Diploma in Early Childhood Care & Education

PHASE 3 : Stages of Development

Infancy

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

ONE MONTH

• Turns head from cheek to cheek

when lies on stomach

• Lifts head momentarily when on

stomach

• Lifts head (bobbing) when held vertically at shoulder

• Kicks legs rhythmically 2-3 cycles while lying on back

• Looks at faces and objects

FINE MOTOR/SELF-HELP/PLAY SKILLS

• Arms move randomly when a toy is shown

• Arms move together symmetrically

• Grasps rattle/finger when placed in baby’s hand

• Randomly brings hand to mouth

• Follows a moving face with eyes while lying on back

• Makes eye contact

• Relaxes body when held, cuddled

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• Enjoys and needs lots of physical contact

TWO MONTHS

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

• Turns from side lying to back by turning head

• Brings hand to mouth when on back and lying on side

• Lifts head and turns to sides when on stomach

FINE MOTOR/SELF-HELP/PLAY SKILLS

• Looks at a toy in 180 degree continuous arc

lying on back

• Shows awareness of hands when holding rattle

• Looks from one object to another

• Involuntarily drops objects

• Brings hand to mouth

• Responds to social interaction with smiling

THREE MONTHS

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

• Holds head in midline when on back

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• Lifts head and upper trunk while placing weight on forearms

• Glances at toy that is placed in hand when on back

• Holds hands open or loosely closed when on back

• Brings hand together (midline) when lying on back (supine)

• Able to see with downward gaze when on back or supported sitting (chin tucking)

FINE MOTOR/SELF-HELP/PLAY SKILLS

• Hands more open

• Tries to reach for object but cannot grasp it

• Holds rattle momentarily when placed in hand

• Brings hands/objects to mouth

• Follows/tracks moving object with eyes in supported sit (past midline)

• Enjoys social play

• Socializes/engages with anyone

• Vocalizes in response to adult talk and smile

FOUR MONTHS

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

 Rolls from back to side

 Holds head steadily and erect with support

 Plays while on side

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  Reaches the toy with both hands

 Brings rattle to mouth with both hands

FINE MOTOR/ SELF-HELP/ PLAY SKILLS

• Brings both hands to toy over chest and plays with fingers

• Reaches and grasps a toy/block

• Clasps hands together

• Hands open most of the time

• Grasps objects with contact to palm

• Pats bottle

• Recognizes parent

• Repeats enjoyable activities

FIVE MONTHS

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

• Brings feet to hands and holds for 3 seconds when on back

• Begins to roll from tummy to back

• Extends both arms fully when on tummy

FINE MOTOR/SELF-HELP/PLAY SKILLS

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• Transfers objects from hand to hand

• Holds 2 objects at a time (one in each hand)

• Drops objects

• Holds bottle independently

• Displays stranger anxiety

• Lifts arms to parents

• Explores parent’s facial features

SIX MONTHS

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

• Rolls from tummy to back purposely

• Rolls from back to tummy purposely

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• Sits alone for 5-10 seconds while placing hands forward on surface to support own

self

• Pushes entire chest off surface with extended arms and open hands

• Reaches with 1 hand for toy and another extended arm while lying on tummy

• Brings feet to mouth when on back

• Catches self forward by extending arms forward and opening hands in sitting when

losing balance

FINE MOTOR/SELF-HELP/PLAY SKILLS

• Reaches with one hand/arm at a time

• Bangs object/block on table

• Follows objects with eyes without head movement

• Holds small objects between index/middle fingers and palm (radial palmer grasp);

may not use thumb yet

• Brings bottle to mouth with hands

• Shows separation anxiety

NINE MONTHS

GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

• Raises to hands and knees position and rocks

• Creeps on hands and knees 5 feet using alternating arm and leg movement

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• Transitions from hands and knees position by turning via side-sitting to sitting on

bottom

• Pivots on bottom when sitting using arms or legs

• Sits steadily and unsupported for more than 1 minute

• Catches self to side by extending arm to side with open hand in sitting when losing

balance

• Stands while holding on to furniture with wide base of support

FINE MOTOR/SELF-HELP/PLAY SKILLS

• Bangs 2 blocks together and starting to clap hands together

• Voluntarily releases objects

• Takes cube out of cup/container

• Points/probes with index finger

• Grabs small objects with thumb and side of index finger (lateral pinch)

