Human Growth and Development
In this discussion of Human Growth and Development in the book, infants have been identified to develop from one stage to another in a sequence manner. Through those stages, they mainly adopt new behaviors or activities as they grow up. During these stages, they mainly adopt many ideas, including knowing what is happening through them. These earlier stages usually play a significant role in their life. They have to develop the concepts of talking, walking, and even how to use the five senses of their body. This is why we usually say infants are not able to forget their mothers. According to research, it has been identifying that infants can know the smell of their mother when around. In this essay, I will be discussing what occurs through the life of infancy to toddlerhood. In this life, I will be interested will the cognitive psycho-social theorists who are involved and development.
Infancy through childhood
A newborn baby is known to have an average of approximately 7.5 pounds. As the newborn is small, it is not mean that they are helpless. The newborn is mainly identified to have a reflection and a capacity that helps them primarily to interact with the immediate environment from birth. Inborn are mostly reflexes to automatically respond to a particular kind of stimulation. The paramount importance of reflexes in an unborn baby is that it mainly assists the newborn to be able to survive until it is the right time to perform a complex activity.
Reflexes among the infants
The reflexes are available in those babies who are their brains usually are developing in a better way, and they have to disappear between 4 to 5 months. As the baby grows, there are different reflex which is mainly connected with them. To start with, I will have to talk about the rooting reflex. Rooting reflex is a kind of response that the newborns primarily possess as they can identify any touch which could happen to their cheek. It has been evidenced that when a new baby is touched on its cheek, it makes the new baby turn faster for the attempt to start sucking.
The sucking reflex will be termed as the automatic, and it is unlearned activity and the sucking motions which they usually perform through the mouth. In this period, many reflexes can be identified. In this stage, the infant usually is mainly facing many reflexes. For example, when one tries to place a finger on the infant’s hand, there is a piece of clear evidence that the infant will struggle to hold it. This can be identified as a grasping reflex. They usually grasp what comes across with their hands. The baby does not need anything which has been identifying by his palms to go without catching.
There is also another reflex which can be identified as the Moro reflex. This kind of reflex is more responsive as it mainly puts the newborns in a position of falling. This is determined when the newborn opens his arms and returns them, and starts to cry within a short period. All these reflexes are of high importance as they help train a newborn on what they have to do. A young infant usually has very significant sensory abilities, which include smelling, hearing, and seeing.
The major problem is that in this stage of development, their senses are recognized not fully developed. Indeed, many of the infants in this stage mainly like interacting with those known to appear most of the time. Their vision is the sense which is least in developing during that time. About days, these babies have the mentality to master every person around them through the power or the way that person talks typically. They usually copy the voices, and they pay much attention to listening to those voices more than the sounds, which mainly do not have any interest in the speeches. For instance, they are mostly connected to their mother’s say more than any other one else. They do not prefer the sound of any stranger who is around them. For instance, when you record two voices that mainly are for the infant and a stranger’s mother, and when the two people are not around you open it, you will identify a strength thing. When it is their mother’s voice, the infant will concentrate on it and try where her mother is. When it is the stranger’s turn, the infant will be identified to be not bothering to it. It means the infants are usually influenced by a strong sense of voice to their mothers more than strangers. The other concept is that newborn babies have the power of tracking their mother’s smell. Due to this, they can recognize their mother while in a gathering. This has proved initially that children can recognize their mother through their smell.
Development stage
Biosocial
Body changes
In this stage of infancy and toddlerhood, there is rapid development. Those who are newborns are known to be around 5 and 10 pounds. At six months, the newborn they are already doubled their weight. The average height of a new baby is 19.5 inches. Before 12 months are over, they are mainly around 29.5 inches. At the age of two years, the newborn baby is 34.4 inches. There is no steady growth rate during infancy and childhood, and between 4 to 6 years, the growth rate slows down. At the age of 8 to 9 years, girls are identified to have a very high growth rate than boys. This is due to the pubertal growth spurt. The growth runs to around 12 years when their menstrual cycle starts. During the ten years, the average girl usually weighs 88 pounds, and the boys are at 85 pounds.
Perceiving and moving
In this stage, there is the maturation of the brain. There is also that development of the other body senses. The senses are hearing, seeing, and the mobility from the reflexes to develop the coordination actions, i.e., walking, grasping, and focusing.
A baby is mainly born with brain cells. We have about 100 to 200 billion nerve cells that help in storing and transmitting the information. As the baby continues to grow in the same way, there is continuous improvement and brain growth. Each neural pathway is identified to form thousands of new connections and toddlerhood. This period is usually referred to as the blooming stage. The neural keeps on developing through the puberty periods. This stage is then followed by a pruning period whereby the connection to the neural is reduced. The pruning stage enables the brain to be more thoughtful in mastering various activities. Here is whereby the brain is facilitated to function effectively. The blooming is mainly around the few years of life, while pruning usually continues in childhood until adolescence.
The capacity of a brain keeps increasing gradually. In the early childhood stage, the frontal lobes are identified to grow very fast. These lobes are connected to memory, planning, reasoning, and impulse control. This means as a child reaches the school-going age can control his behaviors and attention. The development of the mind usually follows the mental breakdown of Piaget’s thought. Motor development occurs in an orderly way. For example, babies have first to know how to hold their heads up and sit with some assistance. They train themselves to sit without help. It follows crawling, then walking is the last stage. Motor skills are those movement involves our bodies and how we manipulate objects. The exercises usually involve the toes, eyes, and fingers for the coordination of small activities. The other motor skill is known as Gross who is mainly connected with the large muscle groups. Examples are legs and arms, which are involved in running, jumping, and balancing. Motor skills are known to develop through a particular developmental milestone that a young child has to achieve.
Surviving in a good health
This stage requires the infant mainly to be connected with immunization. What is more important is that the parental practices include back to sleep and also nutrition. Giving the baby breast milk helps in protecting his health. Due to that, survival rates are much higher today.
Toddlers’ emotions
Emotions in this stage are more due to the advancement of mobility and memory. For instance, all the second year onwards, toddler usually has a lot of fear and anger. This because they are less frequent but to some extend more targeted and focused towards terrifying conditions. They typically cry and laugh at their high voices.
Most new emotions are connected with temper, and they are well known for their anger. When they feel sad, they mainly scream, yell, throw or hit themselves on the floor. Whenever anyone tries to respond to them with much anger, they make the situation to become worse.
Together with physical growth, children will also develop in their cognitive abilities and understand and recognize things. The cognitive skills are developed slowly as the child interacts with the environment in which he lives.
Sensorimotor intelligence
During the first two years of a Childs growth, they progress from knowing their world through sensory experiences and experimenting through actions and mental images.
Piaget demonstrated this development by taking an example of child education that a snake hisses when stunned. Piaget suggested that children develop cognitive ability through interaction with the environment as they mature. Still, researchers have indicated otherwise by offering that young children comprehend things and their working mechanism earlier than they familiarize with them. For instance, infants as young as three months of age might demonstrate awareness of objects they had not seen and had no previous knowledge and experience. There are cognitive milestones that children are supposed to reach. It is paramount to note these milestones which children are supposed to get as they gain innovative skills in thinking, solving problems, and communication; for instance, the children will be able to know nodding of the head to signal a no at the age of between 6 and 9 months and also they will be able to make the response to oral demands to do things like waving goodbye or blowing a kiss at the age of 9 to 12 months children clench to the notion that there is continued existence of objects even in times when these objects are not visible when they are eight months of age.
Information processing
During this stage, there is the development of links between sensory experiences and perception. Children develop their ideas regarding the possibilities offered by the objects of the world. At the age of twelve to twenty-four months, children will be able to master the permanence of items and will at this age be able to engage in games like hiding and seek. They have become toddlers and can know that they can come back once they have left a room. At this age, the toddlers will adjust whenever they are asked to point to pictures and focus on appropriate places and objects when asked to point to pictures. At the age of 3 to 5 years, the children are at the preschool age. They have considerably advanced in their cognitive ability because they can count, tell their names, and the period. They can differentiate colors and make some decisions on their own, like choosing the type of cloth they are to wear. Their cognitive ability has advanced because they can understand some primary ideas like time and sequencing, meaning that they can predict what is likely to come after an event or story. They will start making enjoyment of humor in a story since they will have developed the capacity to think figuratively. At this age, the toddlers will have a blossoming curiosity and will fancy asking why.
The skills to recognize things continue to enlarge at middle and late childhood, and at the age of 6-11 years, the thinking process is more manifest and logical, and more organized. The infants at this bracket will comprehend the current, previous, and upcoming situations, which gives them the aptitude to make prospects for the future and set limits to attain. They are capable of processing complex ideas like subtraction and addition as well as relationships. The acquisition of knowledge among children is reliable across cultures, and scholars have anticipated that infants have a natural tendency for obtaining dialects. The learning of knowledge starts even before birth. After they are born immediately, they identify their mother’s voice and make a difference amid their mother’s dialect and that which strangers speak, and they show a preference for faces.
Language development
Gesture development in children comes before the child has known how to use a particular language. Children will learn how to coo almost immediately, and they replicate sounds from their vocabulary. By the age of 3years, the children are in a position to speak in sentences. They can also jingle and state the weekdays, and at seven years, they can confidently communicate. Behaviorist B.F skinner believed that infants would learn a language in reply to strengthening or feedback like the parents’ approval. This theory has been criticized by Noam Chomsky, who projected that the ability to learn is inborn. But both are right because we are all products of nature and nurture.
Psychosocial development
Emotional development
These developments occur during relationship formation in infants and interface and the learning of spirits’ control. The appearance of strong affections is very crucial as it is the primary societal landmark of a child. Passion is the permanent connection and bonding with others. Harlow conducted a study using monkeys and found that there is more to child-mother bonding than the provision of nourishment as was earlier thought. He discovered that coziness and refuge moods are essential factors of mother-child attachment, leading to healthy psychological and social progress. John Bowlby builds on Harlow’s thinking, developed attachment theory, and stated that a child has a normal social and emotional development to create this attachment even with the caregiver. He noted that this bond is so strong and has to continue for a lifetime. He used the idea of a protected or secure base which he termed as the parental presence, which affords a child a healthy attachment and a sense of well-being as he discovers the surrounding. He stated that the caregiver needs to be approachable to the child’s physical, communal, and expressive requirements and participate in jointly entertaining interactions with the child. These mutually satisfying connections promote the mother-child relationship.
Psychosocial Theories of infant development
All the theories of Childs psychosocial development find that the infant-caregiver relationship is significant.
Mary Ainsworth wanted to know whether there is a difference in bonding between children as they grow by using the strange situation procedure. She identified three types of children’s parent attachment which is: secure, avoidant, and resistant. In the confident style of passion, the child will prefer his or her parent to an alien. The connection character is utilized as a protected base to discover the surroundings and is customarily hunted out in stressful times.
Avoidant attachment
In avoidant attachments, the infant is indifferent to the mother and does not use the mother as a protected base, and has no concern whether the parent is present or leaves. The infantile responds to the parent as if he was an alien. If the mother returns, the infant is reluctant to react positively. Ainsworth concluded on these infants that they had a protector who was impervious and careless to the children’s requirements.
Resistant attachments
The children tend to show clingy behavior for the resistant attachment, but they reject the attachment figures (which were toys) to interact with them. During separation, these children become troubled and annoyed with the parents, and when the parent returns, the child is problematic to ease. A resilient connection is the consequence of the caregiver’s varying degrees of rejoinder to their infant.
Muddled attachments
Some infants have muddled attachments and behave mysteriously in strange situations. This is a type of passion mostly seen in children who have been abused because abuse leads to disruption of their minds and regulating their emotions. Ainsworth’s study has also met several criticisms by some researchers who argue that a child’s disposition influences the connections to a larger extend. In contrast, others state that extension varies from culture to culture.
Conclusion
Affection is the primary psychological as well as the social breakthrough of early stages. In the first years of development, children learn how to emphasize their apparition, explore, and study the surrounding. Intellectual or brain expansion is the learning process of memory, thinking, reasoning and language. Studying dialects entails supplementary skills than the production of resonances. The infants desire the human touch, voice, taste, and smell to develop and mature. As a child grows, their cognitive ability also expands, and different theories have been propounded to discuss child growth’s developmental stages.
