Different Stages of Childhood

     We all see children as little people who do not understand the world as we as adults do. This is because we know very little about the different stages or things that kids go through before becoming in teens. In such a case, it is of vital importance that we as teachers, parents, relatives and everyone who has to deal with children everyday know more about the different changes, fears, and in general all aspects that make of a kid be a kid. Thus, this entry will address the three different stages of childhood: toddlerhood, early childhood and middle childhood. (according to papalia 2006).

Ø TODDLERHOOD (1-3 years old)

Physical development:

Physical development includes the growth of the body and brain, sensory capacity, motor skills, and health.

To continue discussing about physical development, it is necessary to have a look at the concepts of “Gross and fine motor skills”.

·        Gross motor skills: involve the large muscles of the body that enable such functions as walking, kicking, sitting upright, lifting, and throwing a ball. 

·        Fine motor skills: involve the small muscles of the body that enable such functions as writing, grasping small objects, and fastening clothing. 

At this stage, some advances in motor skills are seen. Kids start walking around 12-15 months of age.  After this amazing step in the babies lives when they are already able to walk, toddlers begin to show a multitude of advanced abilities including walking backwards, throwing a ball, jumping in place, and riding a tricycle. Toddlers also become more experts at activities that require fine motor movements such as scribbling, stacking blocks, using a spoon, and drinking from a cup.

Cognitive development:

Cognitive development refers to the changes and stability in mental abilities, such as learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity. According to papalia 2007.

Here we have many theories that analyze cognitive development since the toodlerhood stage to then move to other stages. First we have Piagets’ theory that starts at 2 years of age in which babies are under the preoperational stage in which The child begins to represent the world with words and images. On the other hand, we have vigotsky’s theory. For Vygotsky, cognitive development occurs as a result of social interactions. In social interaction, children work with others to make decisions and solve problems.

In my personal opinion, I think that both experts are right and if we combine the two theories we can generate more ideas to help our babies in their cognitive development. As it is mentioned above, piaget’s assumption in cognitive development says that every child is born with a basic mental structure and all subsequent learning finds its mainstays on that structure. This is completely true; kids can reason since they are born, however, they just do it in a different way. Toddlers start from a very basic reasoning until moving on to a more complex and advanced way of thinking. Nevertheless, these advances come when we as adults start scaffolding our kids understanding by scaffolding to temporary support that parents, teachers, and more-skilled peers give a child to do a task until the child can do it alone according to papalia 2007. By scaffolding kids, we agree with vigotski’s ideas about social interaction, and that kids learn through interactions and also our help. In conclusion, both theories give a good contribution to the understanding and progress of the cognitive development in kids so that we can look for useful techniques to help toddlers in their intellectual development.

Psychosocial development

Understanding by psychosocial development to the changes and stability in emotions, personality, and social relationship, according to papalia 2007.

At this stage, toddlers Are self-centered, possessive and have difficulty sharing toys. However, not all the kids are the same. There are some kids that are willing to share toys. This can depend on the influences from their parents. If parents teach their kids to share their toys with other kids, toddlers will surely learn to share their toys.

Ø Early childhood (3-5 years old)

Physical changes:

The average child grows 2 ½ inches in height and gains between 5 and 7 pounds a year during early childhood. At this stage, kids are able to run, jump, balance one foot for up to 5 seconds. They can also pedal a small tricycle.

As their bodies grow more, gross and fine motor skills continue to expand. Children will be able to:

ü dance 

ü move all their muscles

ü follow a routine of exercises

ü scribble

Cognitive changes:

Advances of understanding categorization, numbers, space and identities are seen in this stage. Kids are able to correctly name some colors, and know some numbers. However, all these activities need to be taught to kids. It would be almost impossible to pretend children to know how to count, if we do not teach them how to do it. Every stage that kids go through needs the support of the adults, the more we help them, the more they learn, and cognitive advances are the skills that need more support to develop.

