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Early Childhood Development 2-7, Theory of Mind, Gender Development,…
Early Childhood Development 2-7
Biosocial Development
Growth Patterns
Height and weight increase
Children grow about 3 inches (8 centimeters) each year.
They gain almost 4.5 pounds (kilograms) each year.
By age 6, the average child in an affluent
Is at least 3.5 feet tall (more than 110 centimeters).
Weighs between 40 and 50 pounds (between 18 and 23 kilograms).
Looks lean.
Has adult-like body proportions.
Children slim down, and the lower body lengthens.
The center of gravity moves from the breast to the belly.
Health
Oral Health
The most immediate harm from surar is cavities and decaying teeth.
Children need to see a dentist and brush their teeth regularly
Poor oral health harms permanent teeth and can jaw malformation, chewing difficulties, and speech problems.
Infected teeth can affect the rest of the child's body.
Allergies
An estimated 6 to 8 percent of children have a specific food allergy
Common culprits: milk, eggs, peanuts, true nuts, soy, wheat, fish, and shellfish.
Injury Prevention
The goal of child care is a happy, productive, and purposeful life for every child. Accidents are a major cause of death for young children.
Injury Control Terminology
Minor mishaps (scratches and bruises) are bound to occur, and motor and social skills benefit from activity.
Children need injury control.
Serious harm is unlikely if safety measures are in place (e.g., safety surfaces, car seats, bicycle helments).
Instead of "accident prevention," use "injury control" or "harm reduction."
Levels of Prevention
Three levels of prevention apply to every health and safety issue:
Primary prevention
: Considers the overall conditions that affect the likelihood of harm.
Example
Sidewalks, pedestrian, overpasses, streetlights, traffic circles, better car designs, stronger penalties for drunk driving, reduction of traffic via improved mass transit, laws requiring seatbelts and helments.
Secondary prevention
: Averts harm in high-risk situations or for vulnerable individuals.
Example
Crossing guards, flashing lights on school buses, salt on icy roads, warning signs before blind curves, speed bumps, walk/don't walk signals.
Tertiary prevention
: Begins after an injury has occurred, limiting damage.
Example
Laws against hit-and-run drivers, speedy ambulances, efficient emergency room procedures, effective follow-up care.
Cognitive Development
Psychosocial Development
Emotional Development
In early childhood, emotional development is key, Actions that are typical at one age might be indicative of problems if they occurred at another age.
Emotional Regulation
Emotional regulation is a preeminent psychosocial task between ages 2 and 6.
If 's a lifelong endeavor that's a crucial aspect of executive function. By age 6, most children can manage their emotions without explosive outbursts. Factors affecting the development of emotion regulation include genetic differences, attachment, patterns, trauma experiences, and socialization.
Maturation: Improves every year
Learning: Children learn from mentors tactics for managing actions.
Culture: Children regulate their emotions in accord with their national culture as well as their family one.
Researchers have found that mothers and children regulate or deregulate each other's emotions. Responding to a child's joy can decrease stress hormones and increase endorphins.
Effortful Control
It is more difficult when a perosn is in pain, tired, or hungry, but it can provide crucial protection.
Children with strong effortful control are more likely to regulate their emotions in hostile environments.
Effortful control, executive function, and emotion regulation are related constructs.
Extrinisic Motivation
Comes from the outside, the perosn. External praise or some other reinforcement is the reason for action.
If an extrinsic reward is removed, the behavior may stop unless it has a habit.
Play
Timeless and universal and is believed to be children's most productive and enjoyable activity.
Social Playing
Social play is beneficial for children.
Sociodramatic Play:
When children act out in various roles and plots.
By about age 4, children use their imagination with peers to create dramas that advance psychosocial development
Explore and rehearse social roles.
Explain their ideas and persuade playmates.
Regulate emotions by pretending to be afraid, angry, brave, and so on.
Develop self-concept in a nonthreatening context.
Parenting Styles
Diana Baumrind (1967, 1971) identifed three parenting styles
Authoritarian
Strict
punitive
demanding
Permissive
lenient
indulgent
non-demanding
Authoritative
balanced
warm
demanding
Physical Punishment
Methods
Time-out
description
Short period of isolation.
Effectiveness
Effective in stopping misbehavior, but may not teach alternative behaviors.
Statistics
A significant 63% of children aged 2 to 5 in low and moderate-income countries have experienced physical punishment within the last month.
23% of children over 9 years old in the United States are spanked.
17% of children in low and moderate-income nations experience severe violence.
Theory of Mind
The understanding of how other people think. It's the ability to recognize that others have their own beliefs, desires, intentions, and emotions that might be different from one's own.
Understanding Differences: Initially, children believe everyone thinks as they do. However, around age 4, they begin to realize that others can have different thoughts and knowledge.
Social Interaction: Social interactions, especially with siblings, play a crucial role in advancing Theory of Mind.
Experience: The prefrontal cortex matures significantly between ages 4 and 5, which helps advance ToM.
Lying: One sign of developing ToM is when young children start to lie to avoid punishment.
Brain Development: Nurture is crucial, and children develop ToM through conversations with adults and playing with peers.
Gender Development
Theories of Sex and Gender
Behaviorism
suggests that gender distinctions result from reinforcement, punishment, and social learning.
emphasizes the role of environment in shaping behavior.
Cognitive Theory
explains that chilren develop a gender schema
emphasizes the role of cognitive development in shaping identity.
Sociocultural Theory
recognizes that gender distinctions are pervasive in every culture
emphasizes the role of culture in shaping gender roles.
Evolutionary Theory
holds that sexual passion is a basic drive because reproduction is needed for every species to continue.
emphasizes the role of biology in shaping gender identity.
Psychoanalytic Theory: proposes that children develop
gender identity
through their relationships with their parents and their understanding of their own bodies.
Becoming Boys and Girls: Sex and Gender
Even 2-year-olds correctly use
sex-specific labels.
Young children become aware of
gender differences
in clothes, toys, playmates, and future careers, and they typically become quite strict about male-female distinctions.
Freud's theory: emphasizes attraction to the opposite-sex.
Aggression
Four general types of aggression
Instrumental aggression
Definition
Hurtful behavior aimed at gaining something
Comments
Apparent from age 2 to 6, involves objects more than people.
Reactive aggression
Definition
Impulsive retaliation for a hurt.
Comments
Indicates a lack of emotion regulation, characteristic of 2-years-olds.
Relational aggression
Definition
Nonphysical acts aimed at harming social connections.
Comments
Involves a personal attack, can be very hurtful.
Bullying aggression
Definition
Unprovoked, repeated physical or verbal attack,
Comments
A sign of poor emotion regulation, can harm both bullies and victims.
Early childhood is prime time for both
aggressive behavior
and
victimization
. Almost every young child has been both an aggressor and a victim.
Sex
and
gender
distinctions are recognized by 2-year-olds, significant to 5-year-olds, and accepted as proper by 10-year-olds.
The concepts of
sex
and
gender
are crucial in understanding human development.
Sex
refers to the biological differences between males and females, while
gender
refers to the social and cultural expectations associated with being male or female.
Nutrition
Obesity Among Children
Obesity
(defined as being the heaviest 5 percent of children measured 50 years ago) correlates with adversity and is linked to depression.
Increases the risk of early death from heart disease, diabetes, strokes, and suicide.
External conditions affect eating, as seen with increases in childhood obesity during COVID-19 lockdowns.
Preventing Overweight
Children in food-insecure households may learn to overeat whenever food is available.
Early childhood is the best time for prevention because eating habits tend to endure.
Although starvation is rare, 2-to-6-year-olds can be malnourished due to small appetites being satiated by unhealthy snacks. Wasting and stunting are possible if the food is scarece. The main nutritional problem for young children is overweight.
Balanced Diet
Young children who eat more dark-green and orange vegetables and less friend food gain bone mass and less fat.
Values regarding food have changed, which can make intergenerational cooperation difficult.
Prevention is better than reversal of destructive patterns.
Nutritional Deficiencies
Most young children consume enough calories but may lack adequare iron, zinc, and calcium.
North American children now drink less milk, leading to less calcium intake.
Advertisements may be misleading (e.g., sweetened juice with added vitamin C.
The American Heart Association recommends no more than six teaspoons of sugar per day.
Initiative Versus Guilt
Emotion regulation is part of the Erikson's third development stage, initiative versus guilt.
Children learn to balance pride and guilt.
Young children often display protective optimisim, which helps them try new things.
An optimistic self-concept protects young children from guilt and shame.
Other Children
American sociologist Mildred Paten described the five stages of play
Solitary
A child plays alone, unaware of other children playing nearby.
Typical age: 1
Onlooker
A child watches other children play
Typical age: 2
Parallel
Children play in similar ways but not together.
Typical age: 3
Associative
Children interact, sharing toys, but not taking turns.
Typical age: 4
Cooperative
Children play together, creating dramas or taking turns.
Typical age: 5
Roughhousing
Rough-and-tumble
play looks rough, but children seem to tumble over one another.
It is more common among males and flourishes best in ample space with minimal supervison.
Fathers are particularly likely to engage it with their children.
Neurological benefits are evident, and longitudinal research finds that boys who played carefully but roughly with peers and parents become caring, compassionate aduls.
Young children pay best with peers.
From ages 2 to 6, children learn how to join a peer group, manage conflict, take turns, find friends, and keep the action going.
Executive Function
At every age, a person's ability to think depends on
executive function
, a cohesive cluster of cognitive abilites that is nascent at age 2.
Three functions of Executive Function
inhibition: The ability to control responses and think before acting.
Memory: Remembering what was seen or heard recently.
Flexibility: The ability to see things from another perspective and adapt to changing situations.
Developing Executive Function
Engaging children's minds and developing their language skills is essential.
Regular sleep, good nutrition, and exercise enhance executive function, while obesity diminishes it.
Curricula that encourage children to verbalize emotions, plan actions, and work with others can advance executive function.
Pride and Prejudice
A young child's self-concept often includes pride in their attributes.
Young children spontaneously seek to understand which differences among people are significant and may pride superficial traits.
Prosocial and Antisocial Emotions
The survival of the human species has depended on
*protection
,
cooperative*
and even
sacrifice
for one another. For that reason,
morality
is encoded in our DNA. With the
cognitive developments
of early childhood and heightened engagement with peers, these inherent moral impulses are reinforced. Children develop
empathy
, an understanding of other poeple's feelings and concerns.
Children's prosocial behavior
Helping others
Sharing
Including others in games
Showing kindness without obvious personal benefit.
Piaget's Preoperational Stage
Preoperational Intelligence: Piage's second stage of cognitive development.
Obstacles to Logic
Centration: Focusing on one aspect of a situation.
Connection with
Egocentrism: Contemplating the world from a personal perspective.
Focus on Appearance: Believing things are as they appear.
Static Reasoning: Believing the world is unchanging.
Irreversibility: Not understanding that actions can be reversed.
Conservation: Understanding that the amount of something remains the same despite changes in appearance.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): Vygotsky's concept of the intellectual arena where new skills can be mastered with help.
Scaffolding: Temporary support provided to help someone learn.
Private Speech: Talking to oneself to review, decide, and explain events.
Social Mediation: Using language to facilitate social interaction and learning.
Overimitation: Copying meaningless actions and habits.
Symbolic Thought: Understanding that objects and words can represent something else.
Vygotsky's Social Learning Theory
Key Principles
Lev Vygotsky emphasized that cognitive development is shaped primarily through social and cultural contexts, rather than just individual development. According to Vygotsky, a person's thinking is fundamentally shaped by interactions with others, with culture and mentorship playing crucial roles in cognitive growth.
Social Context of Learning
Unlike Piaget, who focused on individual development, Vygotsky believed that learning is inherently a social process. His theory emphasizes
Learning through social interaction
The critical role of adults and peers as mentors
Cultural influence on cognitive development
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
The ZPD is an intellectual arena in which new ideas and skills can be mastered. It represents:
The gap between what a child can do independently and what they can achieve with guidance
The range of skills that are just beyond a child's current capabilities but can be developed with assistance
The optimal space where learning occurs
Scaffolding
Scaffolding refers to the temporary, sensitive support provided by mentors to help children advance within their ZPD
Requires joint engagement between the learner and mentor
Encourages children to push forward in their developmental zone
Support is gradually removed as the learner gains competence
Can include questions, hints, examples, and demonstrations
Language as a Cognitive Tool
Vygotsky highlighted the pivotal role of language in guiding children's cognitive development:
Private Speech
Children talk to themselves to review, decide, and explain events
Begins as audible self-talk in young children
Gradually becomes internal as children mature
Aids in cognitive development and self-regulation
Social Mediation
Speech enables mentors to guide learners within their ZPD
Helps children learn about numbers, recall memories, and follow routines
Language facilitates social interaction and learning
Applications in Education
Vygotsky's theory has numerous practical applications in education
Teachers providing scaffolding by breaking down complex tasks
Using dialogue and questioning to promote thinking
Collaborative learning activities where peers work together
STEM learning that builds on children's current understanding
Creating learning environments that encourage social interaction
Modern Relevance
Vygotsky's ideas continue to influence education through
Emphasis on the social nature of learning
Recognition that knowledge is co-constructed
Awareness that children learn most effectively with appropriate support
Understanding that culture shapes cognitive development
Induction
description
Discussing the infraction with the child.
Effectivness
Encourages understanding and empathy, but may not be effective for young children.
Positive reinforcement
description
Rewarding good behavior
Effectivness
Encourages good behavior, but may not address underlying issues.
Fat is replaced by muscle.
The average
Body Mass Index (BMI)
is lower at ages 5 and 6 than at any other time in life.
Injury control
: Suggests that the impact of an injury can be limited.
Harm reduction
: Implies that harm can be minimized.
Accident
: Implies that an injury is random and unpredictable.
Adults should encourage children with honest praise for specific work, which can buttress intrinsic motivation and self-esteem.
If social play is prevented, children are less happy and less able to learn.