Child development facts for kids

Child development is all about the amazing changes that happen as humans grow from birth to the end of their teenage years. It's how kids learn to go from depending on others to being able to do things on their own. This journey is shaped by many things, like our genes, our minds, our bodies, and the people around us. Every child develops at their own speed. For example, children with autism spectrum conditions or Down syndrome might develop differently than other kids. Over time, people's ideas about how children grow and learn have changed a lot.

Early Ideas About Kids

In Medieval Times

Long ago, in medieval times, children were seen as different from adults. Kids under 7 or 8 were treated as children, and even teenagers weren't considered fully grown. Some religious writings said children needed to be "pure," while others saw them as good and innocent.

During the Reformation

During the time of the Protestant Reformation, some people believed children were born with a tendency to do wrong. Adults thought children needed strict teaching to become good people. Children even had to wear tight, uncomfortable clothes! Raising a child was seen as a very important job. People wanted children to use their reason to learn.

The Age of Enlightenment

In the time of the Enlightenment, people started to think differently about children and how they develop. Children began to get more respect and were treated better. Two important thinkers, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had big ideas about children during this period.

John Locke's Ideas

John Locke believed that children were born without any knowledge. He thought the mind was like a tabula rasa, which means a "blank slate." This means a child's mind is like a blank piece of paper when they are born. Children gain knowledge throughout life and "fill up" that blank paper. Locke thought that children learn only by experiencing different things.

Locke's ideas changed how people thought about children. He believed learning should be fun, not just a chore. He even wrote that "Children [should be] free to be childish." Locke's ideas were different from some church teachings because he thought children should read stories, not just religious texts. Children were seen in a better way and got more respect. Locke wanted parents to spend more time with their children and help them learn. He believed that parents needed to help children experience new things to help their minds grow. Locke emphasized that how a child is raised (their "nurture") was the most important part of their development.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Ideas

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a different idea than Locke. He thought that children are born knowing what is right and wrong. Rousseau did not think children were "blank slates." Instead, he believed children were "noble savages." This idea means that children are born good, but society can make them bad. Rousseau felt that adults should pay attention to children’s needs as they grow through different stages.

Child Development Theories

Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Theory

Erik Erikson was a follower of Sigmund Freud's ideas, but he created his own theory called the psychosocial theory of child development. Erikson believed that our personality develops through eight stages, from birth to old age. Each stage has a challenge, or a "problem between two different feelings." How a child solves each challenge helps shape their personality.

Erikson's Stages

• Stage 1: Basic Trust vs. Mistrust (Birth to 1 year): Babies learn to trust if their needs are met.
• Stage 2: Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt (1-3 years): Young children learn to do things like feeding and dressing themselves.
• Stage 3: Initiative vs. Guilt (3-6 years): Children use make-believe play to pretend who they want to be.
• Stage 4: Industry vs. Inferiority (6-12 years): Children learn to work with others outside their family.
• Stage 5: Identity vs. Identity Confusion (12-18 years): Teenagers figure out who they are and their sense of self.
• Stage 6: Intimacy vs. Isolation (18-40 years): Young adults form close relationships with others.
• Stage 7: Generativity vs. Stagnation (40-65 years): Adults become parents and care for children, or contribute to society.
• Stage 8: Integrity vs. Despair (65+ years): Older adults look back on their lives and feel good about what they've done.

Erikson's stages are important because they show how society and culture affect our personality. They also show how personality keeps changing as we grow.

John B. Watson's Behaviorism

John B. Watson didn't like the ideas of Freud and Erikson. Instead, Watson looked at people's actions, or "behavior," to understand how children develop. His ideas are part of a concept called behaviorism. Watson was inspired by Ivan Pavlov's studies on animal learning, which focused on classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is when an animal or person learns to react to something (a "stimulus") in a certain way. Watson believed children could be taught using this method.

Watson decided to test his theory with an experiment using a nine-month-old baby named Little Albert. First, Watson checked if Albert was scared of anything. Albert was not scared of a white rat. Watson then wanted to see if he could make Albert scared using classical conditioning. He found that Albert was scared of the sound of a hammer hitting a steel gong.

