Development of a Four Year Old Child Essays

This child observation will draw on a child developmental theory to discuss the activities of the child I have observed. I will comment on the child’s physical growth and development, cognitive abilities, health, social relationships and emotional wellbeing. I will also look at the child’s interaction with other children and adults , in order to appreciate the child’s development and account for differences and similarities as proffered by my chosen theory of Attachment.

At this stage the child is developing more socially, is able to understand feelings and has real friends. Physically they are high in energy, from running around to riding in the tricycle. All children develop differently, but at this age there are certain skills that are crucial for the child’s intellect and self regard.

Piaget believed there were four stages in a child’s cognitive development and sub stages within these stages. These stages have been the object of debate since Piaget introduced them and are still continuously debated. All of the stages are very concrete and large scale. They don’t account for children at a particular age who are behind or ahead. Piaget underestimated the capability of children to do particular things earlier than he predicted. However, Piaget overestimated the ability of younger children to understand the words used by adults and the implications of their actions. Piaget’s stages help schools to understand that children develop in different ways and hopefully provide schools with different, more stimulating ways to educate students. The four stages have provided a basis for child development, spurred other child psychologists into proving his theories incorrect and created the first step in the understanding of cognitive development.

Taking a step back to observe a child’s physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and moral development gives great insight into the mind of a child. I observed nine year old, soon to be ten, Abigail. Abigail has three sisters and two brothers. Two of her siblings have already grown into adulthood. Abigail has a sixteen year old sister, thirteen year old brother, and an eight year old sister. Abigail’s parents have been married for twenty-five years and reside in the home with Abigail and four of her aforementioned siblings. Abigail’s parents own their own home and work outside of the home. Among strangers, Abigail is quiet and reserved, yet among friends and family she is friendly and demonstrative. When I set out to observe

In the Buckingham chapter, we see how constructed childhood truly is. His arguments show that adults are defining what it means to be a child through mass media such as television, internet, books, and movies. These mediums create the idea of what childhood should be, reinforcing this adult ideology due to the fact that we rely on these as sources of knowledge. We can see through his string of evidence how “childhood”, or the idea of childhood that we have, are socially and culturally constructed. This allows us the opportunity to see how perhaps our own ideas of childhood have been shaped by the books, movies, and shows we watched.

Physical development and many different parts but one aspect is puberty. Puberty is a stage in which our bodies go through rapid changes in both skeletal and sexually. This time for many is an awkward stage in a young teens life. I remember myself going through puberty and have my voice was getting deeper, I was growing, and started to grow more hair. One aspect of Socioemotional development is a for a child to experiences, expression and controlling emotions as well as making positive relationships. When I watch my youngest nephew I see that he is able to control his emotions and express what he wants and not just cry. One aspect cognitive development is formal operational stage. This is the stage in which we able

Kids nowadays are taught to read and write in kindergarten. Some say that is the right way to teach kids. People often learn to read and write when they are older, but the meaning is never the same for a 13 year old vs. a 20 year old. What about the meaning is different for an older person that it is not to a younger person? When somebody learns to read and write at an early stage of life; it is much more beneficial to the subject than learning at an older age the reason behind has to do with how the brain is wired and how the vocabulary expands. When an older person with low resources learns to read and write an older age they lack the basis of what a 13 year old already has; that is the knowledge of several vocabulary words that are learned through reading. An adult trying to learn how to read is not going to know or have the same vocabulary as the vocabulary of a younger subject because of the fact that even in children books the

Jean Piaget is best known for his stage theory on moral development of children which occurs in two distinct stages from heteronomous to autonomous and three sub stages premoral (0 to 5 years), moral realism ( 5 to 10 years), and moral relativism (after age 10). In premoral development, children do not think about right or wrong. In the moral realism phase, children understand right and wrong. Lastly, in moral relativism children move from a concrete understanding of morality to an abstract one; meaning they make decisions according to their own rules. They understand that rules are not absolute but necessary for society to get along (Slavin & Schunk,

It is no question that a child's early development is largely influenced by the environment around them and how they are able to internalize it. The human lifespan is divided into four main stages, each entailing developmental benchmarks to be met. Each person carries an ego that is developed by our responses to common conflict and crises. I believe the four stages explained by Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget can result in a very healthy development if reached successfully, and that despite our predetermined characteristics, the ego is largely developed through the exploration of various environment and social interactions.

