THE FIRST YEAR
Motor Development
During early childhood, the primitive reflexes are
replaced by voluntary motor control, which is under the higher cortical
control. Motor development is a cumulative process; higher level skills are
dependent on lower level skills.
In the first two months, an infant’s
movements consist largely of uncontrolled writhing with apparently purposeless
hand opening and closing. Smiling occurs involuntarily. However, eye gaze, head
turning, and sucking are under conscious control.
At 2 to 6 month old, early reflexes
that limited voluntary movement. Infants can begin to examine objects in the
midline and manipulate them with both hands. Waning of early grasping reflex
allows them to voluntarily hold and release objects. A novel object may elicit
purposeful but inefficient reaching. The quality of spontaneous movements also
changes, from larger writhing to smaller, circular movements, described as
‘fidgety’. Intentional rolling is made possible by increased control of truncal
flexion. Head control improves, allowing infants to gaze across things and
begin to take food from a spoon.
Between 6 to 12 month old, infants
gain the ability to sit up unsupported and later pivot while sitting, providing
increasing opportunities to manipulate several objects at one time. These
explorations are aided by the emergence of pincer grasp. Many infants begin
crawling and pulling to stand around 8 months, and walk before 12 months.
Cognitive Development
Caretaking activities provide
visual, tactile, olfactory, and auditory stimuli. All these stimuli play an
important part in the development of cognition. Infants can see, hear and smell
within days of birth. They are able to perceive objects and events as coherent.
These abilities allow them to sort stimuli into meaningful sets. Infants appear
to seek stimuli actively as tough satisfying an innate need to make sense of
the world.
At the age 1 month, infants can
enjoy conversations. By 5 to 6 weeks, infants begin to smile, at first once or
twice in a day, more frequently and to more different stimuli as they get
older. In a further week or two, they vocalize their pleasure when spoken to.
Around 4 month old, infants are
described as ‘hatching’ socially, they become interested in a wider world.
Infants between 2 to 6 months old also explore their own bodies, staring
intently at their hands, vocalizing, etc. These explorations represent early
stage in the understanding of cause and effects as infants learn that voluntary
muscle movements produce predictable tactile and visual sensation. They also
have a role in the emergence of a sense of self.
At 6 to 12 month old, infants begin
to put everything into the mouth, later they are picked up, inspected, passed
from hand to hand, and banged dropped, then mouthed. Each action represents a
nonverbal idea about what things are for. Anytime after 5 months old, infants
may begin to imitate such acts as chewing or protrusion of the tongue. From age
6 month, they begin to show memory of foodstuffs by strong reactions of like
and dislike.
The major milestone is the achievement of object
constancy (about 9 month), the understanding that objects continue to exist even
when not seen. At 4 to 7 month, infants try to look for dropped toy, but
quickly give up if it is not seen. With object constancy, infants persist in
searching and finding hidden objects.
Emotional and Communication Development
Basic trust develops as infants learn that their
urgent needs are met regularly. The consistent availability of a trusted adult
creates a condition for secure attachment. The emotional significance of any
experience depends on an individual child’s temperament as well as the parents’
responses.
At 2 to 4 month old, infants interact with increasing
sophistication and range of emotions. The primary emotions of anger, joy,
interest, fear, disgust and surprise appear in appropriate contexts as distinct
facial expressions. Face-to-face with a trusted adult, the infant and adult
match affective expressions. Such face-to-face behavior reveals the infant’s
ability to share emotional states, the first step in the development of
communication.
Between 6 to 12 months, infants can recognize parents
and strangers, they may cling or cry anxiously when being approached by
strangers. Separation often becomes more difficult. At the same time, the
demand for autonomy emerges. Infants begin to refuse or consent activities.
They may turn away as the spoon approaches when being fed, or may insist on
holding it themselves. Self feeding with finger foods may be the only way to
get them to eat. Tantrums make their first appearance as the drives for
autonomy and mastery come in conflict with parental controls and with infants’
self limited abilities.
The average infants begin to vocalize with vowel
sounds, ah, eh, uh, a week or two after beginning to smile in response to
parents. In three or four weeks, these vowel sounds are followed by the
addition of front consonant (m, p, b) and back consonant (g, k). At 2 to 3
months, he says “gaga.” At 3 months, infants hold long conversation with
parents, with increasing tone and pitch. At 4 months, he says “ah goo”, and
much vocal play begins, he enjoys the vibration when he razzes. At 6 months,
they add many syllables, and by 7 months they begin combining syllables without
meaning. Up to this stage, an infant’s vocalization is largely unrelated to his
race or hearing.
Infants at 7 month are adept at nonverbal communication,
expressing a range of emotions and responding to vocal tone and facial
expressions. Around 9 months, infants become aware that emotions can be shared
between people. Between 8 to 10 months, babbling takes on a new complexity,
with many syllables (ba-da-ma) and inflections that mimic the native language.
The first true word, that is a sound used consistently to refer to a specific
object or person, appears in concert with the discovery of object constancy.
THE SECOND YEAR
Motor Development
Most children begin to walk
independently near their first birthday, some do not walk until 15 months.
After several months of practice, the child is able to stop, pivot, and stoop
without toppling over. At the age of 18-24 months, motor development is incremental,
with improvement of the balance and agility and the emergence of running and
stair climbing.