• Finger feeds

• Extends toys to show/share

• Holds spoon

TWELVE MONTHS

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GROSS MOTOR SKILLS

• Pulls to standing at furniture by leading with 1 leg

• Lowers self to sitting on floor from standing at furniture without falling

• Stands alone 3-5 seconds

• Walks with 1 hand held 4 steps

• Walks along furniture (cruising)

• Catches self backwards by extending arm in backward direction with open hand

when losing balance

• Flings tennis ball by straightening shoulder or elbow when standing

• Rolls ball forward in sitting by using hand or arm contact

FINE MOTOR/SELF-HELP/PLAY SKILLS

• Claps hands together well

• Puts 3 or more objects in container

• Stacks 2 blocks

• Points with index finger

• Uses pincer grasp to pick up objects (index finger and thumb)

• Marks paper with crayon

• Starting to bring spoon to mouth

• Gives toy to familiar adult upon request

• Shows toy preference

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• Imitates clapping/waving

Infant Motor Development

The term "motor development" refers to age related changes in our capacity for

voluntary physical movement. Although these changes occur throughout the lifespan,

the most important changes for parents occur between birth and 18 years of age.

Gross motor skills help to control the large muscles of the body. These are associated

with the movement of the torso, arms and legs. Fine motor skills are the ability to move

the smaller muscles of the body. These are associated with the control of the tongue

and fingers. In general, gross motor skills develop before fine motor skills.

One of the first and most important parts of the body the newborn must gain control of

is the head. Control of the head is essential to direct attention. The eyes can only see

what is within a certain range of vision, generally in front of the head. It takes the first

four weeks of life for babies to learn how to control and lift their head, though some

babies may take as long as five months to achieve this. A major

type of behaviour that develops during infancy is reaching. At

birth, infants reach without a real intention. They reach for a

stimulus, and there is no coordination of reaching and grasping.

As a result, infants reach for objects and fail to grasp them because they have not

learned how to control or synchronize their grasping with their reaching. Between 3-5

months of age there is a type of intentional reaching that is called ballistic reaching.

It is called ballistic because it seems as though the infant is throwing his/ her hand at the

target. It is not very accurate, and infants often miss their target. In addition, even

when the hand does reach the target, it often fails to grasp the target. Between 5-7
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months of age infants improve their ability to coordinate their vision and have a control

of their reaching. As a result, reaching becomes more deliberate and accurate. This

type of reaching is called guided reaching. However, it is still somewhat imprecise due

to the persistent problem of coordination. Finally, by about 11 months of age, infants

succeed in coordinating their reach and grasp, with a corresponding increase in the

accuracy of reaching and grasping. Infants also appear to use both hands equally for

reaching and grasping until about nine months of age. However, between 9-13 months

of age, infants develop a preference for one hand over the other. By 13 months of age

most infants tend to display a clear preference for their right hand.

Another major type of behaviour that develops during infancy is walking. By about

four months of age most babies can sit with support. They can sit

and grasp by about five months, and they can sit without support by about seven

months of age. By about eight months, most babies can crawl. They can also stand up

if they have help. By the end of the eighth month most babies develop the ability to

pull themselves up to a standing position. However, it takes them another 2-3 months

to learn how to stand alone. By about 12 months, most infants have learned how to

walk alone. During the next few months infants refine their walking abilities by

learning how to walk sideways and backwards (between 13-18 months). They expand

these abilities still more by learning how to run between 14-20 months of age, though

they may not be able to run smoothly until about two years of age. Further

developments, such as turning while running will take a little longer, and occur during

the childhood years.

