Signature Assignment

Abigail Roe

Fresno Pacific University

ECD-300: Advanced Child, Family, and Community

Brianna Oneto, M.S.

November 6, 2021
 What Influences Socialization?

A child’s success in emotional socialization is heavily influenced by their home

environment. More specifically, children are heavily influenced by their parent’s actions when

teaching emotional socialization. Important factors that influence successful socialization often

include cultural differences, intellectual disabilities, socioeconomic status, and gender. These

various factors can have a heavy influence on whether or not children will have a supportive

mother or father. It is the responsibility of parents, educators, and the child’s community to

contribute to a child’s successful emotional socialization.

Another unavoidable influence on a child’s socialization in this modern era is the media.

We live in a world where the media rules the minds of our society. Whether it be television,

movies, the internet, or the news, we are simply unable to avoid the media in all of its forms. It is

nearly impossible to find independent thought without the person being influenced by some sort

of media. We live in a modern-day in age where our children are being influenced from day one

by our society in all new and different ways. We have become reliant on the media to carry us

through our everyday lives. Without the media, we would have no way of knowing the

happenings of our nation, world, friends, or sometimes even family.

Inclusive Early Childhood Education

The reality is that we live in an incredibly diverse society. It is our responsibility as

teachers and educators to acknowledge the countless cultures that surround us and educate

ourselves on why families of different cultures make the decisions that they do. Learning about

culture is the first step to understanding students and families and beginning to form

relationships. Once this is accomplished, a teacher will be better equipped to meet the child’s

needs. Cultural differences often have an effect on a child with disabilities. Once we are able to
target strengths in a family’s culture, you may be able to come to a common ground with a

child’s family.

With our incredibly diverse society, we inevitably see many children from different

cultures with disabilities. Special education educators are responsible for developing cross-

cultural competence to better understand and assist families across various cultures. Across all

cultures, it can be difficult for a parent to accept that their child has disabilities. Families may

struggle to adapt to the specific and unique needs of their child, or even the adversities they may

face when bringing their child into their community. These hesitations may look different across

various cultures (Deiner, 2012).

A family-centered education is one of the most popular solutions to assisting families

with their children with disabilities. Teachers and classrooms come and go, but a child’s home

life will always stay the same. This is why it is so important to make sure teachers include

parents in a child’s education plan. Family-centered systems promote open communication

between teachers and parents and encourage collaboration for the betterment of the student.

Family-centered programs “meet the unique needs of a particular child and their family, honors

the diversity of families, and recognizes that the family is not defined by the child’s disability”

(Deiner, 2012).

Disabilities and Caregiver Discipline

Parenting a child with disabilities comes with a multitude of stresses. Parents must adapt

and develop many new responsibilities and lifestyle changes. It seems common to see children

with disabilities treated harshly by impatient caregivers. Culture and community can either

support or hinder a child’s development. In many countries, there is a stigma around people with

disabilities that can have a negative impact on their social development. It is a common
occurrence to see children with disabilities treated poorly by their community. On the contrary,

there are countries where children with disabilities are treated divinely because they are seen as

special and beautiful (Hendricks et al., 2014).

If parents don’t raise their children with unconditional love, acceptance, and value, they

will feel neglected or rejected. Parents of children with disabilities are much more likely to treat

their child with harsh punishment than if their child did not have disabilities. This is because

having a child with disabilities is objectively more challenging. These parents may have to take

their child to many appointments, complete difficult tasks to maintain the child’s health, and deal

with behavior management both in public and private. These are just a few of the many factors

that can contribute to a parent losing patience with their child and resulting in them lashing out

(Hendricks et al. 2014).

Socialization as Media Effect

Socialization is a lifelong process, beginning at birth and developing over time until the

day we die. Nowadays, we find that media is one of the biggest influences on socialization today.

Amongst the media, the other major effects on socialization in children are family, school, peers,

religion, work, ethnic background, and political climate. All of these factors influence the way

we think and act in society (Genner and Suss, 2017). Of course, the level of influence depends on

the age of the person. Adults are much less likely to have their minds molded by these factors of

socialization. Children are being exposed to the media for the first time, and will basically pick

up on any immediate influence surrounding them. However, the media is such a powerful source

that we find it heavily changes the minds of people of all ages.

We have clear examples everywhere we look of how easily the media influences the

children of today. We can see it in the posters they have on their walls, the clothes that they
wear, the things that they say, and the toys that they play with (Genner and Suss, 2017). As

technology develops over time, the media grows and continues to have a greater impact on the

minds of our youth. The newly coined term for children born into this digital age is “digital

natives.” “Digital natives” are people born after the year 1980 and have never known a world

without digital technology. The constant exposure to digital media has proven to mold the minds

of children in many different ways than we have seen in the past (Palfrey and Gasser, 2008).

Media has officially become one of the main models of how children shape their identity.

Children will find a character on the internet, on a television show, in a video game, or on a

popular media platform, and begin to form and base their identity on imitation. Children that

choose to advertise their lives on social media have a much smaller value on creating privacy

boundaries than those who choose to keep their lives offline. Spending too much time and energy

online can cause children to develop symptoms of envy and depression at a very early age. On

the opposite end of things, having a presence on social media can help children experience

connectedness and acceptance by forming and maintaining friendships through social media

(Genner and Suss, 2017).

Social Media and Children

Social media provides us with new and effective ways of communication. Children are

finding themselves with devices that give them unlimited entertainment. There are countless

forms of online gaming that take up an unhealthy amount of children’s free time. With spending

hours online gaming, children are seeing less face-to-face interaction. Many people that game

will spend nonstop hours glued to the screen. Spending these countless hours playing online

games often leads to exposure to inappropriate language, abusive speech, overtly sexual content,

and violence. This content can pose a serious threat to children’s socialization (Ersoy, 2021).
However, online gaming doesn’t always come with negative connotations. Gaming can be used

for educational purposes. Children tend to learn things faster when they are having fun in the

process. Many children and adults make friendships and lasting relationships when gaming

online.

An Educator’s Responsibility

Teachers are responsible for classrooms that hold all different kinds of children from all

different unique backgrounds. Obviously, a teacher is not capable of changing the mind of a

child that appears to come from a background that has had a negative effect on them. However,

what a teacher is capable of is taking the time to form a relationship and bond with a student and

their family and learn about their background and family dynamic. This includes culture,

physical home environment, family dynamics, disabilities, economic status, and media usage. Of

course, many of these topics are personal and parents are not comfortable discussing them with

teachers. But if a teacher is able to get through to a family and make it clear that they are

working as a team for the betterment of their child, it will prove to be beneficial for everyone

once the teacher has the proper tools to be able to give the child the education they greatly

deserve.
 References

Deiner, P. (2012). Inclusive Early Childhood Education: Development, Resources, and Practice.

In Google Books. Cengage Learning.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Inclusive_Early_Childhood_Education_Deve/

GdkJAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Ersoy, Mustafa. (2021). Social Media and Children. Research Gate.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348325496_Social-Media-and-Children

Genner, Sarah., Suss, Daniel. (2017). Socialization as Media Effect. Research Gate.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314395153_Socialization_as_Media_Effect

Hendricks, C., Deater-Deckard, K., Lansford, J. E., & Bornstein, M. H. (2014). Associations

Between Child Disabilities and Caregiver Discipline and Violence in Low- and Middle-

Income Countries. Child Development, 85(2), 513–531.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24031606?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior

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Palfrey, J., & Gasser, U. (2008). Born digital: Understanding the rst generation of digital natives.

New York, NY: Basic Books