In this Sociology class, Stress and Crisis in Families, we learned theories and components to stress and crises in families such as types of stressors (health, death, incarceration, etc.), how they cope, how they might perceive crises, theories about processing crises, and more.
Parental Support Resource Project
Throughout the course, we created a booklet for tips for parents on things to do with their children without having to buy anything or needing items at the houses. In this spiral-bound booklet, we included games to play around the house combined with how to help children through defiance and separation anxiety. When creating this booklet, we needed to do extensive research on children and parents. We research literature ranging from the mental health of parents, children’s imagination, self-play for children, and more. Researching, finding, creating, and evaluating these resources that would be implemented into the booklet was a long but rewarding process. I learned more about how important mental health is in parenting along with how to incorporate more communication when playing or assisting a child.
As a parent, having this booklet on hand helps in many ways such as needing an idea on the spot on what to do with children when they are looking for interactive play with their parent. It is also handy to have when learning how to deal with and work through defiance and other negative, or high-stress situations.
What was learned through doing this project though, was to slow down. I like to say I manage my time well, but sometimes I do not. I felt that the research portion of this project was rushed on my end because I was eager to get started on the next step. However, taking time to read upon literature and gather even more information (like reading through it again) can be beneficial because you may have missed something. While I was still confident in the things I found and implemented in the project research, there is always room for improvement.
At the end of this project, we had to present it to a few of the head staff at HeadStart, which is where these booklets were being sent. I was one of two presenters in my group for our section of the book. To present this to the head staff, clear, easy-to-understand, and concise information was needed to make it a professional and smooth presentation. They say every time you present, you get better and better at it, which is exactly what went down here. I gained experience in presenting a product to staff members which is something I will probably come across again in my adult life.
My primary task for my group was to create the slides and images to create an easy-to-look-at and understand page. I take pride in creating the slides and making theme appealing to the eye. This task to some may feel like the easiest part, but there is a lot that goes into it. I want whoever is receiving something I made be able to look at it and know there was time, effort, and care put into it. I created my team’s slides with AI-generated images for the actual booklet itself, and then I also created the slides for our group presentation to the head staff. However, that wasn’t just the only thing I did. My smaller, but nevertheless important, tasks were researching some challenges that preschool children face, preschoolers’ development, and parental mental health adding these findings of literature into a shared document and then consolidating all of our ideas and research into categories into two slides. Our teamwork and communication could not have gone any better and I feel as though this was one of the most easy-flowing projects I have done since being at Longwood. Everyone contributed their amount of work, no one felt that they were doing more/less than others, and we felt proud of our contributions at the end.
Project Link