As toddlers transition to young childhood between the ages of three and six, they will continue to amaze you with their new abilities. Your young child's body is rapidly changing and the prefrontal cortex is maturing. According to "The Developing Person," the maturation of the prefrontal cortex causes your child's emotions to be more specific to a targeted stimuli. He is able to control laughing and crying. Your child will also be less impulsive. These new senses of control make learning new skills easier than in the toddler years.
Growth
By the age of six, although smaller, your child's body resembles adult proportions. The lower body begins lengthening and baby fat turns to muscle giving young children a much slimmer appearance than toddlers. According to "The Developing Person," between the ages of two and six, a well nourished child will grow three inches in height and gain four and a half pounds. The average six-year-old weighs between 40 and 50 pounds and is approximately three and half feet tall.
Motor Skills
Motor skills are broken into fine and gross motor skills. Fine motor skills involve small movements of the hands and fingers; gross motor skills involve large body movements. The center of gravity moves from the breastbone to the belly button, which enables many gross motor skills, such as cartwheels, according to "The Developing Person." By their seventh birthdays, many children are able to kick and catch a ball, ride a bike, play tag, jump rope, and run without losing their balance. As for fine motor skills, according to North Dakota State University, the average seven-year-old can string beads onto a string, tie shoes, cut shapes and print letters. By this age, many have begun using a dominant hand while writing.
Language
According to "The Developing Person," language comes easily to young children because unlike adults and teenagers, young children are not self-conscious about what they say. Young children regular practice their language skills while talking to peers, adults and sometimes even themselves. A common mistake young children use while developing language skills is their generalization of grammatical rules. For example, a young child may know to put "ed" at the end of past tense words, but not know there are exceptions, so you have sentences like "I taked the bus" or "we runed to the store." According to Education.com, parents should not focus on what is said incorrectly because most children naturally outgrow this stage. According to "The Developing Person," by age six, most children know more than 10,000 words.
Logic
Young children often run into obstacles with situations that require logical thoughts. According to "The Developing Person," young children focus too much attention on one idea while excluding others. For example, a young child may not understand that wolves and dogs are related since dogs live in houses and wolves live in the wild. Young children also focus on appearance, so if a child sees a man with a ponytail, the child may be confused about the man's gender based on the ponytail.
Encouragement
Parents and caregivers can help in the physical and cognitive development of young children by increasing activities available. Many schools and community centers have a variety of sports that young children can enjoy which helps with their motor skills. In addition, allowing your child to play outside with friends is a great way for children to burn calories and build muscle tone since many activities involve running, climbing and riding bikes. Limit the amount of time your child spends in front of the television set or playing video games, since these activities do not assist in their physical development. As for language, activity books aimed specifically to your child's age can help increase their cognitive abilities. Many of these books offer puzzles, shapes, numbers, letters and foreign languages.
References
- "The Developing Person: Through the Life Span"; Kathleen Stassen Berger; 2008
- North Dakota State University: Supporting Physical Growth and Development in Young Children
- Education.com: Young Children's Oral Language Development
