What are the main areas of child development?

Child development refers to the sequence of physical, language, thought and emotional changes that occur in a child from birth to the beginning of adulthood.

As children grow, they develop in various different ways. Every child goes developmental stages that include everything from physical skills such as sitting and standing, to social skills such as smiling and forming relationships with others.

Of course every child develops at his or her own pace but there are certain skills considered to be particular important and which should be attained by a certain age range. These are known as developmental milestones.

To track a child’s progress, we look at five main areas of development. These are:

Cognitive development

This refers to the thinking skills and knowledge that help children understand the world in which they live. They learn to, amongst other things, process information, to learn facts, to know right from wrong, to make decisions. This aspect of development can be broken down into further categories. These are: (1) intellect, which determines how much children are capable of learning at different stages of development, (2) memory and (3) reasoning, which allows the child to make connections between things.

Social and emotional development

Social skills make it possible for children to interact with others while emotionally they learn to understand and manage their feelings. It is common to refer to socio-emotional skills and the acquisition of empathy, sympathy, ability to recognise feelings and being able to relate to others in various situations. This area is especially important for developing self-awareness and self-confidence.

Speech and language development

Being able to understand and communicate with others are vital in our peopled world. We also use language for problem-solving and, of course, for school learning.

Gross motor development

The large muscles in our bodies are referred to as ‘gross’. Those in the head, neck, arms, legs and torso are used to move in a coordinated and controlled way. We use these muscles in most of our everyday activities.

Fine motor development

The ability to move small muscles especially in the hands and fingers refers to fine motor skills. In turn, small movements need accompanying skills, such as body awareness and hand-eye coordination. They are crucial for basic skills such as tying shoelaces, buttoning shirts, playing a musical instrument, using knives and forks, and also for handwriting. Fine motor development is typically a little later than gross motor.

Any delay or interruption in these developmental areas may have implications for later school learning. If you notice that your child is lagging in any area, it might be wise to seek the help of a developmental specialist.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.