Child development is a process that every child goes through, beginning at birth and peaking at the age of six. During these years a child is growing in domains such as social/emotional, gross and fine motor, cognitive and language development. It is critically important that parents and caregivers understand that all children do not develop at the same rate/time and that children may achieve various developmental milestones earlier or later than the average but still be within the normal range.
Social Emotional Development
During this stage of development, children learn the sense of self, responsibility for self and others and prosocial behaviors. Social emotional development engages a child in showing the ability to adjust to new situations, exhibiting appropriate trust in adults, recognizing their own feelings and managing them appropriately and beginning to stand up for his rights. Also during this child stage the child presents the ability to self-direct, becoming independent, respecting the environment, such as a classroom, following routines and rules, playing with other children, using thinking skills to resolve conflict and acknowledging and responding appropriately to the feelings of others.
Physical Development: Fine and Gross Motor
This stage entails the child becoming physically active in working with the coordination of the brain and muscles throughout the body. For gross motor skill development a child will demonstrate such abilities like crawling, jumping, hopping and galloping. The child will also work on climbing up and down, balance while moving, as well as throwing, kicking and catching skills.
Fine motor skills are developing, such as physical components like the child controlling small muscles in the hand, coordination in eye-hand movement and utilizing tools for writing and drawing.
Cognitive Development
The cognitive development of a child is greatly significant because it enhances her ability to learn and problem solve, develop logical thinking as well as representation and symbolic thinking. During this stage a child pursues the challenges of classifying objects, recognizing patterns and repeating them and playing make-belief with objects. Children also show awareness of time concepts and sequence and the uses of numbers and counting.
Language Development
Listening, speaking, reading and writing are elements of language development in children. A child developing in this stage practices hearing and discriminating the sounds of language, understanding and following directions, answering and asking questions and actively participating in conversations. Children also show excitement and enjoyment reading, understanding print concepts, comprehending and interpreting meaning from books and other texts as well as writing letters and words.