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Fine motor skills are the ability to use the small muscles of the body, especially the

hands and fingers. Although these skills develop at the same time as gross motor skills,

they tend to lag behind a bit, because the large muscles must be able to put the body in

place for the small muscles to play their part.

Between 4-6 months of age infants become fairly successful at reaching for and grasping

objects, though a few trials and errors may be common. An important

milestone is reached at about nine months of age when infants develop the ability to

hold small objects between the thumb and forefinger. This is called the pincer grasp. It

is important because it eventually makes many other behaviours possible, such as

writing or buttoning clothing. Between 10-12 months of age infants typically are able to

hold a spoon in their hands and feed themselves, though their aim may still be rather

poor.

As the baby learns how to control his/ her eyes and head, and other muscles, it soon

finds that he/she cannot always achieve his/ her goals without coordinating different

parts of the body at the same time. Infants must learn how to control their eyes and

head before they can intentionally grasp objects, or catch a ball. From this point of

view, the development of the infant is a function of their innate physical characteristics

and the relatively constant state of the physical world they inhabit, e.g., in terms of the

laws of physics. In addition, the infant must learn how to control each subsystem (e.g.,

the eyes) before it can coordinate the activities of several sub systems (e.g., the eyes,

legs, arms, and hands) to accomplish goals (e.g., catch a ball).

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PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT:

An infant's physical development infant begins at the head, then moves to other parts of

the body (for example, sucking comes before sitting, which comes before walking).

Newborn - 2 months

 Can lift and turn the head when lying on his or her back

 Hands are fisted, the arms are flexed

 Neck is unable to support the head when the infant is pulled to a sitting position

 Primitive reflexes include:

o Babinski reflex -- toes fan outward when sole of foot is stroked

o Moro reflex (startle reflex) -- extends arms then bends and pulls them in

toward body with a brief cry; often triggered by loud sounds or sudden movements

o Palmar hand grasp -- infant closes hand and "grips" your finger

o Placing -- leg extends when sole of foot is touched

o Plantar grasp -- infant flexes the toes and forefoot

o Rooting and sucking -- turns head in search of nipple when cheek is

touched and begins to suck when nipple touches lips

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o Stepping and walking -- takes brisk steps when both feet are placed on a

surface, with body supported

o Tonic neck response -- left arm extends when infant gazes to the left, while

right arm and leg flex inward, and vice versa

3 - 4 months

 Better eye-muscle control allows the infant to track objects

 Begins to control hand and feet actions, but these movements are not fine-tuned.

The infant may begin to use both hands, working together, to accomplish tasks. The

infant is still unable to coordinate the grasp, but swipes at objects to bring them closer

 Increased vision allows the infant to tell objects apart from backgrounds with

very little contrast (such as a button on a blouse of the same color)

 Infant raises up (upper torso, shoulders, and head) with arms when lying face

down (on tummy)

 Neck muscles are developed enough to allow the infant to sit with support, and

keep head up

 Primitive reflexes have either already disappeared, or are starting to disappear

5 - 6 months

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 Able to sit alone, without support, for only moments at first, and then for up to

30 seconds or more

 Infant begins to grasp blocks or cubes using the ulnar-palmar grasp technique

(pressing the block into palm of hand while flexing or bending wrist in) but does not yet

use thumb

 Infant rolls from back to stomach. When on tummy, the infant can push up with

arms to raise the shoulders and head and look around or reach for objects.