When Albert was eleven months old, Watson continued the experiment. Albert was given the white rat. A few seconds later, Watson made the loud gong sound. Albert cried when this happened. This was repeated seven times. After that, Albert would cry just by seeing the white rat. Little Albert also became scared of other things that looked similar to the white rat, like a rabbit, a dog, a fur coat, a Santa Claus mask, and even Watson's hair. This is called "generalization." Watson's experiment showed that he could teach Albert to be scared of something. Watson concluded that children are greatly affected by their environment.

Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory

Albert Bandura believed that children learn by watching others in society. After watching, children often copy what they saw. His theory is called social learning theory. The copying that children do is called "modeling." The person they copy is called the "model." Bandura thought there are four things needed for modeling to happen:

• Attention: The child must pay attention to what the model is doing.
• Retention: The child must remember the behavior.
• Reproduction: The child must be able to copy the behavior.
• Motivation: The child needs a reason to copy the behavior.

The Bobo Doll Experiment (1961)

Children are more likely to copy behavior if the model is the same gender as them. For example, a girl is more likely to copy a woman than a man because she wants to act like people who are similar to her. Also, children are more likely to copy behavior if the model gets positive reactions from adults. When children are praised for a behavior, they will keep doing it because they want more praise.

However, a child might not always get praise. They might get punished. If a child is punished for a behavior, they will not copy it. A child can also decide whether to copy a behavior by watching what happens to the model. If the model gets punished, the child will not copy that behavior because they don't want to be punished either. Bandura did an experiment to test his ideas, known as the Bobo Doll Experiment.

Bandura used 36 boys and 36 girls, aged 3 to 6 years old. He also used one man and one woman as models. Bandura wanted to see if the children would copy aggressive, or mean, behavior. He divided the children into groups. Some groups saw an aggressive model, and others saw a non-aggressive model.

The children were put in a playroom with the model. The children were told to sit on a chair while the model went to the other side of the room. Children in the aggressive groups saw the model hit and kick a Bobo doll (a large, inflatable toy). The model spent most of the time being aggressive towards the doll. Children in the non-aggressive groups saw the model play quietly with other toys, ignoring the Bobo doll. After the model left, the children were allowed to play with the toys in the room, including the Bobo doll.

The children were watched to see how they played. Children who saw the aggressive model played aggressively with the toys, especially the Bobo doll. The children who had a non-aggressive model played more nicely. Bandura's experiment showed that children can learn behaviors from adults just by watching them.

Jean Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory

Jean Piaget started his theory on child development by wondering how children think. He believed that babies and children understood things differently than adults. Piaget focused on how children's thinking (their "cognition") develops. His work helped create new ways of teaching and learning programs. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development has three main parts:

• Schemas
• Adaptation
• Stages of Development

Schemas

Piaget thought children had and made "schemas" as they grew. Schemas are ways of making sense of experiences. A schema is like a mental picture or idea in a child’s mind. This picture helps the child understand how different things happen in the world and how to act. For example, a child’s schema for a classroom might include students sitting at desks and a teacher at the front. This schema helps the child know how to behave and what to expect in a classroom.

Piaget believed that babies are born with some simple schemas, like sucking or grasping. These are called "sensorimotor actions." As children get older, their schemas become more complex. They start to think before acting, using "mental representations." These are pictures in the mind that stand for different things. Piaget thought the two most powerful mental representations are images and concepts. Images are mental pictures of objects, people, and places. Concepts group these images together. Schemas can be changed and created by putting together and changing images and concepts in a child’s mind.

Adaptation

Piaget thought that a child’s mind changes to better fit with the world through "adaptation." Children use adaptation by changing their schemas to match what they experience. Piaget believed adaptation has two parts: assimilation and accommodation.

In assimilation, children use the schemas they already have to understand new things. But children’s schemas are not always perfect. When a child has a schema that doesn't quite fit, they have to change it. This is called accommodation. In accommodation, new schemas are made, or old ones are changed. These changes help the child understand the world better. Piaget thought there is a balance between assimilation and accommodation, which he called "cognitive equilibrium." When a child’s schemas fit their understanding of the world, they are in equilibrium. When the schemas don't fit, the child is in "disequilibrium." Piaget called the process of moving between equilibrium and disequilibrium "equilibration."

Stages of Cognitive Development

Piaget divided children's cognitive development into four stages. These stages always happen in the same order and occur for children everywhere. Each stage has key things that happen during that time.

Sensorimotor Stage

The sensorimotor stage is the first stage. In this stage, babies "think" with their eyes, ears, and hands. Children learn about the world through their senses. Piaget thought that children in this stage learn by doing the same actions over and over. These actions come from their sense experiences. Piaget called this "circular reaction."

