Reply must be at least 150 words. Be sure that your comments have content, expand on the topic, and contain especially the textbook information (cite your source in proper APA format).[Special note: Do not critique case study work.]

http://books.google.com/books?id=mC_LNMy2rbkC&q=hello#v=onepage&q&f=false

The Developing Person through the Life Span ,Berger, 2011, Worth Publishers,

N ew York, NY

One of the first things that came to my mind in reference to this case study and the textbook reading is PLAY.  Drama and Pretending is a sociodramatic play, in this type of play children can act out roles, plots and be any identity they choose.  In this stage of development in early-childhood, children fantasize of being whatever and whoever brings them satisfaction, from Peter Pam to Captain Hook.  The type of characters they gravitate to at that age will have a lot to do with the way they act and play.

Vygotsky on the topic of Children and Mentors “believed that every aspect of children’s cognitive development is embedded in a social context” (Vygotsky, 1934/1987), and that parent’s are, for the most part children first mentors along with other caregivers.  He went on to say that children learn when their mentor 1. Present challenges 2. Offer help without taking over 3. Add crucial information and 4. Encourage motivation.  Children at this stage need guided participation to learn and share social experiences while building a solid foundation to build their lives on.

In our text reading on Brain Development it is said that by age 2 most of the connections of the neurons has taken place and substantial pruning has occurred.  It tell us that most of the brain is already present and functioning by age 2 (Berger, 2011), so what left to develop?  Well it say the main part, the function that make us most human have not developed at this stage in life.  The part that enable human to be more reflective in thoughts and better coordinated is still in the developmental phase, which make it hard to hold a 6 year old criminally responsible.  Although by age 6 most kids can throw and catch balls, immediately name objects they see, write, count, and more.  Things are slower at 6 than 16 because information processing is slower at 6.  Parents are reminded that they must still be patient with young children and just because they are able to do all these wonderful things, they are still developing and never forget God word tell us  to raise a child in the way that they should go.  “Researchers are looking into many possible explanations  for this surprising result (Muller et al., 2006:  Yerys & Munakata, 2006).  All agree, however, that something in the executive function of the brain must mature before children are able to switch from one way of sorting objects to another” (Burger, 2011).  At age 6  the executive functions has not matured, therefore, 6 years old are not able to make sound decisions.  The limbic system which regulates emotions are advanced during early childhood.  Three major areas of the limbic system are the amygdale, the hippocampus, and the hypothalamus are part of this advance.

On cognitive development Piaget preoperational thinking states that obstacles to logical operations.  He describes four limitations of preoperational thoughts that make logics difficult.  They are focus on centration, focus on appearance, static reasoning, and irreversibility.  Centration is the tendency to focus on one aspect of  a situation to the exclusion of all others.  A second characteristic of preoperational thought is a focus on appearance  to the exclusion of other attributes.  The third  preoperational children use static reasoning, believing that the world is unchanging, always in the state in which they currently encounter it. The fourth characteristic of preoperational thought is irreversibility.  Preoperational thinkers fail to recognize that reversing a process sometimes restores whatever existed before (Berger, 2011).