Theories of how children grow

Theories of how children grow

Psychologists have come up with several theories that show how children grow. These theories give details almost every feature of how people change and how they grow throughout the childhood period. They focus much on issues of development. Parents should not take the study of child development for granted. They are supposed to view it as a serious matter since many theories have come along to explain the changes that take place during the early part of life. Some of these theories will be discussed below.

The first child development theory is Freud’s Psychosexual Developmental Theory. With this assumption, child growth appears in a sequence of stages focused on diverse pleasure areas of the body. In every scene, many children face some conflicts that play a significant function in the course of their growth. The theory of Freud came with a suggestion that says the energy of the libido is mostly focused on diverse zones at particular stages. It suggests that when a child fails to progress through any specific scene, it can cause a fixation at the stage of development. Achievement of each step leads to the growth of healthy adult behavior. Some other theories believe that characters do continue to change and grow over the whole life. But when it comes to Freud’s theory, he thought that it is an ancient knowledge that plays the most significant function in shaping the growth of children. Regarding this theory, personality is developed by the age of five years.

The next theory of child development is behavioral child growth theory. This theory shows how environmental connections influence behavior, and these behaviors are based on the opinions of other theorists like that of John B. Waston. Some methods of child development focus only on observable characters. Growth is sometimes viewed as a reaction to rewards, punishment, and support. The theory of behavioral child development is different from other approaches because it does not give any consideration to subjective opinions or feelings. This theory focuses on how experiences shape children to become who they are right now.

Children grow up and develop quickly in their first five years across the four primary areas of development. These areas include physical and motor development, psychosocial development, cognitive morals, language, and literacy growth. Motor development is the physical development and strengthening of children’s bones, muscles, and the capability to move and touch the environment. When it comes to physical development, the first thing that a parent notices in the early physical growth period of the babies are increasing the size of the body. Different body parts show different growth patterns to the age of the child. The body size category of a child includes the skeleton, muscles, and internal organs. These parts show the rapid growth during the first and the third development period of early life than in middle childhood development. At the age of three, children start losing their baby fat. Due to this, child limbs begin to develop longer, and the abdominal muscles begin to tighten the appearance of the abdomen.

At this age, children also start growing taller at around 38 inches. But by the age of six, children reach a height of approximately 46 inches and weigh up to 46 pounds. The neural system, which is the head, brain, spinal, and the intricate nervous network of a child, becomes fully developed by the age of six years. But when it comes to the reproductive organs, they grow very slowly until a child reaches the adolescence stage. Also, motor development is essential to the educational psychologist because it gives way for the later smooth learning on the part of the child’s life. In early child motor development, the children first show reasonable control over the arm movement. They then try to move the whole hand, and finally, they try to hold something using their hands. The new motor competencies of a child are integrated into more substantial and more coherent whole units of motor behavior. Hence, the process of differentiation shows the process of hierarchic integration, which completes the growth process in motor development.

The second area of childhood development is psychosocial development. In this stage, there are some stages of growth over the lifespan of the infancy to adulthood. One of the steps is trust versus mistrust. In this stage, from the first day a child is born to the 12th month, he should gain knowledge that adults are to be trusted. He only learns this when an adult provides the essential basic needs for survival. The caregivers should ensure that the child gains their trust.

On the other hand, if a child does not receive the basic needs he wants, he may develop a feeling of fear and mistrust. The next stage is autonomy versus shame. This period starts at the age of 1 to 3 years. It is a time when children learn how to control their actions on their own to the environment. They start to play with toys and dressing. Once a child is denied this opportunity by the caregivers to perform on her background, he may begin to doubt her abilities, which may cause her to have low self-esteem.

The next stage is Initiative versus guilt. During the age of 3 to 6, children are competent in starting their actions and control their world through social interactions and play. At this stage, a caregiver who allows his baby to explore inside limits and supports his child’s choice, such children develop enough self-confidence and feel the logic of purpose. But for children who do not receive the support of their parents, they do build a feeling of guilt. The third area of childhood development is cognitive moral language and literacy development. During childhood development, there is a stage of cognitive development. In this stage, children gain abilities to think, solve problems, and teach themselves how to communicate. For example, at the age of 1 to 2, toddlers start to play with some objects, and they also gain the knowledge that when somebody leaves the room, definitely they will come back.

They are also able to see the pictures in the books, and they can point at those objects when asked to find them. The preschool-age children, who range at the age of 3 to 5, also have steady progress in cognitive development. At this stage, children can calculate, define colors, tell their full names, and also they can come up with some decisions on their own. They even start to enjoy the use of jokes in stories that are narrated by their teachers and caregivers.

A child’s social surroundings impact their cognitive growth and learning achievement. Children who connect themselves in better social relationships do well academically in school compared to those children who don’t engage in that relationship. The children who live in social surroundings with excellent housing stability are less expected to be absent from school. Children who stay in poor neighborhoods are more expected to drop out of learning institutions. The next impact is that those children who grow up in optimistic social surroundings have fewer risk-taking behaviors. These kids are less likely to have accidents compared to those who don’t grow in such situations.

In conclusion, kids who have an excellent social relationship have more self-esteem compared to children who don’t have. These children do not experience problems like having depression and anxiety. Also, these types of children have more motivation in life compare to the rest of the children. Positive social surroundings also improve physical healthiness for the kids. It reduces the risk of eating disorders, it also increases the likelihood of being immunized and also it minimizes the risk of teenage pregnancy.