Cognitive Development
Object exploration accelerates
because reaching, grasping, and releasing are nearly fully mature and walking
increases access to interesting things; Toddlers combine objects to create
interesting effects such as stacking blocks. Playthings are more intended to be
used for their intended purposes (comb for hair, cups for drinking). Imitation
of parents and older children is an important mode of learning.
At approximately 18 months, object
permanence is firmly established. Cause and effect are better understood, and
they demonstrate the flexibility in problem solving, using sticks to obtain a
toy out of reach and figuring how to wind a mechanical toy.
Emotional Development
Infants developmentally approaching
the milestone of their first steps may be irritable. Once they start walking,
their predominant mood changes markedly. Toddlers are described ‘intoxicated’
with their new ability and with the power to control the distance between
themselves and their parents.
In many children, the relative
independence of the preceding period gives way to increased clinginess around
18 months. This stage, described as rapprochement, may be a reaction to growing
awareness of the possibility of separation. Many children use a special blanket
or stuffed toy as a transitional object: something that functions as a symbol
of the absent parent.
Self-conscious awareness and
internalized standard of evaluation first appear at 18 to 24 months. They begin
to reach for their own face, rather than the mirror image, when they see an
unusual appearance. They begin to recognize a broken toy and may hand them to
parents to fix. When tempted to touch a forbidden object, they may tell
themselves “no, no,” evidence of internalization of standards of behavior.
Linguistic Development
Receptive language proceeds
expressive. By the time infants speak their first words, around 12 months, they
already responds appropriately to several simple statements such as “no,”
“bye-bye,” “give me.” By 15 months, the average child points to major body
parts and uses four to six words spontaneously and correctly. Most
communications of wants and ideas continues to be nonverbal.
Labeling objects coincides with the
advent of symbolic thought. Children may point at things with index finger and
ask their names. After the realization that words can stand for things, a
child’s vocabulary grows from 10-15 words at 18 months into 100 or more at 2
years. After acquiring about 50 words, toddlers begin to combine words to make
simple sentences. At this stage, toddlers understand two-step commands, such as
“give me the ball and then get your shoes.”
PRESCHOOL YEARS
Motor Development
Most children walk with mature gait
and run steadily before the end of their third year. Beyond this basic level,
there is wide variation in ability as the range of motor activities expands to
include throwing, catching, and kicking ball, climbing, dancing and other
complex-pattern behaviors.
Handedness is usually established by
the third year. Variations in fine motor development reflect both individual
proclivities and different opportunities for learning.
Bowel and bladder control emerge
during this period. Daytime bladder control typically precedes bowel control
and girls precede boys. Bed-wetting is normal up to age 4 in girls and 5 in
boys. Many children master toileting with ease, particularly once they are able
to verbalize their bodily needs.
Cognitive Development
The preschool period is
characterized by magical thinking, egocentrism, and thinking that is dominated
by perception. Magical thinking includes a confusion of coincidence for
causality, animism, and unrealistic beliefs about the power of wishes.
During the preschool period, play is
marked by increasing complexity and imagination, from simple scripts
replicating common experiences such as shopping (age 2-3 year) to a more
extended scenarios involving singular events such as going to the zoo (age 3 or
4 year) to creation of scenario that have only been imagined, such as flying to
the moon (age 4 or 5 year). Similar progression in socialization moves from
minimal social interaction with peers during play (solo or parallel play, age 1
or 2 year) to cooperative play (age 3 or 4 year) to organized group play with
distinct role assignments.
Moral thinking mirrors and is
constrained by a child’s cognitive level. Emphatic responses to others’
distress arise during the second year, but the ability to cognitively consider
another child’s point of view remains limited through out the preschool period.
Fairness is taken to mean equal treatment regardless of circumstantial
differences. Rules tend to be absolute, with guilt assigned for bad outcomes
regardless of intentions.
Emotional Development
Emotional challenges facing preschool children include
accepting limits while maintaining a sense of self-direction, reigning in
aggressive and sexual impulses, and interacting with a widening circle of
adults and peers. At age 2 year, behavioral limits are predominantly external;
the age 5 years, these controls need to be internalized if the child is to
function in a typical classroom.
Children learn what behaviors are acceptable by
testing limits. Excessively tight limits can undermine a child’s sense of
initiative; whereas the overly loose limits can provoke anxiety in a child who
feels no one is in control. Control is the central issue. Inability to control
some aspects of the external world often results in a loss of internal control
that is a temper tantrum. Tantrums normally appear toward the end of the first
year of life, and peak in prevalence between 2 and 4 years.
Preschool children normally experienced complicated
feelings toward their parents: intense love and jealousy and resentment and
fear that angry feelings might lead to abandonment. The swirl of these
emotions, most beyond the child’s ability to express or analyze, often find
expression in highly labile moods.
Curiosity about genitals and adult sexual organs is
normal. Modesty appears gradually between age 4 and 6 year, with wide
variations among cultures and families.
Language Development
Language development occurs most
rapidly between 2 and 5 year of age. Vocabulary increases from 50-100 words to
more than 2000. Sentence structures advances from telegraphic phrase to
sentences incorporating all the major grammatical components. As a rule of
thumb, between age 2 to 5, the number of words in typical sentences equals the
child’s age (2 by age of 2, 3 by age of 3, and so on). By 2 ½, most children
are using possessives (my ball), questions and negatives. By the 4, they can
count to 4.
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