Impacts on Early Emotional Development

When I first went to the website I was afraid of what I was going to see and read about because media seems to only telecast the worst.  However, I did find some interesting information as well as things I only can will eventually change for the betterment of the children.  The region I chose to explore was East Asia and Pacific.  What really set out to me as a challenge what many of us take for granted was having clean water to drink, cook, and to bathe.  Lack of water as we all know can cause diseases to explode. Not being able to wash your hands properly can pass illnesses and diseases from one person to another.  Children and families in Myanmar’s Rakhine State are still recovering from the sectarian violence that erupted in 2012. Many live in camps, where they are vulnerable to both water shortages and floods. UNICEF is currently helping flood-affected families to access clean water (Brown, 2015). 

UNICEF says improvements in hygiene must supplement access to water and sanitation, or children will continue to fall victim to easily preventable diseases like diarrhea (UNICEF, 2015).  Imagine how a parent feels their child going to bed knowing when they wake in the morning a decision has to made either to cleanse their bodies or preserve the water for a meal.  This is also devastating to a child and does affect a child’s emotional well-being and development.  Children should not be worrying about having enough water to drink or have to make a choice whether or not to wash their hands.  Illnesses are spreading rapidly.  Even though a parent can understand and attempt to adjust to this type of living it is hard for children to cope in this manner.  I believe it would be hard for myself who has an abundance supply of water to go to a region such as this and attempt to adjust.  I would be worried sick.  

 The insight I gained from this is not to take the simple things in life for granted.  Education is so important but yet we take it for granted that it’s always going to be around.  We take for granted water is always going to be around because we live in a country where the water flow is plentiful.  But for moment put yourself in a different setting where the things are not like they ought to be and you will learn to appreciate the simple of things like the drip from the faucet.

References

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry