Child Development

Understanding Child Development Stages as an Aid to the Assessment of Child Growth

Childhood is a period of a person's life starting from birth to pre-adolescence, or from 0 months old to about the age of 8 or 9 years old. During this period of time the child grows and develops in body, intelligence, emotion, and social behavior. While children grow and develop at different rates, altogether, their levels of growth and development may be assessed along a time line and an average level of achievement can be derived. Child development stages are points along the time line of childhood where, on the average, children have completed an average level of competence in some area of growth and development and are ready to begin the next stage of development.

In child development stages, some growth or development is exhibited, achieved, or attained in body height, weight, and function, in motor skills, language and speech, vision, hearing, and social interaction. Each stage for a given area builds on the achievements of that area's previous stage: growth and development.

Child development stages are arbitrary schedules for child growth and development. These schedules use age as the principle of division, as is expected if we are dividing a period of a lifetime, but the number of years included in schedules differ. Some schedules define childhood as the first six years of life while other extend to the age of thirteen. While we do normally define a child as one who is age 0 to 13, most recognize a division of that range into ages 0 to 6, or childhood 7 to 11, or pre-puberty, and 12 to 13, or puberty.

Among those schedules that consider only the first six years as childhood, some see four child development stages while others see thirteen. The ones with more stages actually divide the stages of those with fewer stages into more discrete sub-stages. Most schedules agree that there are four stages, but some schedules simply divide those four stages even further.

The four child development stages for schedules 0 to 6 years of age divide that segment into infant, ages 0 to 18 months, toddler, ages 18 months to 3 years, childhood, ages 3 to 5, and school age, ages 5 to 6.

Infancy can be sub-divided into 6 sub-divisions by age: month 1, 1 to 3 months, 3 to 6 months, 6 to 9 months, 9 to 12 months, and 12 to 18 months. By the end of infancy, the child is able to stand, walk or toddle, categorize, speak a few words, manipulate objects with gross actions, recognize pictures, and relate to others, perhaps with some anxiety, may wave, and is able to (to a degree) use a spoon. Toys are faithfully attended.

At the end of the toddler stage, the child walks, talks, climbs stairs, draws, stacks, plays with others, is toilet trained, requires only one nap, obeys simple commands, and baby fat has for the most part, disappeared.

From age 3 to 5, childhood proper, the child is able to run, skip on one foot, dress, brush teeth, feed self, knows right from left, recognizes and names colors and letters, draws shapes, plays games with other children, questions, and speaks fluently.

From ages 5 to 6, the child can skip on both feet, speaks with some malapropisms, draws complex shapes such as diamonds, is more independent, and capable of carrying out simple chores. The end of this stage shows the attainment of reason.

Child development stages describe average levels of attainment, but one should always keep in mind that children grow and develop at varying rates. The child who seemed small for her or his age, for instance, may end up being a towering basketball player. These schedules are to aid us in the assessment of a child's growth, but these are not hard-and-fast rules.

Use A Child Development Checklist - for the Joy of It!

A child development checklist is a simple way to monitor your child's development over the period of their childhood. A checklist will specify what an average child should have achieved or attained by a certain age. As you watch your child achieve or attain a level of competence, you're sure to feel the joy of it!

The problem with a child development checklist is that many parents regard these as 'rules' rather than guides. You might consider an item assigned to a specific age as something your child must have attained or achieved if your child is to be considered normal. It is true that such items are based on averages: an average child has attained this or that. If your child has not kept up with the average, you may fear that something is wrong with your child. While that is a possibility, it is by no means a necessity. Children grow at variable rates. A child slow to develop speech, for instance, might very well end up a language professor. As long as the child is exhibiting some progress, there is no cause for alarm. If your  child has not achieved or attained a certain level on a checklist, you should do what may be done to encourage development, and if the level has not been achieved or attained by the middle of the next stage of development, a parent should then consult their pediatrician. When using a child development checklist, always keep in mind that children develop at variable rates.

