CHAPTER 5 I FACTORS AFFECTING GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the chapter, you should be able to:
1. Learn about the maternal and child nutrition and sensory stimulation.
2. Differentiate the various age -related changes, universal changes, group specific and
individual changes.
3. Understand about parenting, modeling and peer group interactions.
AGE-RELATED CHANGES: UNIVERSAL CHANGES
Introduction
Age- Related Changes may be gradual or rapid and can reflect positive, negative, or no
change from previous levels of functioning. Changes occur at the cellular level and are
partially explained by biological theories of adult development and aging. Biological
changes influence psychological and interpersonal/social developmental changes, which
are often described by stage theories of human development. Stage theories typically
focus on "age-appropriate" developmental tasks to be achieved at each stage.
Developmental Stages
As the child grows, you may find yourself searching for clues to their behavior. As a
parent, you may hear the words “developmental stages.” This is just another way of
saying your child is moving through a certain time period in the growing-up process. At
times, she may be fascinated with her hands, her feet, and her mouth. As she grows, she
may get into everything. Lock your doors and cabinets, and take a deep breath during
those exploration years! Then there will be an age when independence is all she wants. At
every stage, what she needs is your love, understanding, and time.
Children learn in many different ways. Each child has his own way of learning—some
learn visually, others through touch, taste, and sound. Watch a group of children and you’ll
understand at once what this means. One child will sit and listen patiently, another cannot
wait to move and count beads. Another wants you to show her the answer over and over.
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Children also learn in different ways depending on their developmental stage. One thing
we know is all children love to learn new things by exploring and discovering. Children
love to solve problems during play and in daily activities.
A child care provider who understands children’s learning styles and includes reading,
learning numbers, art activities, rhyming, and problem solving in your child’s daily
activities. Also, find out how your provider encourages your child to understand and
benefit from daily activities and experiences.
Ages and Stages
Depending upon the age of your child, his learning style and personality, your child will
have different needs. The first five years are especially crucial for physical, intellectual,
and social-emotional development. Keep your child’s personality and age in mind when
looking for child care experiences and activities.
Sensitive Period
Stage at which a child may be particularly responsive to specific forms of experience or
particularly influenced by their absence. Child between 6 to 12 months under care of a
nanny in the absence of working mother.
Critical Period
Individual is most sensitive to the presence or absence of some particular experience. A
limited time in which an event can occur, usually to result in some kind of transformation.
Refers to the brain’s ability to CHANGE throughout life. The brain has the amazing ability
to reorganize itself by forming new connections between brain cells. Other studies have
looked at children deprived of certain experiences due to illness (such as temporary
blindness), or social isolation (such as feral children). Many of the studies investigating a
critical period for language acquisition have focused on deaf children of hearing parents.
Language and cognitive development are especially important during first six months to
three years of life. When children spend their early years in a less stimulating
environment, brain development is affected and leads to cognitive, social and behavioral
delay. High levels of adversely and stress during early childhood can increase the risk of
stress-related diseases and learning difficulties. Fifteen of Bhutanese children aged
between 2 to 9 years were identified having problem in cognitive development. Country
once of Save the children and Ministry of Education have established Early Childhood
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Care and Development Centers in the rural areas of Bhutan to maximize the development
of young children and to educate the caregiver of their responsibility in nurturing and
caring children for healthy development.
Universal Changes
Universal changes are changes all individuals undergo as biological organism. We
all go through the process of growth and maturation as we age.
Stage theories hold that the sequence of development is universal. For example,
in cross-cultural studies of language development, children from around the world reach
language milestones in a similar sequence (Gleitman & Newport, 1995). Infants in all
cultures coo before they babble. They begin babbling at about the same age and utter
their first word around 12 months old. Yet we live in diverse contexts that have a unique
effect on each of us. For example, researchers once believed that motor development
followed one course for all children regardless of culture. However, childcare practices
vary by culture, and different practices have been found to accelerate or inhibit the
achievement of developmental milestones such as sitting, crawling, and walking (Karasik,
Adolph, Tamis-LeMonda, & Bornstein, 2010).
For instance, let’s look at the Aché society in Paraguay. They spend a significant
amount of time foraging in forests. While foraging, Aché mothers carry their young
children, rarely putting them down in order to protect them from getting hurt in the forest.
Consequently, their children walk much later: They walk around 23–25 months old, in
comparison to infants in Western cultures who begin to walk around 12 months old.
However, as Aché children become older, they are allowed more freedom to move about,
and by about age 9, their motor skills surpass those of U.S. children of the same age:
Aché children are able to climb trees up to 25 feet tall and use machetes to chop their way
through the forest (Kaplan & Dove, 1987). As you can see, our development is influenced
by multiple contexts, so the timing of basic motor functions may vary across cultures.
