Theories of Child Development Essay

Piaget suggests that development in children occurs in four stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational.

The preoperational stage is when infants become older, young children and they are able to think in a more symbolic way. In this stage children start to learn the difference between real and make believe, past and future. They tend to have more of an imagination as they grow older. Children in the preoperational stage still are not completely logical with their thinking. They go more off intuition. Do more of what they want to do, not what is the best thing to do. They are still too young to grasp the concept of cause and effect. They also do not understand time and comparison yet.

The second theory examined is Erik Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development. Each stage in Erikson’s theory involves a conflict/crisis that a person must work through to evolve their personality. Rosenthal (1981) explains that, “Each stage arises because a new dimension of social interaction

When an infant arrives in the world they are helpless tiny humans who depend on adults for every need from love, to feeding them. It is amazing how these tiny babies grow into adults able to make decisions and become self-dependent. There are many theories about how children develop and what roles the environment plays, what people affect their lives and how events can shape their personalities. Some of these children have and easy life and some have a harder time making that journey to adulthood.

And by three years of age, the toddler is expected to gain anywhere from three to five pounds, grow about three inches in height, and also have all twenty of his/her primary teeth grown in (2016). According to Jean Piaget, there are four stages of cognitive development that a child will go through. The first stage is known as the sensorimotor stage; it is from birth to about two years of age. The sensorimotor stage is a period that the cognitive development rapidly grows and during this time frame the infant develops “an understanding of the world through trial and error using their senses and actions (McLeod, 2015).” An example of an experience that Bilal went through during the sensorimotor stage would be when Bilal was eight months old, I tried the object permanence test I did this by hiding an object from Bilal and have him look for it, when the location of the object changed Bilal would look for it where he previously saw it (My Virtual Child, 2014). The social and

THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE: GROWTH OF SYMBOLIC ACTIVITY Some time between the ages of 18 and 24 months, According to Piaget, children develop the ability to form mental representations of objects and events. At the same time, language develops, as well as the beginning of thinking in words. These developments mark the transition into the preoperational stage. During this stage, which lasts up until about age seven, children are capable of doing many task they could not perform earlier. For example, they begin make-believe play which includes enacting familiar routines.

Piaget (1952) based his theory on his belief that cognitive development occurred in four specific stages; sensori-motor stage,

Effectively, the stages of infant cognitive development can be viewed and explained simply. According to Piaget there are four stages of cognitive development that range from the ages of birth through adulthood. Today we will only focus on two of these stages as they pertain to the ages of birth through the ages of 24 months or two years old. The first stage is the sensorimotor stage which includes and defines the ages from birth to about 18 months of age. This stage is quickly described and defined by the infant only being aware of what’s immediately in front of them, and only interacting with those people, objects or sounds (http://www.webmd.com/children/piaget-stages-of-development Piaget Stages of Development. ©2005-2015 WebMD, LLC). Looking at Piaget’s studies even at the earliest moments of life an infant utilizes the power of their brains in the forms of basic awareness’s and communication attempts. The second

When looking at the cognition infancy stage of birth to age 2 that is considered the sensorimotor stage. Within the sensorimotor stage children are learning though observation

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development proposes that a child’s capacity to understand certain concepts is based on the child’s developmental stage. He outlined 4 stages of development that spanned a child’s age from birth through 11 years old. The list below presents a summary of the characteristics typical at each stage:

were defined characteristics of each stage that would be visible when the child reached it.

There are multiple factors in a child’s development. Parents have a responsibility, as well as a privilege, to contribute to every milestone. Most parents stress over physical and mental stages so much so that play-time is ignored. By making decisions that sacrifice play parents hinder their social development. Parents must take action and encourage their youth to play more, before childhood is lost forever.

The sensorimotor stage is focused from birth to two years. It is divided into six substages as the infant learns to coordinate their senses and motor skills. The content

In the sensorimotor stage the child discovers the environment through physical actions such as sucking, grabbing, shaking and pushing. During these first two years of life children realize objects still exist, even if it is out of view. This concept is known as object permanence. Children in the preoperational stage develop language skills, but may only grasp an idea with repeated exposure. As Piaget describes in the next stage, children draw on knowledge that is based on real life situations to provide more logical explanations and predictions. Lastly, in the formal operational stage children use higher levels of thinking and present abstract ideas.

According to Piaget, children pass through four periods of growth (Neukrug, 2017, 2013). The first is the sensorimotor stage. In this stage, children can respond to physical and sensory experience. They cannot maintain mental images because they do not have full language ability.