Where do you stand on the immortal nature vs. nurture debate? When studying child development, it is important to consider that it takes both!
Early child development is based on a series of sequences that happen in the early years of a child's life. These are also influenced by factors such as social environment and parenting.
- What is childhood development?
- What are the stages of childhood development?
- What are key characteristics of childhood development?
- What are social and emotional development like in early childhood?
Understanding Child Development
Child development is a really interesting and important area of psychological study. The study of child development helps us identify important physical, cognitive, and social developmental milestones that children should reach. When a child does not meet these developmental milestones it can help direct us to where medical or environmental (such as parenting) interventions can be made.
There are three main areas of focus psychologists might have when studying childhood developmental psychology:
Physical
Cognitive
Social
Physical development looks at maturation. Maturation is the growth process of a child based on their biology and does not focus on outside influences. Cognitive development focuses on how a child's brain develops mental activities such as thinking, speaking, and remembering. Social development Looks at how a child's relationships and environmental factors impact their growth and emotional health.
Stages of Childhood Development
Most people recognize the three main growth stages in child development: Early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. Each stage represents various elements of developmental milestones that children should reach. These developmental milestones are physical, cognitive, and social.
A child learning to climb, pexel.com.
Stages of Physical Development
We know that the physical focus of child development is based on the idea of maturation. Maturation is when psychologists look both at brain and body growth as a natural biological sequence. While research on the physical growth of a child might ultimately be left up to medical pediatric doctors, understanding this sequence is important for psychologists when exploring the maturation process of a child's brain. It is a huge component of early childhood developmental milestones.
The main stages of physical child development in psychology are:
Brain Development
Motor Development
Brain Maturation
Stages of Cognitive Development
Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget is known for identifying four stages of cognitive child development; they're set out in his "theory of cognitive development". These four stages are:
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete Operational
Formal Operational
Stages of Social Development
Social child development is often looked at through the lens of attachment.
Attachment is the emotional bond between a child and caregiver. It is considered one of the most important aspects of social development during infancy.
Looking at a child's attachment style is a great way to assess social development in their early childhood. It can also leave a large impact on the interactions and attachments we form later in life. Later, we will look at attachments and parenting styles in a little more detail.
In addition to attachment, the German-American psychologist Erik Erikson identified eight stages of psychosocial development, four of which are in childhood.
Trust-versus-mistrust stage
Autonomy-versus-shame and doubt stage
Initiative-versus-guilt stage
Industry-versus-inferiority stage
Characteristics of the Stages of Child Development
Let's look more closely at these stages, now that we know what they are.
Physical Development
The physical child development stages for a child are:
Brain Maturation
Brain maturation is a process that continues from the prenatal stage to adulthood. Early childhood brain maturation is what takes a newborn from instinct-driven infants carrying only unconscious impressions, to persons in early childhood who are creating and storing conscious memory.
Brain Development in Early Childhood
When you are born, you already have almost all the brain cells you will ever have - our brains just aren't sure what to do with them yet. After birth, our brains go through a wild growth period in our early years (similar to our bodies). Neural networks start growing to help your brain tell your body how to eat, walk, sit, stand, and so forth.
Infants' brains increase in size rapidly through the early childhood years. They require ample energy to develop the parts of the brain that will lead to the physical and cognitive changes that will develop over the years to come.
Motor Development in Early Childhood
Humans develop motor skills in the same sequence. While the exact age of skill development might vary depending on the individual, motor skills build on each other and develop as the neurons in our brains connect. It is easy to see how brain development is directly connected to motor skills development.
Research says that children across the world develop motor skills in the same sequence. They roll over first, then sit, crawl, stand, and finally, walk. While the exact ages of these early skills can be somewhat influenced by culture, parenting, and other environmental factors, the sequencing remains the same. It is impossible to direct a baby to walk that cannot yet stand, and our evolutionary sequencing is aware of that.
Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive child development has children follow these stages.
Sensorimotor
According to Piaget, babies aged 0-2 years are in the sensorimotor stage of early childhood development. This means their understanding of the world is based on sensory input - seeing, hearing, touching, etc. Young babies within this stage are only focused on the present moment. This is due to a lack of object permanence.
Object permanence is the awareness that something continues to exist, even when it cannot be sensed at that moment.
As infants grow, they start to build up the memory of objects and people even when they are not in the room. This is the start of object permanence.
Preoperational
Children aged 2-6 are in the preoperational stage of child development. The preoperational stage is when a child will start to use language and images to identify things. Though a child can start to identify things, concepts, and tasks at this age, Piaget suggests that they are still too young to take a concept and reverse it.