However, the functions are present in all societies.
All physical changes that happen from infancy to adulthood are programmed and
re-part of the plan for the physical body.
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Physical Development
Ages 2 through 6 are the early childhood years, or preschool years. Like infants
and toddlers, preschoolers grow quickly—both physically and cognitively. A short chubby
toddler who can barely talk suddenly becomes a taller, leaner child who talks incessantly.
Especially evident during early childhood is the fact that development is truly integrated:
The biological, psychological, and social changes occurring at this time (as well as
throughout the rest of the life span) are interrelated.
Physical changes
Children begin to lose their baby fat, or chubbiness, around age 3. Toddlers soon
acquire the leaner, more athletic look associated with childhood. The child's trunk and
limbs grow longer, and the abdominal muscles form, tightening the appearance of the
stomach. Even at this early stage of life, boys tend to have more muscle mass than girls.
The preschoolers' physical proportions also continue to change, with their heads still
being disproportionately large, but less so than in toddlerhood.
Three-year-old preschoolers may grow to be about 38 inches tall and weigh about
32 pounds. For the next 3 years, healthy preschoolers grow an additional 2 to 3 inches
and gain from 4 to 6 pounds per year. By age 6, children reach a height of about 46
inches and weigh about 46 pounds. Of course, these figures are averages and differ from
child to child, depending on socioeconomic status, nourishment, health, and heredity
factors.
Brain development
Brain and nervous system developments during early childhood also continue to
be dramatic. The better developed the brain and nervous systems are, the more complex
behavioral and cognitive abilities children are capable of.
The brain is comprised of two halves, the right and left cerebral hemispheres.
Lateralization refers to the localization of assorted functions, competencies, and skills in
either or both hemispheres. Specifically, language, writing, logic, and mathematical skills
seem to be located in the left hemisphere, while creativity, fantasy, artistic, and musical
skills seem to be located in the right hemisphere. Although the hemispheres may have
separate functions, these brain masses almost always coordinate their functions and work
together.
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The two cerebral hemispheres develop at different rates, with the left hemisphere
developing more fully in early childhood (ages 2 to 6), and the right hemisphere
developing more fully in middle childhood (ages 7 to 11). The left hemisphere
predominates earlier and longer, which may explain why children acquire language so
early and quickly.
Motor Skills
Motor skills are physical abilities or capacities. Gross motor skills, which include
running, jumping, hopping, turning, skipping, throwing, balancing, and dancing, involve the
use of large bodily movements. Fine motor skills, which include drawing, writing, and tying
shoelaces, involve the use of small bodily movements. Both gross and fine motor skills
develop and are refined during early childhood; however, fine motor skills develop more
slowly in preschoolers. If you compare the running abilities of a 2-year-old and a
6-year-old, for example, you may notice the limited running skills of the 2-year-old. But the
differences are even more striking when comparing a 2-year-old and 6-year-old w h o are
tying shoelaces. The 2-year-old has difficulty grasping the concept before ever attempting
or completing the task.
Albert Bandura's theory of observational learning is applicable to preschoolers'
learning gross and fine motor skills. Bandura states that once children are biologically
capable of learning certain behaviors, children must do the following in order to develop
new skills:
1. Observe the behavior in others.
2. Form a mental image of the behavior.
3. Imitate the behavior.
4. Practice the behavior.
5. Be motivated to repeat the behavior.
In other words, children must be ready, have adequate opportunities, and be
interested in developing motor skills to become competent at those skills.
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Adolescence
Is the period of transition between childhood and adulthood. Children who are entering
adolescence are going through many changes (physical, intellectual, personality and
social developmental). Adolescence begins at puberty, which now occurs earlier, on
average, than in the past. The end of adolescence is tied to social and emotional factors
and can be somewhat ambiguous.
What are the physical changes of adolescence?
There are three main physical changes that come with adolescence:
The growth spurt (an early sign of maturation);
Primary sex characteristics (changes in the organs directly related to reproduction);
Secondary sex characteristics (bodily signs of sexual maturity that do not directly involve
reproductive organs)
What are the intellectual changes of adolescence?
Adolescent thinking is on a higher level than that of children. Children are only able to
think logically about the concrete, the here and now. Adolescents move beyond these
limits and can think in terms of what might be true, rather than just what they see is true.
They are able to deal with abstractions, test hypotheses and see infinite possibilities. Yet
adolescents still often display egocentric behaviors and attitudes.
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Social and Emotional Development
Social and emotional development are closely intertwined. Both emotional regulation
(remaining in control of emotions) and emotional expression (effective communication
about emotions) are necessary ingredients for successful and rewarding interpersonal
relationships. Furthermore, advanced cognitive development enhances the quality of
interpersonal relationships because it enables youth to better understand the wants,
needs, feelings, and motivations of others. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that just as
youths' thoughts, emotions, and identities are becoming more complex during
adolescence, their social relationships are becoming more complex as well.
Adolescents will begin to form many different types of relationships, and many of their
relationships will become more deeply involved and more emotionally intimate. During
children's younger years, their social sphere included their family, a few friends, a couple
teachers, and perhaps a coach or other adult mentor. But during adolescence, teens'
social networks greatly expand to include many more people, and many different types of
relationships. Therefore, adolescent social development involves a dramatic change in the
quantity and quality of social relationships.
Younger children will often use the word "friend" to refer to any other child whom they
happen to know. However, as children mature and become adolescents, they begin to
differentiate friends from acquaintances, indicating a more mature understanding of the
qualitatively different ways to know another person. Likewise, youth develop the capacity
to form closer, more intimate relationships with others. They also begin to form romantic
attachments; and, as the desire for a romantic relationship increases, youth may begin to
question their sexual orientation and gender identity.
Youth must also learn to balance multiple relationships that compete for their time,
energy, and attention. Instead of just a single teacher and coach as in grade school, there
are now several teachers and several coaches each with different requirements and
priorities. Higher education and gainful employment also require increasingly
sophisticated social skills such as the ability to form cooperative relationships with
classmates in order to complete group projects or assignments; learning to interact with
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their boss in an appropriately deferential and respectful manner; or working alongside a
diverse set of co-workers in a team-like atmosphere.
New communication technologies enable youth to create and to maintain social bonds in
completely different ways: e.g., email, chat rooms, mobile phones with "texting," online
social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, video communication such as Skype®,
and online gaming. These technologies have dramatically expanded the size and
complexity of social networks by: 1) changing the way youth relate to one another, 2)
increasing the amount of time spent staying connected with one another and, 3) redefining
what it means to be a "friend." In fact, it is quite possible to have a "virtual" friendship
without ever having direct face-to-face personal contact. Parents are often amazed and
confused by these vastly different means of socializing and connecting with others.
External Factor which can influence the development of children and young people
Poverty and Deprivation
Poverty and deprivation do have a significant effect on how a child develops in and
outside the school. For instance, if a child is living in poverty, then parents are not able to
afford to buy high quality food which means eating minimal or the wrong quality of food
can lead to health problems. This can affect the development of the pupil in school by not
eating properly they are not able to concentrate in class. If a child is living in high rise
council flats, they don’t have access to a garden therefore they become deprived of
outdoor play and are not able to develop their physical (gross motor skills). Statistics have
commonly shown that children who come from deprived and poor backgrounds are less
likely to thrive and achieve well in school, as parents find it extremely difficult to manage
the child’s needs. This can have a severe impact on all areas of the development as they
will not be able to fit in with other children at school and affect the way in which pupils are
able to respond to different situations.
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Personal Choices
The choices children make as they grow older affect their development, this can be to do
with the choice of friends they may have, groups they interact with any other extra-
curricular activity they may want to do and so on. If a child makes the choice between
healthy food and fatty food and knows the outcome of both but still decides to take an
unhealthy diet this will affect the health of a child such as diabetes, obesity tooth decay
which lead to further health problems as the child grows up. This is why it is important that
from time to time they may need advice and support from adults/ parents to enable them
to make choices which are right for them.
Looked after/care status
If a child is being looked after or in care i.e. they are separated from their family for any
reason this can affect their development in many ways. The problems children suffer while
being looked after in care is that they have less opportunity to make positive relationships
with key figures, due to already having a negative experience of being separated from
familiar figures which were close to them this could be parents. Further problems then
lead to them not being able to relate to others and can cause behavioral problems and
disorders. Their ability to communicate with others can become frustrating and behavior
starts to get aggressive as they can’t express their emotions which then lead to isolation
and withdrawal. This is not to say that the school do not work closely with carers or social
workers in fact they are monitored on a regular basis to ensure that they are making
expected levels of progress.
Education
The opportunities education provides for them is the way a child and young person will
see how it helps them to achieve success and prosperity in their lives. Parent’s education
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and their feelings towards education have an impact on the way a child develops and how
they see it they need re assurance that their parents value education so therefore it is
important to go to school and learn as this will help them with skills they will need as they
grow older. This does not mean that every child that attends school will have any previous
education this can be due to the fact that they are from another country where education
begins at a later stage. Alternatively, they may have come from a different country where
English is not their first language or may never have spoken English, therefore they may
need to have additional support until they are settled.
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