 6 - 9 months

 Crawling may begin

 Infant can walk while holding an adult's hand

 Infant is able to sit steadily, without support, for long periods of time

 Infant learns to sit down from a standing position

 Infant may pull into and keep a standing position while holding onto furniture

9 - 12 months

 Infant begins to balance while standing alone

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 Infant takes steps holding a hand; may take few steps alone

TODDLERS’

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT:

Throwing and kicking a ball (12 months)

Soon after his first birthday, the child shows interest in ball play -- first by throwing,

then by kicking at age 2

Pushing and pulling (12 to 18 months)

Once the child becomes a confident walker, he can discover the joy of dragging or

pushing toys along. He improves his coordination while walking forward and

occasionally looking back.

Squatting (12 to 18 months)

Till now, the baby has had to bend down to pick things up off the ground. But soon, he

will attempt to squat instead.

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Climbing (12 to 24 months)

Toddlers climb up on the kitchen table (or on the desk or the bed) for the obvious

reason: Because it's there. Kids this age are trying to find a balance between risk and

challenge. Climbing is an important physical milestone, though. It helps the child to

develop the coordination he needs to master skills like walking up steps.

Running (18 to 24 months)

Some kids seem to go from crawling to sprinting in two seconds flat. Others

take more time. That is because kids fall a lot when learning to run, and some are quite

willing to risk it.

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Jumping (24 to 36 months)

Between 2 and 3 years, toddlers learn how to jump off low structures, and gradually

how to jump from a standing position. Both these skills require bilateral coordination,

or the ability to use both sides of your body to do something different.

Developmental milestones include:

By the 1st year

 he can use his feet to push himself along on a ride-on.

By 15 months

 he can walk without help, though he will have his feet wide apart and his arms

up to maintain balance

 he can move from sitting to standing by using his hands to push himself up and

stand up from sitting by using his hands

By 1 half years

 he can push a wheeled toy in front of himself

 he has mastered the pincer grip and can now pick up small objects

 he can build a tower

 he can climb up onto low furniture such as chairs, coffee tables and lounges

 he can scribble on paper

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 he can drink from a cup without any help

By two years:

 he can get up off the floor without having to use his hands

 he can pull a toy by walking backwards

 he can run in a direction and stop when he needs to

 most toddlers can walk down stairs while holding onto a support by placing

both feet on each step

 he can push buttons and turn knobs

MOTOR DEVELOPMENT:

Gross Motor Skills

Gross Motor development involves the larger, stronger muscle groups of the body. In

early childhood, it is the development of these muscles that enable the baby to hold

his/her head up, sit, crawl and eventually walk, run and skip.

Between the ages of 12–18 months, a toddler

 Starts walking independently

 Attempts to run, or runs with stiff posture

 Squats down to pick up something

 Crawls up stairs and creeps back down

 Can sit by ownself on a small chair

 Pulls a toy behind himself/ herself while walking

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Between the ages of 18 months – 2 years, a toddler

 Can walk up and down the stairs while holding someone’s hand

 Can run quite well, though not very fast.

 Jumps with feet together

 Can jump down and forward

 Likes to stand on tiptoe with support

 Loves to throw a ball into a box

 Able to kick a ball forward

Between the ages of 2 – 2 ½ years, a toddler

 Stands on tiptoes if demonstrated by elders

 Jumps from bottom step

 Begins to ride a tricycle, moving forward with feet on the floor

 Catches a large ball with arms straight out

Between the ages of 2 ½ - 3 years, a toddler

 Can stand on one foot for some time

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 Walks downstairs with two feet on the same step

 Loves to walk tiptoe

 Starts riding a tricycle using the pedals

 Can catch a ball with arms bent

 Kicks a ball forward

PHYSICAL COGNITIVE SOCIAL

NEW BORN:

Uncoordinated, reflexive movements Physically explores Baby loves the

the environment, comfort of mother,

Repeated movements Toddlers feel safe

lead to stimulation of with the mother.

brain cells.

4- 5 MONTHS:

Can grasp with a purpose, reach and Curious and Responds to social

transfer objects from one hand to interested about the stimuli, shows

another, roll over, plays with feet. environment emotions through

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 facial expressions

9 MONTHS:

Crawls, can stoop down and then Starts interacting

recover, eye and hand coordination Can differentiate socially, likes to play

without any preference for hand between parents and with parents and

others, problem family members

solving skill develops.