Psychosocial development: 

At this point, kids start understanding themselves, their emotions, their gender and they start acquiring the traditional masculine or feminine role they should assume according to the society. At this ages, they cooperate with other children, they play together, they are more likely to follow rules, they show concern for others feeling and start expressing the feelings of being sorry.

There is a specific theory created by Erick Erickson about psychosocial development in early childhood.  This theory elucidates different stages regarding the psychosocial changes that kids go through. However, there is one specific stage concerning early childhood which is initiative versus guilt. In this stage, Erickson enlightens the point in the life of kids when they start interacting with the world and reasoning about the appropriate way to control the world. They start planning activities, achieving goals of certain tasks, and exploring the earth.  Kids should start making choices and decisions at this period. They initiative must be encouraged by their parents so that their own decisions can end up in a successful sense of purpose while dismissive parents can make their own children feel embarrassed or kids may experiment a sense of guilt.

Taking into consideration that kids are independent little people, caregivers should allow children to experiment the world with their own ideas, just as Erickson explains in his initiative versus guilt theory.  This is why, I could not agree more with Erick Erickson and his ideas about letting kids have the freedom they need to make their own choices, of course, with the supervision of adults. 

Ø  Middle childhood (6-9 years old)

Physical changes:

Just right before puberty, we find middle childhood. In this stage, kids have already grown and mastered all kind of movements using their bodies. They are able to do plenty of routine exercises, they can also swim, dance, run, jump, play any game, ride a bicycle and some other activities.

In this stage as in others, kids’ nutrition is very important since this care will help children to develop all their parts of their bodies and will keep them health to perform any voluntary or requested task.

Cognitive changes:

At this point, kids are so curious about life and the world itself that they start reasoning about every occurrence that comes to their lives. Children may start attacking their parents with hundred of questions about things they see or live.

During middle childhood most children start going to school and to learn new things such as, reading, writing, calculating numbers, among other skills.

At this point, we can observe Jean Piaget’s concrete operational phase that consists on using logical operations to demonstrate cognitive understanding of logical mathematical, more abstract classification order, flexible thinking, among other logical operations.

To have a better understanding of this Piaget’s concrete operational phase, let’s have a look at this video that will clarify this so famous cognitive theory for us.

Psychosocial development: 

There is a big emotional growth in this stage. Kids are more aware of their own and others’ feelings, they understand conflicting emotions, they are Aware of culture’s “rules” for emotional expressions, emotional self-regulation and control of emotions, attention, and behavior.

It is very impressive to see how kids are able to reason at this stage, their intellectual improved in a way that kids in middle childhood are able to understand emotions, and feelings. They are not self centered anymore and they can think about how others can feel in different situations.

It is very important to pay attention to how kids develop their own self. This can be influenced by parents, teaches, peers, and also the society. Kids absorb everything they see, everything they are told they are, and this can be very crucial in a kid’s life. Thus, the fact of encouraging kids by labeling them with good adjectives such as: Smart or intelligent can mark positively children lives forever as well as bad adjectives like: stupid or troublemaker can mark them negatively.

In conclusion, every stage in the life of a kid is important, and every person who is in charge of kids most show interest not only in learning more about kids, but also in how to assure them a good physical, cognitive and psychosocial development that can contribute them to have better lives in the future. This is way this entry has tried to encompasses some of the most relevant aspects in the different stages of childhood.  

References:

v “Ages and Stages”, the University of Illinois Extension, 2008 (www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/BABYSITTING/age-toddler.html).

v Papalia, D, et al. A child’s world. Mc Graw Hill, USA, 2006.

v Papalia, D. E., Olds, S. W., & Feldma R. D. 2007. Human development. 10th ed. Boston: McGraw Hill.

v  “Understanding Children: Disciplining your toddler”, Ohio State University Extension,HDFS-1529c-02 (http://ohioline.osu.edu/uc/pdf/1529c.pdf).