A popular example of Piaget's preoperational stage is a child and the "two" glasses of milk. He watches the milk be poured from a wide and short glass into a tall and skinny glass, and identifies the taller glass as having "more milk" because it looks fuller. This signifies a lack of the skills to mentally reverse actions or concepts.
Concrete Operational
A 7-12-years-old child is in the concrete operational stage of child development. This stage is when children start to be able to think things through logically and make conclusions about concrete events, as well as mentally reverse equations and outcomes.
Formal Operational
From the age of 12, a child is in the formal operational stage of childhood development. Perceptions go from being based on concrete and experiential to abstract. This means a child will develop the skills to process hypothetical situations and start to form more abstract reasoning skills.
Social Development
Erick Erickson's psychosocial stages theory on social child development includes the following:
Trust-versus-mistrust stage
According to Erikson, this stage of a child's development is all about infants learning to trust their caregivers to fulfill their needs. Whatever sense of trust we can develop as infants and early childhood can impact our sense of trust later in life, even into adulthood.
Autonomy-versus-shame and doubt stage
According to Erikson, this stage of child development is all about early childhood. Toddlers are exploring autonomy for the first time. This will be when you hear toddlers start to say "NO!" The struggle in this stage is for toddlers to learn to control their meltdowns, which can impact how this stage of early childhood relates to autonomy and emotional outbursts later in life as well.
Initiative-versus-guilt stage
According to Erikson, this is the "why?" stage for a child's development. Children will start to question and develop curiosity about the world around them. When allowed to learn, explore, and question a child can build a healthy foundation of answer-seeking in early childhood for their future selves as well.
Industry-versus-inferiority stage
According to Erikson, this stage is often the start of "formal" education. A child is evaluated based on performance and production. A child in this stage wants to feel like they are progressing similar to other children and can feel inferior to another child if they fall behind. This feeling of inferiority can haunt children into the future, which is why this is an important part of childhood development.
Child watching classmate pixabay.com
Social and Emotional Development in Early Childhood
As mentioned earlier, attachment and our relationships with our caregivers can deeply impact our social and emotional development in early childhood. Mary Ainsworth, a psychological researcher, studied attachment through her "strange situation" study, where she observed the reactions of infants when placed in a new and strange environment. Ainsworth developed three categories of attachment based on the outcomes.
Secure Attachment
When babies are comfortable to explore while parents are present, show signs of distress when parents leave, and return to the parents when they arrive again.
Avoidant Attachment
When babies resist their parents, explore new areas, and do not go to their parents after they return.
Anxious/ambivalent Attachment
When babies show ambivalence to parents or show extreme distress when the parents are absent, but do not return to the parents or seek comfort when they return.
Parenting Styles
The way parents and caregivers interact with infants and children can impact their attachment. It is important for parents to develop their own parenting skills when learning how to help their child reach developmental milestones. There are three main parenting styles.
Authoritarian
This style is based on a strict set of standards with matching punishments. This style focuses on seeking obedience, rather than encouraging discussions or nuance within behavior. This style is often matched with stronger or harsher punishments for a child.
Permissive
The style is based on a lack of clear rules, an absence of rules, or constantly changing rules. This is often also associated with a lack of meaningful discipline for a child.
Authoritative
This style is based on consistent rules or guidelines that are reasonable for the child's development stage, and are well-explained. The rules are discussed as well as punishment, and are consistent for the child.
Overall, what makes us the way we are is a combination of nature and nurture. Physical, cognitive, and social child development is impacted by gene sequencing as well as environmental influence.
Childhood Development - Key takeaways
- The study of childhood development helps us identify important physical, cognitive, and social milestones that children should reach. When they do not meet these milestones, it can help direct us to where medical or environmental interventions can be made.
Brain maturation is a process that continues from the prenatal stage to adulthood. Childhood brain maturation is what takes infants from instinct-driven infants carrying only unconscious impressions to individuals creating and storing conscious memory.
While the exact age of development might vary depending on the individual, motor skills build on each other and develop as the neurons in our brains connect.
- Secure attachment - when babies are comfortable to explore while parents are present, show signs of distress when parents leave, and return to their parents when they arrive again.
- Avoidant attachment -when babies resist their parents, explore new areas, and do not go to their parents after they return.
- Anxious/ambivalent attachment - when babies show ambivalence to parents or show extreme distress when the parents are absent, but do not return to the parents when they return.
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