Early childhood

• Early Childhood Development


  The many skills and milestones that children are expected to reach by the time they reach the age of 5
• Milestones in Early Childhood Development

  • Learning how to run
  • Learning how to talk using simple sentences
  • Learning how to play with others
• Early Childhood Development


  • Occurs naturally when parents and children spend time playing, preparing dinner, or looking at books together
  • Preschools and Head Start programs provide activities based on early childhood development guidelines
  • You can find toys and books for both children and parents that promote developmental goals
• Early Childhood is a time of remarkable physical, cognitive, social and emotional development
• Infants enter the world with a limited range of skills and abilities
• Watching a child develop new motor, cognitive, language, and social skills is a source of wonder for parents and caregivers
• Physical Development in Early Childhood


  Includes body growth, skeletal growth, and asynchronies in physical growth
• Body Growth


  • On average, 2 to 3 inches in height and about 5 pounds in weight are added each year
  • The child gradually becomes thinner; girls retain somewhat more body fat, whereas boys are slightly more muscular
  • Posture and balance improve, resulting in gains in motor coordination
  • Individual differences in body size are even more apparent during early childhood than in infancy
  • To determine if a child's atypical stature is a sign of a growth or health problem, the child's ethnic heritage must be considered
• Skeletal Growth


  • Between ages 2 and 6, approximately 45 epiphyses, or new growth centers, harden into bone and emerge in various parts of the skeleton
  • X-rays permit doctors to estimate children's skeletal age, the best available measure of progress towards physical maturity
  • By the end of the preschool years, children start to lose their primary teeth
  • Childhood tooth decay remains high, especially among low-SES youngsters in the United States
• Asynchronies in Physical Growth

  • Physical growth is an asynchronous process: different body systems have their own unique, carefully timed patterns of maturation
  • The general growth curve is a curve that represents overall changes in body size - rapid growth during infancy, slower gains in early and middle-childhood, and rapid growth once more during adolescence
  • Exceptions to this trend are found in the development of the reproductive and lymph systems
• Developmental Milestones


  Abilities that most children are able to perform by a certain age
• Developmental Milestones from Birth to 3 Months


  • Use rooting, sucking and grasping reflexes
  • Slightly raise the head when lying on the stomach
  • Hold head up for a few seconds with support
  • Clench hands into fists
  • Tug and pull on their own hands
  • Repeat body movements
• Developmental Milestones from 3-6 Months


  • Roll over
  • Pull their bodies forward
  • Pull themselves up by grasping the edge of the crib
  • Reach for and grasp objects
  • Bring objects they are holding to their mouths
  • Shake and play with objects
• Developmental Milestones from 6-9 Months


  • Crawl
  • Grasp and pull objects toward their own body
  • Transfer toys and objects from one hand to the other
• Developmental Milestones from 9-12 Months


  • Sit up unaided
  • Stand without assistance
  • Walk without help
  • Pick up and throw objects
  • Roll a ball
  • Pick up objects between their thumb and one finger
• Developmental Milestones from 1-2 Years


  • Pick things up while standing up
  • Walk backwards
  • Walk up and down stairs without assistance
  • Move and sway to music
  • Color or paint by moving the entire arm
  • Scribble with markers or crayons
  • Turn knobs and handles
• Developmental Milestones from 2-3 Years


  • Ride a tricycle
  • Go down a slide without help
  • Throw and catch a ball
  • Pull and steer toys
  • Walk in a straight line
  • Build a tall tower with toy blocks
  • Manipulate clay into shapes
• Developmental Milestones from 3-4 Years


  • Jump on one foot
  • Walk backwards
  • Do somersaults
  • Cut paper with safety scissors
  • Print some letters
  • Copy shapes including squares and crosses
• Developmental Milestones from 4-5 Years


  • Jump on one foot
  • Walk backwards
  • Do somersaults
  • Cut paper with safety scissors
  • Print some letters
  • Copy shapes including squares and crosses
• Cognitive Development in Childhood


  Includes Piaget's Theory of Preoperational Stage
• Preoperational Stage


  • Marked by rapid growth in representational, or symbolic, mental activity
  • Language is our most flexible means of mental representation
  • Piaget believed that sensorimotor activity provided the foundation for language, just as it underlies deferred imitation and make-believe play
• Make-Believe Play


  • Increases dramatically during early childhood
  • Piaget believed that through pretending, young children practice and strengthen newly acquired representational schemes
  • Over time, play becomes increasingly detached from the real-life conditions associated with it
  • Make-believe play gradually becomes less self-centered as children realize the agents and recipients of pretend actions can be independent of themselves
  • Play also includes increasingly more complex scheme combinations
  • Sociodramatic play is the make-believe play with peers that first appears around age 2 1/2 and increases rapidly until 4 to 5 years
  • The emergence of sociodramatic play signals an awareness that make-believe play is representational activity
• Spatial Representation


  • Spatial understanding improves rapidly over the third year of life
  • With this representational capacity, children realize that a spatial symbol stands for a specific state of affairs in the real world
  • Insight into one type of symbol-real world relation, such as that presented by a photograph, helps preschoolers understand others, such as simple maps
  • Providing children with many opportunities to learn about the functions of diverse symbols, such as picture books, models, maps, and drawings, enhances spatial representation
• Eliminations of Preoperational Thought


  • Piaget described preschool children in terms of what they cannot, rather than can, understand
  • Operations are mental representations of actions that obey logical rules
  • In the Preoperational stage, children's thinking is rigid, limited to one aspect of a situation at a time, and strongly influenced by the way things appear at the moment
  • Egocentric is the inability to distinguish the symbolic viewpoints of others from one's own
  • Animistic Thinking is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities, such as thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions
  • Conservation refers to the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when outward appearance changes
  • Transductive Reasoning is a reasoning from one particular event to another particular event, instead of from general to particular or particular to general
  • Lack of Hierarchical Classifications is the organization of objects into classes and subclasses on the basis of similarities and differences between the groups
• Socio-Emotional Development in Early Childhood


  Includes emotional and personality development, families, and peer relations
• Emotional and Personality Development


  • The self, emotional development, moral development, and gender
• The Self


  • Initiative versus guilt - children use their perceptual, motor, cognitive and language skills to make things happen, but widespread disappointment leads to an unleashing of guilt that lowers self-esteem
  • Self-understanding - the child's cognitive representation of self, based on the various roles and membership categories that define who they are
• Emotional Development


  • Young children's emotion language and understanding - important changes include increased use of emotion language and understanding of the causes and consequences of feelings
  • Self-conscious emotions
• Families


  • Parenting styles (authoritarian, authoritative, neglectful, indulgent)
  • Sibling relationships and birth order
  • The changing family in a changing society
• Peer Relations


  • Peers provide a source of information and comparison about the world outside the family, and feedback on abilities
  • Good peer relations appear to be necessary for normal social development
  • Children who are rejected by peers are at risk for depression, and aggressive children are at risk for many problems