12 MONTHS:

Starts walking Anxiety seeing

Points at pictures strangers, likes to

relating to verbal cue, play alone

receptive language is

better than expressive

language, beginning

of symbolic thinking

15 MONTHS:

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Development of more complex skills Attachment towards

Learns through mother increases

imitating complex and can easily

behaviour, can recognize the near

recognise known ones at home

objects

Parallel and

symbolic play, starts

Can arrange toys and imitating

2 YEARS: puzzles in order, uses

two word phrases

Can climb up stairs first and then

down

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23
PRE SCHOOLERS

Physically active, cannot sit in one Have vivid Co operative in

place for long imaginations, cannot playing, can have

differentiate between imaginary play

fantasy and reality mates

Hopping, jumping, climbing,

running, riding on big wheels and Receptive language is

tricycles better than expressive Develops fine and

language till 4 years of gross motor skills

Improves fine motor skills with eye- age along with social

hand coordination, can hold scissors skills

and draw shapes

Have an accurate

Toilet trained between 3-3 half years memory

Understands good

and bad behaviour,

feels bad for

disobedience with

Ego centric and parents

illogical

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 Curious about their

own bodies and

may even explore

Does not have a for curiosity

proper understanding

of time and sequence Curious and has no

of events sense of privacy

Vocabulary explosion

Less emotional

outbursts

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PRE SCHOOLERS

Skills that develop between the ages of 2 and 3

-runs forward

- walks up and down stairs, alternating feet

- jumps in place with both feet together

- kicks a ball forward

- uses one hand consistently in most activities

- stacks up to 6 blocks

- turns pages in a book one by one

- imitates vertical, horizontal, and circular strokes

Skills that develop between the ages of 3 and 4

- walks stairs without support

- runs around obstacles

- hops/balances on one foot for up to 5 seconds

- pedals and steers a small tricycle

- catches a bounced ball

- holds a writing utensil between first two fingers and thumb

- copies a cross and a square

- uses scissors to cut on a line

Skills that develop between the ages of 4 and 5

- balances on one foot for 10 seconds or more

- jumps over objects 5 to 6 inches high

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- hops in a straight line on one foot

- turns a somersault, swings, and climbs

- gallops, may be able to skip

- copies a triangle and other geometric shapes

- draws a person, prints some letters, colors within lines

- cuts out simple shapes

Perceptual Development

While the ability to see, hear, and integrate sensory information is well established by

six months of age, more complex and less obvious perceptual abilities develop

throughout early childhood, for example, precision of visual concepts such as shape

and size increases. Another aspect of perception often taken for granted is the ability to

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interpret pictorial representations of objects and people in the environment. Research

shows that 3 year olds respond to depth cues like shading and the convergence of lines.

Sensitivity to such cues, however, improves with age. The ability to obtain accurate

information from pictures reflects children's eye movement fixation patterns. Young

preschool children tend to have shorter eye movements and focus their gaze to small

areas near the middle or edge thus ignoring or missing much of the information

available.

The study of children's art provides some insight into the integration of their growing

perceptual, cognitive and motor abilities. The 2.5 year old grasps a crayon in his hand

and scribbles while the 4 year old can draw a recognizable

human form know as the "tadpole person." The tadpole person is characterized by a big

head, sticks for legs, and no body. The transition from drawing scribbles to the tadpole

person usually occurs sometime between the 3rd and 4th year.

Increased motor control and eye-hand coordination is one of the factors involved in this

achievement. Drawing skills undergo a second transition sometime between the 4th and

5th year and the tadpole person is transformed into a complete person with a body as

well as a head. Like the preschool child themselves, their art is delightfully full of life,

energy, and creativity. . Drawings by youngsters of this age are characteristically

colourful, balanced, rhythmic, and expressive.

