Points to Remember 2

Family structure is the number of family members and their biological relationships to each other.
Family dynamics is how family members relate to each other, which includes the economic, psychological, child-rearing, and environmental influences in the home.
Changes in family structure and dynamics can happen due to changes within the home or influences outside the home.
A family’s ethnic and cultural values will influence how their children are raised.
One of the most significant influences on children is their parents’ discipline style.
Know the three types of discipline styles: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative/democratic.
A child’s birth order in the family may influence personality development.
Temperament refers to a person’s characteristic way of approaching and reacting to other people and situations. Three general types of temperament are easy child, slow to warm up child, and difficult child.
Communication styles in a family influence how well a family functions.
Children in dysfunctional families learn not to express their feelings, not to trust, and to rely on no one but themselves.
The presence of a loving father in the home positively influences a child’s social and emotional development.
The United States has the highest divorce rate in the world.
Divorce is a process which takes everyone in the family several years to negotiate.
Divorce affects children differently according to their developmental age, gender, temperament, etc.
Children’s psychological reactions to parental divorce depend on the quality of the relationship with each parent, the intensity and duration of the parental conflict, and the parents’ ability to continue to focus on the child’s needs.
The single most critical factor in how a child adjusts to a parent’s divorce is the amount of parental conflict the child is exposed to.
Know the five tasks of adjustment to divorce for parents and children.
Typical reactions of a child to their parents’ divorce include blame, guilt, depression, feelings of abandonment, denial, hope for reconciliation, acting out, triangulation, divided loyalties, and projection.
Know the characteristics of children’s different reactions depending on their developmental stage.
Factors that influence how children adjust to the parents’ divorce include the discipline style of the parents, accessibility to both parents, whether the mother remarries, and their relationship with their father.
Children of divorce often have loss issues regarding their change of lifestyle and the loss of access to one parent.
They also tend to have to deal with more economic loss and life stresses than children from two-parent homes.
Parental adjustment to their own divorce and parental competence also affect how well the child adjusts.
Children of divorce have different childhoods than children from two-parent families, may have more problems in adolescence, and may have problems in future intimate relationships.
Students may show problems in school during their adjustment to their parents’ divorce, which may include acting out, withdrawal, attention, organization and concentration problems, social and emotional regression, unwillingness to try new things, and other emotional concerns.
Teachers need to communicate with both households of a student.
Classroom curriculum needs to include information on different family structures and strategies for dealing with feelings and communication within a family.
After-school programs help reduce family stress and increase family and student involvement in school.
The teacher’s support to the student’s parents can make a difference in the life of a student.
Over one-quarter of U.S. families are headed by single parents.
The five stages of grief (for both death and loss) are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Teachers need to help students understand what phase they are going through and what they can to do help themselves at each phase.
Lack of income is the single most important factor in accounting for differences in the way children from different family structures turn out.
Overall, children in single-parent homes face more stress and responsibility than children in two-parent homes.
90% of single-parent homes are headed by women.
Single mothers face more financial stress and depression, while single fathers face more stress in the adjustment to domestic management.
School policies and forms should reflect many different family structures.
Schools can support students in single parent homes by helping with homework, providing basic necessities for school, encouraging parent networking, and ensuring that the curriculum reflects the home life of their students.
The federal Family Education Rights and Privacy law requires schools to share school records with non-custodial parents unless there is a court order forbidding it.
More than half of all Americans will live in a stepfamily at some point in their lives.
Young adolescents have the hardest time adjusting to a stepfamily.
Research shows that children from a stepfamily are more likely to be susceptible to peer pressure, be socially deviant, and be harder to manage.
Boys adjust to a stepfather faster and more easily than girls.
It normally takes two to three years for a stepfamily to get to know each other’s history and personality and form new relationships and make new bonds.
Challenges of building a stepfamily include dealing with issues of previous losses, adjusting to everyone, building new traditions, and dealing with extended families.
Children in stepfamilies must deal with the developmental tasks of loss of power and control, resolving their feelings of guilt and anger, resolving loyalty issues, fear about the future, and figuring out where they belong in the new family.
Students in stepfamilies may display issues around power and control, may be confused about their identity, and may be pessimistic about their future.
Teachers can help parents understand what is motivating a student’s misbehavior by understanding family dynamics and developmental stages.
Teachers need to help students believe in their own future.
Two-thirds of teen mothers have previously been sexually abused.
Teen mothers are less likely to finish high school, more likely to have a second child within one year, and more likely to rely on welfare.
A risky lifestyle and delays in seeking prenatal care often lead to complications in the pregnancy and birth for the teen mother and her baby.
The presence of a supportive teen father increases the positive outcome for both the teen mother and the child.
Babies born to teen mothers often are born with low birth weight and an increased risk of complications.
Children born to teen mothers are at higher risk for living in poverty, doing poorly in school, behavior problems and mental illness, learning disabilities, and child abuse and neglect.
A stable home with a strong emotional attachment to parents is the strongest deterrent of teen pregnancy.
Schools need to go beyond teaching sex education and also teach family life issues such as communication, budgeting, child development, etc.
A good sex education curriculum includes age appropriate, experiential activities as well as lessons in resisting peer pressure and refusal skills.
Teen parents need special programs which meet their needs to help them finish high school.
Adoptive children have seven different life issues to resolve that children born to their own parents do not have.
Teachers may or may not know that a student is adopted. Knowing the background history on an adopted child makes it easier for the teacher to be sensitive to the child’s needs.
Many children who are adopted beyond the infancy years have special physical, psychological, and developmental needs that will need to be addressed by the classroom teacher.
When writing assignments, teachers need to be aware of the special needs of adopted children.
Grandparents raising grandchildren have special challenges that regular parents do not face. Teachers can support these grandparents through education, programs to ease the financial burden, consistent discipline, etc.
Children who are being raised by their grandparents are going to have special issues due to their family history that children being raised by their natural parents may not have.

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