Environmental Influences On Physical Development

The environment where a child is been raised plays a huge role on its psychological development. There are a lot of environmental influences that might affect their overall development and behavior. These influences might come from a prenatal environment, physical environment, social environment, cultural environment, learning environment, economic environment, emotional environment and family environment. All these environments are important for the success and for the happiness throughout their lifecourse. According to the World Health Organization, the first 8 years of life will affect a child’s health, education and economic participation for the rest of its life. Prenatal environment refers to the chemical balance and the presence of toxic substances inside a mother’s body and the physical environment refers to how good is the nutrition of a child and also to the exposure in risky conditions that might lead to a disease and etc. The social and cultural environments refer to the formation of relationships, morals, values and norms within a child’s system. Moreover, learning environment refers to the stimulation that a child gets from its environment e.g. parents, caregiver and school.

Some studies support that children aged 6 – 12 years old can be positively affected from obesity prevention programs at school. However, environmental factors like economic, physical, political and sociocultural may influence negatively the results of the preventing programs. Obesity however, could be related with cultural environmental factors. For example, Mexican children consume increased amounts of sweetened beverages and decreased amounts of natural and healthy foods. In western societies children most of the time are watching TV and they are traveling by car, which means that they are performing less physical