Developments During Early Childhood

Developments During Early Childhood

Physical, cognitive, and psychosocial are the three major developments that children learn to live by. Children learn so many new things as they grow and, these three developments tend to change the way children think about the world and themselves. When children go through physical development their appearance tend to change as they are growing older. They also learn great motor skills. Cognitive development is when child start to use their language skills to communicate with other. Finally there is the psychosocial development, in which, the children become more social and start to understand emotional feeling of others and themselves.

Physical Development

During the physical development stage, children tend to grow rapidly during the ages of three and six. At the age of three, a child's body starts to come together in proportion. Nutrition and health is a very important issue during this age, because children tend to become overweight around this age. It is very important for children to become active during childhood. Parents should also show their children how to take care of their teeth by brushing well. Children also learn motor skills like running, jumping, drawing and coloring, and many other skills that they were not able to do before.

Nutrition

Being Overweight can be very harmful to a child. It is a parent's job to show their child good eating patterns. Parents should serve a child the right portions of food on their child's plate. Plus, the worst thing that parents does in this world it to make their child clean their plates. It is very important for parents to show their children the right foods to eat and to show them how much they should eat. According to Papalia, Olds, and Feldman, "to avoid overweight and prevent cardiac problems, young children should get only about 30 percent of their total calories from fat and less than 10 percent of the total from saturated fat" (2006, pg. 243). Most likely if a child who is overweight and has overweight parents; that child tends to become an overweight adult him/herself. Exercising is also a go thing for a parent to show their child. Now, exercising doesn't mean that a child has to run for minutes, do jumping jacks, and so on. Just by playing outside, riding a bike, or running around having fun is good excise for children. So, showing a child good nutrition, eating habits, and exercises are a good source of physical development.

Oral Care

"By age 3, all the primary, or deciduous, teeth are in place, and the permanent teeth, which will begin to appear at about age 6, are developing, (Papalia, Olds, and Feldman, 2006, pg. 243). It is important for a child to take good care of their teeth. A child can develop tooth decay be consuming too much sugar substances like soda and candy. Plus, a lot of this tooth decay can lead to a cavity and then to an oral infection. If a child gets an oral infection, it can lead that child to have slow growth due to abnormal eating and sleeping habits. Oral care, like brushing, is something a parent should teach their child, once they start to develop their teeth.

Sleeping Disorders

Sleeping disorders are not a major concern in early childhood. It is not unusual for children to talk and walk while they are asleep. As stated in the text, "this and other sleep disturbances and disorders are caused by accidental activation of the brain's motor control system" (Hobson & Silvestri, 1999). If a child has a nightmare it is usually caused by staying up or eating a heavy meal late at night, watching too much television, or by watching or hearing a scary story. I am happy to say though that these nightmares are rarely recalled. The only time a parent should be alarmed about their child having nightmares is if their child tends to be frequently having them. Plus, if their child tends to by very scared and anxious during the day and all of this can be cause by stress. It is always safe for the parent not to wake a child during sleepwalking or a nightmare; it might just frighten their child more.

Motor Skills

There are two types of motor skills gross motor skills and fine motor skills. Children tend to use their large muscles when they are doing gross motor skills like jumping, running, and skipping. Fine motor skills children tend to use their eye-hand coordination like in drawing, coloring, and cutting. As children grow, they tend to learn many new skills that they were not able to do before. An example of a gross motor skill is when a three year old can jump in place using both legs, but a four or five year old can hop in place using only one leg. An example of a fine motor skill is when a child progresses from drawing just lines to actually drawing shapes to represent something. It is important for parents not to compare their child to another. Each child has his/her own pace in learning different motor skills at different times.

Cognitive Development

Cognitive development in early childhood consists of the children developing skills in language and thinking. Children learn how to communicate with one another, especially in school. Piagetian as well as Vygotskian has an approach about what children go through during the cognitive development. Plus, the way children start to process information and develop their language during this stage is very interesting.

Piagetian Approach

Piagetain thought that early childhood should be named preoperational stage, which lasted from age two to age seven. During the preoperational stage, Piagetian stated that children used their symbolic thought instead of logic. "Advances in symbolic thought are accompanied by growing understanding of causality, identities, and categorization, and number, (Papalia, Olds, and Feldman, 2006, pg. 265). Symbolic thought usually begin in early childhood, but it is during middle childhood that they fully develop these skills.

Symbolic functions are when a child uses symbols that attach meaning to something. Children in preschool can use symbolic functions in many different ways. They can us it during dramatic play and when they communicate with one another. The way children put things together to make a relationship between things is called transduction. Piagetian thought of this to be causality and this truly helps children to