A practical understanding of the distinguishable differences of a child’s Psychosocial and Cognitive Development is vital to a teacher in today’s classroom. A teacher’s ability to address the emotional needs of their students is purely based upon their ability to understand developmental growth expectations of each stage. This essay presents Erikson’s and Piaget’s historical backgrounds, theory insight with comparisons, and how their child developmental theories are used in today’s classroom. Teachers will benefit from using these theories to make informed decisions concerning their students. A child’s educational journey begins very early and last a lifetime. However, a teacher’s ability to identify early signs of developmental

Social Development: After my observation of Renaldo, I deduct that at the age of four years, a child begins to develop personality and as well as learning new materials at a rapid rate. Renaldo behaved the way I think children his age would behave. He shared toys and plays with his classmate shows that he is developing friendship and positive attitude. He was able to follow instruction. According to pbs.org, four-year-old children want to be more self-reliant and seek to expand the areas of their lives where they can be independent decision-makers.

Building upon Piaget's moral development model, which suggests that children around the ages of 10 or 11 transition from a rule-based morality to one that is more relativistic, Kohlberg concluded in his 1958 doctoral dissertation that there were at least five stages of moral development (Crain, 1985). According to Kohlberg, the maturation from one stage to the next was not controlled by genetics, cultural norms, or socialization per se, but driven by activities that challenged personal moral assumptions. Therefore transitioning from one stage to the next, according Kohlberg, did not occur at specific ages, yet were invariant in sequence.

For this project I chose to focus on the middle childhood life stage. “Middle childhood, ages 6-12, is characterized by a child culture characterized by rules, reciprocity, and fairness” (Ashford and Lecroy, 2012). I chose to use middle childhood, rather than using early adolescence for this paper even though the two are interchangeable terms. I feel as if my subject, who is nine years old, leans closer to the childhood side of this life stage rather than the adolescent side. He too me still shows a lot of qualities of a child than of an adolescent. My focus during this observational project was my family friends ten-year-old son named Jake Brown. I have changed the names of the people in my observational study to protect their identities. The setting was at the Brown’s home over a course of three days, all at different times of the day. In my opinion, this specific setting and being there different times of the day are both important elements of my observation. The setting being Jakes own home is significant because this is where he might feel the most comfortable at, allowing him to express himself and his feelings in a genuine manner. Being able to be in an observational role at different times in the day allowed for me to see how Jakes mood could possibly be in reaction to the time of the day.

The case study focuses on a 15th month male child (proband) brought by his mother to a pediatrician with inconsolable crying due to acroparathesia in the lower extremities and angiokeratomas on his skin. The mother is 30-year-old Japanese healthy female (consultand) with a history of hypohydrosis. The proband has two siblings, a 6-year-old sister with a mild hearing deficit in both ears and a 4-year-old sister with no medical history. The consultand has two siblings, a 34-year-old healthy male with a history of hypohydrosis and 19-year-old sister with angiokeratomas similar to the proband. The consultand’s father and uncles have passed away at young ages ranging from 42- 50 due to acute myocardial infarction, renal failure or acute stroke. The proband’s father is Caucasian with a history of mild hypertension. The paternal grandparents have a medical history of mild hypertension (paternal grandmother) and hypocholesteremia (grandfather). Overall, the medical and family history of the proband is consistent with X-linked disease known as Anderson-Fabry disease as the affected male (consulstand’s father) passed his X chromosome to all of his daughters (consultand and sister). In this way, all daughters of affected males will have the gene for Anderson-Fabry disease.

According to Atherton (2011), Jean Piaget’s Developmental Theory is a seminal work in the field of education. Although Piaget was a biologist and he devoted most of his early works to the study of mollusks, he later on moved into the study of children’s minds and their progress as they grew up. He mainly worked with the children in his family and his methodology was mainly interactional.