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COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: PARADOXES OF THE PRESCHOOL MIND

According to Piaget, children's language acquisition reflects their emerging capacity for

representational thought. The ways in which children think about the world are still

primitive -- dreams come from street lamps, we think with our ears, clouds are alive,

and the sun follows us when we move. Piaget proposed that 3, 4, and 5 year old

children make errors because they are still unable to engage in true mental operations.

This type of thinking therefore was termed "preoperational." According to him, the key

feature of preschool thinking is that children can only focus their attention on one

particular aspect at a time. This limitation is overcome at 6 or 7 years of age, when the

transition to concrete operational thinking emerges. When this occurs, children are able

to combine, separate, and transform information mentally in a logical manner. They

know that the sun does not follow them and dreams do not come from street lamps.

According to Piaget, preoperational thinking not only lacks logic but it is also

egocentric. Another characteristic is known as complexive thinking, which is a chain of

ideas in which each is linked to the preceding one but the whole is not organized into a

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unified concept. A third characteristic of preoperational thought is the capacity for

deferred imitation which allows children to engage in pretend games.

Representation

The ability to pretend is linked to the capacity for representation-the ability to think

about the property of things without acting into it directly. The development of

representation is the crux of all cognitive development during the preoperational

period. Recent research shows that preoperational intelligence develop at two distinct

levels, which are single representations that occur between the ages of 2 and 4, and the

second between 4 and 6 years when children are capable of combining two or more

representations (Case and Khanna, 1981; Gelman 1978; Kenny 1983). The transition

from one of these levels to the next corresponds to a spurt in brain development.

Observation of children in pretend play indicates that children at 2 years of age can

control only one representation at a time. For example, in making

a doll act as a person the child can represent the person doing only one thing at a time-

a child walking, a man eating, a woman washing her hands. As the child matures single

representations begin to include a set of related actions. Children combine

characteristics into concrete social categories. For example, the child can make a doll

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perform a series of activities like putting on a saree, applying makeup on the face, and

make her look like a bride.

At about 4 years of age children begin to understand some relationships and

complexities of social behaviour. They begin to understand other social relationships

like husband-wife, mother-father, mother-child, etc. By relating various representations,

the child now begins to understand relationships. This ability is reflected in the child's

new attempts to influence behaviour. Strategies like "If you let me play with your doll,

I'll let you play with my basket," are quite common among 4 year olds. The preschool

child is concerned about the people around them and how they relate to each other.

Imitation

Imitation is one of the most important ways children learn about the social world.

During the sensorimotor period, before the capacity for representation develops, infants

can imitate an action only at the moment it is observed. One result of representation

skills is the capacity for deferred imitation-the process by which a child observes

represented to themselves, and then at a later time called up from memory and actively

imitated. Imitation also requires the ability to take another's point of view. Piaget

pointed out that children often make serious mistakes by assuming that another person

shares their own view of things. Everyone who has spent time with young children is

aware of this egocentrism or the inability to take another's point of view. Even when

preschool children are shown another person's perspective, they cannot keep it in mind
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and coordinate it with their own. They are not selfish but simply strongly believe in

their own viewpoint.

As cognitive skills increase, perspective-taking skills improve. At 2 and 3 years of age,

children can take someone else's perspective only in the sense that they can understand

a characteristic. By 4 and 5 years, children are able to understand the difference between

another person's perspective and their own as long as they need to keep track of only

one or two simple concrete factors. Thus, by 4 or 5 years of age, most children have

taken a major step away from egocentrism.

Memory

In order to understand another's perspective, the child must be able to remember.

Memory is the ability to encode information, store it, and retrieve it. There are two

kinds of memory, namely short-term and long-term. Short-term, also known as the

working memory processes information retrieved within a few seconds or minutes of

its being encoded. Preschoolers can use both short-term and long-term memory. For

example when they have heard a brief list of words or seen a small group of pictures

presented by an experimenter, 4-and 5-year-olds can often recall them immediately

after presentation as well as older children can. Their long-term memory is amazing.