The following child development checklist lists those items commonly found on such lists for the first year of a child's life and is meant to represent what is common among such lists. Others may be more specific, but these lists usually sub-divide stages into more discrete periods. Because the stages are fairly short and development of traits may occur anytime within a stage, this child development checklist retains the more general grouping.

Age 0 to 4 months:   One foot tall, head/chest/abdomen equal circumference, eyes                    move in unison, eyes track hand movement, tearful cries, coos,
               gurgles, makes vowel sounds, recognizes smell of breast
                    milk, each month head size increases, smiles, squeals, turns
                head to sound, lifts head, pushes self up on arms, incipient
                    teeth.

Age 4 to 8 months:   28-30 inches tall, double birth weight, normal heart rate,
               locates sound, babbles with double syllables, more facial
               expressions, grasps, pulls, sits with support, stands with
               support, partial crawls, teeth appear, blinking, swallows
               soft foods, transfers objects between hands, holds bottle,                    plays peek-a-boo, reaches, reflexes increase.

Age 9 to 12 months:  One and a half times birth size, 20-21 lbs., or 3 times the
                birth weight, heart rate at 80 to 110, body temperature
                still affected by environment temperature, start of anterior
                fontanel closure, 8 to 10 teeth appear, hands                                  disproportionately large, eyes work together, but distance
                vision (over 13 to 20 ft) not developed, one finger
                exploration, pinches, stacks, holds and drops, pulls, barely
                stands, crawls on stairs, imitates, utters words, plays.
                Anxious around others.

Use this chart only to check your child's development, not to grade it. If you are concerned in any area of development, see your pediatrician. Above all, enjoy your baby's growth. It's part of the joy of parenting!

Child Language Development is the Development of a New World View!

Just imagine how wonderful the world must be to a newborn child. At first, it appears to a child as something glowing, noisy, hard or soft, full of smells and tastes. Then, it becomes even more fascinating and mysterious, with things taking shape, things moving, jumping in and out of sight, noises unraveling into music, smells into meals and flowers, the whole buzzing, sparkling sight of appearances merging into other appearances, from morning to night. Changes and states, changes and states, and all the while Mom and Dad are naming this, naming that. Out of this confusion and punctuations of moment and rest, child language development gathers together a world of words, of subjects and actions that their miraculous human minds put together as a world represented and expressed as language. How utterly wondrous is the human mind and our extraordinary power to speak!

Even though child language development is slow, occurring over years, even into adulthood and old age, as it occurs, we never cease to be impressed by its acquisition. Humans were definitely made for speech. Speech, language, is the expression of thoughts, ideas, emotions, perceptions, sensations, and imaginings, of our subjective and objective experiences. It is the means by which we order the world for ourselves and between ourselves. Some argue language is our true reality. The word lies behind our experiences of the world, they say, rather than the world lying behind our language. Whichever the case may be, in child language development we see both reality and language developing for the child simultaneously.

Child language development occurs in phases. In the first months of a child's life, the speech apparatus begins to develop. Cooing, gurgling, crying, all these are preparing the mouth, throat, and vocal cords for the more refined and coordinated physical actions involved in speech. They're vocalizing. By 3 months, they're making vowel sounds, and by six months, after playing with sounds, they're making two syllable sounds. Between 7 and 12 months they're babbling, angel's speech, and around 13 months you'll hear them speak a word or two. By 18 months they're speaking more distinctly, and at 3 years they've got questions, hundreds of them. At the age of 4, they say the cutest things, using words with many malapropisms, and by 5 years they're speaking full sentences. From there it's speaking paragraphs with central themes.

The words that we use and that our children learn refer to objects and processes, their denotation, but also to related ideas or feelings, attitudes, implications, to connotations that are not the object or process the word points to. As children learn words, usually from adults or siblings, but also from peers, they learn the names of things and actions, but also attitudes towards these new words. Language development is also attitude development, value building. Language development and emotional development are closely related.

Child language development is a reflection of the development of the child's world view, of the child's understanding of reality. It's a wondrous process and one we should aid in its development without turning off our children to the joys of language. Look further into this power that distinguishes us from all the other creatures on earth. In the beginning, and throughout our lives, it's the word that holds our reality.