Orphans and Vulnerable Children - CRIN

4 Environmental Factors in Children’s Development

In this activity, you will:

 Discuss how environmental factors can affect a child’s development

Facilitator’s notes:

A child’s environment is the world he or she lives in.
Some factors that affect how a child sees and understands his/her world are:
 Nutrition, material security and physical security
 Relationship with parents and sisters/brothers
 Opportunities to play and share with other children
 Culture, for example, children may not be allowed to ask adults questions
 Traditional beliefs
 Religion
 Experience, for example, a child who has seen his or her parent die will understand what
death means at an early age
 Education.

Although in the last activity we looked at general patterns of childhood development, what an
individual child experiences and understands is influenced by many particular factors. Home visitors
need to know that, when dealing with children, it is important to:
 Assess each child as an individual, not as a general case or group
 Accept different development and understanding levels
 Involve parents and guardians in their assessment, where possible.

For this activity you will need:

 Flipchart and markers

To facilitate this activity:

1 Explain to participants that, although there are psychological explanations for
the behaviour of children and that children do, in general, follow stages
of growth and development, there is also great variation among children based
on their own individuality, and based also on the environment that they grow up in.
Children should thus be assessed as individuals, rather than as general cases.

2 Ask the group to think of the many factors that can affect how children see and understand the
world they live in. You may need to give one or two examples to start the activity, for example,
relationship with parents, or education level. Write responses up on the flipchart.
Once you are satisfied that the group has given an adequate number of responses,
you can review their list and add to it from the list in your facilitator’s notes.

Activity 4

45 minutes

Guide to Mobilising and Strengthening Community-Led Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children Unit 2, Module 2^167