Other sleep problems such as nightmares and night terrors are common among healthy toddlers but they seldom persist for long.

3. Pica
Pica is the eating of items generally regarded as inedible, for example soil, paint, and paper. It is often associated with other behavior problems. Cases should be investigated carefully because some are due to brain damage, or autism, or mental retardation. Some are associated with emotional distress, which should be reduced if possible.
Otherwise, treatment consists of common-sense precautions to keep the child away from the abnormal items of diet. Pica usually diminishes as the child grows older. For a review of the history of ideas about pica see Parry-Jones and Parry-Jones (1992).
Facts and Tips about Pica eating disorder:
1. Pica is an eating disorder which involves consumption of non food substances for at least one month.
2. Pica eating disorder is most common in young children, pregnant women and person having epilepsy, developmental disabilities and mental retardation.
3. People eat non food item such as dirt, clay, soil, sand, soap, paper, plaster, chalk, hair, feces, leaves, laundry starch, cigarette butts, coal, light bulbs, wire, pencil erasers etc.
4. Complications associated with pica eating disorder are lead poisoning, iron-deficiency anemia, intestinal perforation, malnutrition, dental injury or abdominal problems.
5. Nutritional insufficiency, malnutrition, stress, lack of care, developmental delay, poverty, cultural aspect and anemia increases the risk for pica eating disorder but root cause is still unknown.
6. Psychological treatment, counseling or talk therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, nutritional education, supplements or medicines are helpful in treatment.

4. Reading Disorder
In DSM-IV, this condition is named reading disorder. It is defined by a reading age well below (usually 1.5-2 standard deviations) the level expected from the child's age and IQ (Yule 1967). Defined in this way, the disorder was found in about 4% of 10-11-year-olds in the Isle of Wight, and about twice that percentage in London (Yule and Rutter 1985).
Clinical features of reading disorder
Specific reading disorders should be clearly distinguished from general backwardness in scholastic achievement resulting from low intelligence or inadequate education. They should also be distinguished from poor reading due to lack of opportunity to learn at home or at school, or due to poor visual acuity. The child presents with a history of serious delay in learning to read, which has been evident from the early years of schooling and has sometimes been preceded by delayed acquisition of speech and language. Errors in reading include omissions.. substitutions, or distortions of words, slow reading, long hesitations, and reversals of words or letters. There may also be poor comprehension.
Writing and spelling are impaired, and in older children these problems may be more obvious than the reading problems. There may be associated emotional problems, but development in other areas is not affected. Compared with children with general backwardness at school, those with specific reading retardation are much more often boys; they are also more likely to have minor neurological abnormalities, and are likely to come from socially disadvantaged homes.
Specific reading retardation is associated with conduct disorder more often than would be expected through chance (Rutter et al. 1970a, 1970b). The association may arise in part because the two conditions have common neurodevelopmental or temperamental origins; in part because reading retardation leads to conduct problems at school when the child is frustrated by failures; and in part because conduct disorder gives rise to problems in learning to read.
Facts and Tips for Reading Disorder:
• Reading disorder is a problem in learning due to visualization difficulty or problem in brain function.
• Deficiencies in reading speed, writing, knowledge and exactness are the symptoms of the reading disorder.
• This is a hereditary and genetic disorder.
• It is more common in children and they do not understand the mathematics concept.
• IEP (Individual Education Plan) is helped to prevent deficiencies in reading speed, writing.
• Consume fresh fruit and green vegetables to control visualization problems.
• Parents should built or increase the self-confidence in their children.

5. Reactive attachment disorder of infancy and early childhood
This term denotes a syndrome starring before the age of 5 years and associated with grossly abnormal care-giving. There are two subtypes: inhibited and disinhibited. Children in the first subgroup may show a combination of behavioral inhibition, vigilance, and fearfulness, which is sometimes called frozen watchfulness. These children are miserable, difficult to console, and sometimes aggressive. Some fail to thrive. Such behavior is seen among children who have been abused. Children with the disinhibited subtype of the disorder relate indiscriminately to people, irrespective of their closeness, and are excessively familiar with strangers. Such behavior has been described most clearly in children raised in institutions. In DSM-IV, the diagnosis is made when the disturbance of relationships appears to be a direct result of abnormal care-giving. ICD-10 does not use this criterion but requires that the behavior is present in several situations.
Cause of Reactive attachment disorder
It seems that these syndromes are characteristic of the type of care-giving (abusive or institutional) rather than of the child. Insecure attachment in infancy is often followed by conflicts with care-givers and impulsive behavior later in childhood. Nevertheless, considerable improvement can occur if the child experiences a secure attachment to a care-giver, for example, as a result of fostering or adoption. (These observations have not been made specifically in relation to attachment disorder as defined in ICD-10 and DSM-IV.)
Facts and Tips for Reactive attachment disorder:
• Reactive attachment disorder is a difficult emotional illness and emotional affection disorder.
• It is mostly common in young children.
• Change in caretakers, lack of affection, cruelty causes reactive attachment disorder.
• Emotional and physical problems are the main symptoms of this disorder.
• Parents should give support and love to their children to control this syndrome.
• Psychotherapy and family therapies are most important treatments and these are followed by both parents and children.
• Do not neglect and mistreat your child.