Early development is characterized by changes in memory that are related to changes in

cognitive development, including the increasing ability to focus attention, the ability to

connect ideas with each other in a more logical way, and the ability to devise strategies

for remembering. Although memory improves throughout childhood, important

developmental changes take place during the preschool years. A major advance in

memory abilities seem to begin at about 4 or 5 years when children start to recall items

of some complexity and when they begin to monitor and manipulate their own

memories.
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Play

Preschool children love to play and they spend hours building and knocking down

towers. They love to play house and act out stories with their playmates. Play in infancy

consists mainly of imitations of repeated actions and sometimes with variations. In the

preschool years, play becomes an important part in the child's life. Preschoolers love to

play games that test and fine-tune their physical characteristics like running, climbing,

swinging, throwing etc. They like to build things with mud, sand or blocks and they

love to pretend. They make believe about all kinds of things everyday concerns, new

things they have learned, and imagined adventure.

During the preschool years, children gradually play less by themselves and more with

other children. At 2 years of age, solitary play is common and social

interaction with other children remains simple. Parallel play is often seen among 2 year

olds and becomes common by age 3. In parallel play, a child is influenced by the

activities of other children but they do not actually cooperate in finishing a task. Two

children may play with sand and imitate each other activities, but they will not work

together to build the same castle.

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 With an increase in thinking abilities, the complexity of children's

solitary and social play also increases. At about 4 years of age cooperative play becomes

the most important. In this form of play, many children create a city of blocks or play a

game in which each child takes the role of a family member and together they act out

the daily events. The content of play shows a new level of understanding and the child

begins to play games with simple rules. At any age, children's problems are reflected in

their play. Play provides a time when children can control things themselves.

Piaget's view on the preschool child's development makes the child at the centre of his

or her own world. Through active interaction, exploration, and observation of the

environment, the child actively creates his or her own learning. Play facilitates the

transition to higher levels of cognitive development. Play fosters a sense of self-esteem.

That reinforces the actions of the children. As a result, in play, a child is always above

his/ her daily behaviour.

Complex Thinking

Play is mostly under the child's control and it clearly indicates some of the paradoxes in

children's thinking processes. Preschool children usually have difficulty controlling or

coordinating their thoughts. Even when they are capable of representational relations,

they can deal with only simple, crude connections between ideas, so their thoughts tend

to wander. One result of these difficulties is a thought pattern known as complexive

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thinking--the stringing together of ideas without a unifying concept or system. While

there are connections between ideas, a single concept that ties them all together is

lacking.

Personification is an attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, which is

often taken as a characteristic of children's thinking. Preschool children are not yet able

to distinguish clearly between properties of objects and characteristic of people because

they have recently learned to separate their own actions from those of other people.

During the preschool years, many cognitive-developmental changes take place. Before

this period, infants cannot differentiate between themselves and their actions in the

surroundings. At about 2 years, children are able to do representation, can think about

the properties of things without having to act on them directly. This shows the

beginning of the first level of the preoperational period. At this level, the child can deal

with only one representation, one idea or thought at a time. At the second level of the

preoperational period, which begins at about 4 years, children develop the ability to

deal mentally with more complex things. During the preschool years the child moves

through these two levels, building increasingly complex and sophisticated schemes. The

egocentric, complexive, magical thinking of infancy gradually gives way to more logical

thinking-perspective taking, a better memory, and an ability to separate oneself

mentally from one's immediate environment.

35
Stages of Language Development

Prenatal Development

Babies do not speak before they are born, yet language learning appears to begin before

birth. During the last trimester of prenatal development the foetus can hear its mother’s

voice as shown by changes in foetal heart rate and motor activity when the mother is

speaking, and this affects its preferences for language after birth in a number of ways.

