Child development Flashcards
Why consider developmental milestones?
- gives parents a guide to help support & understand their child, while managing their own expectations
- provides professionals with a framework by which a child can be assessed
What are some red flags with regards to developmental milestones?
- not smiling at 8 weeks & no smile at 10 weeks needs a referral
- not walking by 18 months
- unable to walk up stairs unaided at 3 years
unable to produce spontaneous 4 word sentence by age 3 - regression in development
BUT- it is important to remember that every child is different & therefore develops at different rates
What are the areas of child development?
fine motor, gross motor, speech & language, social & emotional, cognitive
What are some influences on growth & development in children?
genetics, gender, race & cultural differences (e.g., whether it is common to put babies on the floor or carry them), intelligence, health, environmental (quality of nutrition, socio-economic level, parent-child relationship, ordinal position in family, external factors)
What are the basic principles of growth & development?
- continuous process from conception to death
- proceeds in an orderly sequence
- children pass through predictable stages at different rates
- all body systems do not develop at the same rate
- cephalocaudal –> head grows & develops quicker
- proximal-distal –> development from centre of body outwards (more control over arms than fingers etc.)
Who was Piaget (1896-1980) & what did he do?
key theorist in children’s cognitive development, hypothesised that infants’ & adults’ minds work in very different ways, developed a stage-like progression of cognitive development, which is used extensively in children’s nursing
Outline the 1st stage of Piaget’s stages of development.
Sensori-motor stage (birth-2 years) –> focuses on how infants develop & make sense of the world, using their senses, infants use skills they were born with (sucking, grasping, looking, listening), key characteristics are egocentrism & lack of object concept
What is object permanence & how does this impact infants’ behaviour?
the ability to recognise that things continue to exist even though they can no longer be seen or heard- infants develop this between 7-8 months, links to separation anxiety, when caregivers leave, the infant believes they are not coming back
Outline the 2nd stage of Piaget’s stages of development.
Pre-operational stage (2-7 years) –> engage in symbolic or pretend play, egocentric (cannot see things from a different point of view), animism (thinking everything is alive), rigidity of thought, pre-logical reasoning
Outline the 3rd stage of Piaget’s stages of development.
Concrete operational (7-11 years) –> begin to think logically, can see relationship between things, thinking is restricted to concrete situations, so they find it difficult to deal with objects, events & relationships they have not yet experienced
Outline the 4th & final stage of Piaget’s stages of development.
Formal operational stage (11 years+) –> able to think abstractly, can now consider & think about alternatives, able to reason symbolically
What is self-recognition, and when is this developed?
the ability to recognise oneself- Lewis & Brookes-Gunn (1979) found that children between 21 & 24 months recognise themselves in mirrors but before this age are unable to do so
What is the Theory of Mind?
understanding that people don’t share the same thoughts & feelings as you
Outline the development of Theory of Mind.
1) infancy & early childhood –> pay attention to people & copy them, recognise others’ emotions & use words to express them, know they are different from other people & have different likes/dislikes, understand causes & consequences of emotions, pretend to be someone else when playing
2) aged 4-5 years –> understand people want different things & have different beliefs about the same thing, understand that if someone hasn’t seen something, they will need extra information to understand, understand that sometimes people believe things that are not true, understand that people can feel a different emotion to the one they display
What is school readiness? Give some examples.
a measure of how prepared a child is to succeed in school cognitively, socially, and emotionally –> going to toilet independently, dressing independently, eating independently, communicating needs, working with others, following directions etc.
