Early Childhood Flashcards
The average child grows 21⁄2 inches in height
and gains 5 to 10 pounds a year during early
childhood. Growth patterns vary individually,
though. Some of the brain’s interior changes
in early childhood are due to myelination.
From 3 to 6 years of age, the most rapid
growth in the brain occurs in the frontal lobes.
Body Growth and Change
Gross motor skills increase dramatically
during early childhood. Children become
increasingly adventuresome as their gross
motor skills improve. Fine motor skills also
improve substantially during early
childhood. Young children also make
advances in perceptual development.
Motor and Perceptual Development
Experts recommend that young children get 11
to 13 hours of sleep each night. Most young
children sleep through the night and have one
daytime nap. Helping the young child slow down
before bedtime often leads to less resistance in
going to bed. Sleep problems in young children
are linked to other problems, such as being
overweight and being depressed. Disruptions in
sleep in early childhood are related to less
optimal adjustment in preschool.
Sleep
▪ According to Piaget, in the preoperational stage children cannot yet perform
operations, which are reversible mental actions, but they begin to represent the
world with symbols, to form stable concepts, and to reason.
▪ During the symbolic function substage, which occurs between about 2 and 4 years
of age, children begin to mentally represent an object that is not present, but their
thought is limited by egocentrism and animism.
▪ During the intuitive thought substage, which stretches from about 4 to 7 years of
age, children begin to reason and to bombard adults with questions.
▪ Thought at this substage is called intuitive because children seem so sure about
their knowledge yet are unaware of how they know what they know. Centration and
a lack of conservation also characterize the preoperational stage.
Piaget’s Preoperational Stage
The child’s ability to attend to stimuli
dramatically improves during early childhood.
Advances in executive attention and sustained
attention are especially important in early
childhood, but young children still attend to the
salient rather than the relevant features of a task.
▪ Significant improvement in short-term memory
occurs during early childhood. With good
prompts, young children’s long-term memories
can be accurate, although young children can
be led into developing false memories.
Information Processing
Parents and teachers need to provide
young children with a supportive
environment in which to develop literacy
skills. Children should be active
participants and be immersed in a wide
range of interesting experiences that
involve listening, talking, writing, and
reading.
Young Children’s Literacy
The child-centered kindergarten emphasizes educating the whole child, with
particular attention to individual variation, the process of learning, and the
importance of play in development. The Montessori approach allows children to
choose from a range of activities while teachers serve as facilitators.
Variations In early childhood Education
▪ In Erikson’s theory, early childhood is a period
when development involves resolving the
conflict of initiative versus guilt.
▪ The toddler’s rudimentary self-
understanding develops into the
preschooler’s representation of the self in
terms of body parts, material possessions,
and physical activities.
▪ At about 4 to 5 years of age, children also begin
to use trait-like self descriptions.Young children
display more sophisticated self-understanding
and understanding of others than was
previously thought.
The Self
▪ Advances in young children’s emotional development involve expressing
emotions, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions.
▪ Young children’s range of emotions expands during early childhood as they
increasingly experience self-conscious emotions such as pride, shame, and guilt.
▪ Between 2 and 4 years old, children use an increasing number of terms to describe
emotion and learn more about the causes and consequences of feelings.
▪ At 4 to 5 years of age, children show an increased ability to reflect on emotions and
understand that a single event can elicit different emotions in different people.
They also show a growing awareness of the need to manage emotions to meet
social standards.
▪ Emotion-coaching parents have children who engage in more effective self-
regulation of their emotions than do emotion-dismissing parents.
▪ Emotion regulation plays an important role in successful peer relations.
Emotional Development
▪ _______ involves thoughts, feelings, and behaviors regarding rules and
conventions about what people should do in their interactions with others. Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the importance of feelings in the development
of the superego, the moral branch of personality. Positive emotions, such as
empathy, also contribute to the child’s moral development.
▪ Young children’s conscience emerges out of relationships with parents. Parents
influence young children’s moral development through the quality of parent-child
relationships, by being proactive in helping children avert misbehavior, and by
engaging children in conversational dialogue about moral issues.
Moral Development
▪ ____ refers to the social and psychological
dimensions of being male or female. Gender
identity is acquired by 21⁄2 years of age for
most children. A ______ role is a set of
expectations that prescribes how females or
males should think, act, and feel. Gender
typing refers to the acquisition of a traditional
masculine or feminine role.
▪ Parents influence children’s gender
development, and peers are especially adept
at rewarding gender-appropriate behavior.
Gender
▪ Authoritarian, authoritative, neglectful, and indulgent are four main parenting
styles. Authoritative parenting is the most widely used style around the world and
is the style most often associated with children’s social competence. However,
ethnic variations in parenting styles suggest that in Asian American families, some
aspects of control may benefit children.
▪ Physical punishment is widely used by U.S. parents, but some experts conclude that
there are a number of reasons it should not be used with children. However, there
currently is controversy about the effects of physical punishment on children, with
few studies making a distinction between abusive and mild physical punishment.
▪ Coparenting has positive effects on children’s development.
Parenting
▪ Peers are powerful socialization agents. Peers provide a source of information and
comparison about the world outside the family. In early childhood, children
distinguish between friends and nonfriends, with a friend often described as
someone to play with.
▪ Parent-child and peer relationships are often connected. Parents influence their
children’s peer relations by how they manage children’s lives and the opportunities
they provide for interacting with peers. Rough-and-tumble play is more likely to
occur in peer relations, whereas in times of stress children often turn to parents
rather than peers for support.
Peer Relations
▪ ______ functions include affiliation with peers, tension release, advances in cognitive
development, exploration, and provision of a safe haven. The contemporary
perspective on ____ emphasizes both the cognitive and the social aspects of play.
▪ Among the most widely studied types of children’s play are sensorimotor ____,
practice play, pretense/symbolic play, social play, constructive play, and games.
▪ There is concern about the decreasing number of hours children spend in free play
and in recess at school. Because play is a powerful positive context for the
development of children’s cognitive and socioemotional skills, it is important that
we find more time for play in children’s lives.
Play
▪ Young children watch 2 to 4 hours of TV per day on average, but experts
recommend that they watch 1 hour or less. Young children increasingly are
spending time with other media and information/communication devices such as
computers, DVDs, video games, and iPhones, which has given rise to the term
screen time. Screen time can have both negative influences (such as turning
children into passive learners, presenting them with aggressive models, and
decreasing time spent with peers and in play and physical activity) and positive
influences (such as providing models of prosocial behavior) on children’s
development. Both watching TV violence and playing violent video games have
been linked to children’s aggressive behavior. Watching prosocial behavior on TV
can teach children positive social skills.
Media/Screen Time