There are two main kinds of circular reaction: primary and secondary. One-month-olds use primary circular reaction, which involves actions related to their basic needs, like eating. Four to eight-month-olds use secondary circular reaction. This happens when children try to make things happen with their actions, which helps them control their own behavior. By eight to twelve months, babies can control their behavior more.

In the sensorimotor stage, children also gain "object permanence." This happens between 8 and 12 months. Object permanence is knowing that something still exists even if you can't see it. Piaget showed this with his "object hiding task." If a baby can find a toy hidden under a blanket, they have learned object permanence.

Preoperational Stage

The preoperational stage brings a big change in how children think using symbols. In this stage, children can use symbols to represent what they know. Children also learn language in this stage. Piaget believed children use words to explain the mental pictures they have from their experiences.

In the preoperational stage, children often show "egocentrism." This is when children can't tell the difference between their own viewpoint and someone else’s. Piaget used the "three mountains problem" to show egocentrism. In this problem, a doll is placed on one side of a group of mountains, and a child is on a different side. The child is asked to say what the doll sees. A child who has egocentrism will say what they see, not what the doll sees.

Concrete Operational Stage

In the concrete operational stage, children’s thinking becomes more logical. Logical thought means using reason when thinking. Children can understand changes between things that are right in front of them. However, they still have trouble with things they have to imagine.

Children in this stage can place items in different groups. They understand that things can belong to more than one group at a time. They can also put things in order based on qualities like length or weight.

Understanding "conservation" happens in this stage. Children who understand conservation know that changing an object's shape or container doesn't change how much of it is there. For example, in conservation of liquid, children know that the amount of liquid doesn't change if it's poured into a different shaped glass.

Formal Operational Stage

In the formal operational stage, children (now teenagers) can think about "abstract ideas." These are ideas that are in their mind and not necessarily right in front of them. In this stage, they can come up with rules about how things might happen without needing to see concrete examples.

Piaget believed there were two main parts of the formal operational stage: hypothetico-deductive reasoning and propositional thought. In hypothetico-deductive reasoning, teenagers can guess the outcome of a problem. They do this by making guesses that can be tested in an experiment. By testing their guesses, they learn if they were right and, if not, why. In propositional thought, teenagers can understand if spoken statements are true without needing to see an example of those statements.

Lev Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

Lev Vygotsky built his theory of child development on the importance of three things: social interactions, cultural interactions, and language. Vygotsky thought that children’s development was mainly shaped by talking and working with other people (social interactions) and by their culture. He also focused on language, believing it was very important for changing how a child thinks.

Language

Vygotsky thought that during the first two years, child development is mostly about direct connection with the world. After two years, language changes how a child thinks. Language is important because it's how adults pass on ideas to children. Vygotsky felt that language growth leads to a huge change in how children think because they can share ideas with others.

Children talk to both others and themselves. Vygotsky thought that children talking to themselves was very important for development. He believed children talk to themselves to help guide their thoughts. He called talk directed at oneself "private speech." Private speech is used when a task is hard, after a mistake is made, or when the child is unsure what to do. Children who use private speech are often more focused and involved in the task they are doing. Also, children who have trouble learning often use private speech more to help them understand what they are learning.

Social and Cultural Interactions

Vygotsky thought that important learning comes from working with adults or more skilled friends. These helpers can guide the child on how to do different tasks. Vygotsky believed there is a "zone" of difficulty where a task needs to be for a child to learn best. He called this range the "zone of proximal development." This zone includes tasks that are too hard to do alone but can be done with help. The help would come from a helper.

When the helper works with the child, social interactions happen. Vygotsky thought there are two important parts of social interaction: intersubjectivity and scaffolding. Intersubjectivity happens when two people start with different understandings. By interacting, they come to the same understanding.

Scaffolding happens when a teacher helps a child. The teacher will change how much they help based on the child’s work level. The teacher will help more if the child needs it and less if the child doesn't need as much help. Over time, the teacher lets the child work alone. When the child works alone, they use the conversation they had with the helper in their own private speech to help them solve the problem.

Images for kids

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  A young boy playing in a squatting position

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  Girl playing in a play ground

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  Typical pattern of habituation

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  A child learning to walk

See also

In Spanish: Desarrollo infantil para niños