Development Stages of Early Childhood

Name

Institution

The stages of a child’s development from birth to eight years

Development of a child entails all changes either psychological or biological that occur in a child at the stages between births towards the end of adolescent in human beings. As a child develops his dependency on other continues to reduce progressively as they learn how to be autonomous (Keenan, 2002). We can discuss the development of a child by breaking it down into three major categories. That is, the child’s physical development, its cognitive development, its development of language and also speech and its development socially and emotionally.

The physical changes in a child from the time of birth to three years include changes in height and body. The height of the child doubles while the weight quadruples. The child at this stage begins to show adult like appearances (Keenan, 2002). The child also masters skills such as use of a spoon, sitting on his own, walking and can as well coordinate use of his hands and eyes. The child can see an object and reach for it. The child at this stage learns to use the toilet. At the age of one the child begins to develop emotionally and socially. The child begins to relate with the people surrounding him. Language begins to develop and the child can express themselves using simple vocabulary (Marshall & Stuart, 2001). A child at this age is able to use language to describe their surroundings.

At the age of three to about five years the child begins to show fine motor ability. Here the child is able to control his pencil and can balance on a single foot as well as skip. Physical growth in a child between these stages is reduced as motor skills development take centre stage (Marshall & Stuart, 2001). A child of about five years is able to construct simple sentences of about seven words. The child is able to tell a story and can use the past tense.

At the age of eight years the child is able to use language to solve problems with others as well as communicate. An eight year old can understand concepts that are not concrete although its reasoning has not fully developed (Marshall and Stuart 2001). The child is more social and relates better with others especially when they are playing.

Piagets sensori-motor stage of development

When an infant is at this stage of development they are mainly preoccupied trying to discover the relationships they have with their environment and their bodies. At this stage the child has its sensory abilities well developed. Children mainly depend on their senses to learn about their bodies’ ant their surroundings (Keenan 2002). This stage is called sensori-motor due to the fact that this is where we learn early signs of a child’s intelligence (Marshall and Stuart 2001). We learn this signs from a child’s motor activities and his sensory perceptions.

The importance of this stage is that it helps infants to understand that they are distinct from the world around them. At this stage the child is able to coordinate different activities. For example a child can look at an object and reach for it. At the later stages of sensor motor stage is the object permanence concept (Keenan, 2002). With this concept the child is able to keep the existence of an object in mind even if they are not viewing it. Object permanence is more active in older infants as they have mastered most objects.

Direct groping concept emerges after object permanence. At this stage a child is curious to learn the outcomes of various experiments. The child wants to learn how various movements have varying results (Marshall & Stuart, 2001). If a child is aware of his doings effects, he might want to intentionally cause these effects.

Pre operational stage of development

This is the stage where a child’s reactions to objects that are similar are identical. The child at this level uses one thing to make inferences to another. Example if the child sees the moon his reasoning will be that, that is a ball since his ball is round. Children between the age of four to seven experience intuition.

Thinking in this stage is highly egocentric; hence the child will only understand life from his own perspective. Egocentrism in a child makes him believe that the world shares in their way of thinking. They believe the world is theirs and they have the ability to control it. At preoperational stage the child is able to use symbols as well as masters conversations. The child can also use words to express the things he cannot see (Keenan, 2002). At the latter levels of preoperational stage the child a child can distinguish fantasy and reality and can reason logically (Marshall & Stuart 2001). Egocentrism begins to decline.

Comparing paiget development to brain development

In the development of the brain the early years of a child are very important. At the time of birth the brain of a child has billions of neurons (Miller, 2006). The child grows the neurons mature and leads to formation of synapses. At the age between two and four months the vision neurons begin to send messages to the brain. The child’s brain begins to register the objects they see and they are stored permanently. In paiget development this is where the child vision begins to function. The first month of piagets development the child cannot see but in the second month their vision begins to be more active.

When a child is exposed to certain words his brain will create neural connections that help the child learn the words. The stimulation of sounds in a child’s brain helps them to learn languages (Miller, 2006). The brain is very vital in a child’s language development. In the paiget development this is the stage where the child learns how to produce sounds in the early years of development.

In conclusion, child development takes place in stage, each stage building on the preceding stage. The development can tri-categorised; the child’s physical development, its cognitive development, its development of language and also speech and its development socially and emotionally. All development processes are necessary for normal maturation of a human child.

References

Keenan, T. (2002). An Introduction to Child Development. London: SAGE.

Marshall, J., & Stuart, S. (2001). Child development, GCSE Home economics for OCR services. Oxford: Heinemann Educational Publishers.

Miller, M. W. (2006). Brain Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.