Of course babies do not speak before they are born, yet language learning appears to

begin before birth.

Shared Attention, Gestures, and Sign Language

In the first months after birth, infants focus mostly on their own bodies and on the

interaction with the people in their world. At about 6 months, they begin to develop

more interest in the objects and events around them. When babies look or point at what

they see, adults tend to label what it is for them.

Nonverbal “signs” are representations that have meaning, like words. Using signs can

reduce frustration for both parent and child. One concern some people have is that

babies will rely on these signs and this will delay development of spoken language, but

research shows that it is not true. In fact, babies who can show sign, may have a slight

advantage in their early spoken language learning.

36
Toddlers’ Development of Words and Sentences

Babbling sometimes leads directly to babies’ first words. The sounds they play with

while babbling may be the sounds they use for the first words they say. Through

interaction, they associate words with familiar objects and people.

Growth of Vocabulary

At around 2 years of age, word development undergoes a drastic change. After the

second year of a child’s life, the vocabulary suddenly expands and that is why it is

known as naming explosion, word spurt or vocabulary burst. During this vocabulary

expansion, a child learns 10 words a week. This goes on through the preschool, early

school, and elementary school years. The vocabulary burst is remarkable in the sense

that the children do not get help from word learning but picking up words from the

environment.

Bilingualism and Bilingual Education

Learning to speak a language is a complex, cognitive task, so learning to speak two

different languages is even more cognitively complex. Children, who learn two

languages simultaneously, reach language milestones approximately as the same age as

of the children who are monolingual.

Young children learn a second language at a fast rate. There is evidence that target

language words are more effectively learned by unknowingly acquiring it, through

reading story book or conversing regularly, rather than making a deliberate effort of

memorizing the words. The choice between learning new words in real life situations or

making a deliberate effort to learn words makes the difference in intentional vocabulary

learning or incidental vocabulary learning.

37
Bilingual Acquisition

Between three to five years, all children become fully competent in at least one

language. This is accepted as totally normal. Even more remarkable are those children

who simultaneously acquire proficiency in two, or more languages during the

preschool years. It takes the same time frame for monolingual children to learn one

language as well as the bilingual children to learn two languages and become good at

using them in social and personal surroundings.

Bilingual children may learn their languages primarily at home, like monolingual

children, or in the daycare, or neighborhood. Bilingual children's exposure to their

languages can also differ greatly, as, for example, if the child is learning one language

from parents, who each speaks in a different language. Their language exposure can

fluctuate greatly over time.

The studies and researches by Warwick Elley suggests that young language learners

learn new words through interesting books than by doing vocabulary exercises.

Children learn new words better in natural contexts and situations.

What are the most important things for parents or early childhood educators to know

about early childhood bilingualism?

38
There are number of important things to keep in mind:

 bilingual acquisition is a common and normal childhood experience

 all children are capable of learning two languages in childhood

 knowing the language of one's parents is an important and essential component

of children's cultural identity and sense of belonging

 bilingual acquisition is facilitated if children have sustained, rich, and varied

experiences in both languages

 proficiency in both languages is more likely if children have sustained exposure

in the home to the language that is used less extensively in the community; the

language that is used more widely will get support outside the home

 parents can facilitate bilingual proficiency by using the language they know best

and by using it in varied and extensive way.

39
A dramatic accomplishment

This is the period of the acquisition of language. In late infancy, children learn to say a

few individual words and by paying attention to context, they can also understand

some of the language used around them. At about 2 years of age, their ability to use

language suddenly increases rapidly. The size of the vocabulary increases and they

begin to string words together in short sentences. The ability to represent objects,

people and events through language, develops at about the same time as representation

in children's imitation, play and other actions. While representation is not required in

uttering simple individual words, it is necessary for organizing words into simple

statements.

The growth of children's vocabulary and their increased ability to use complex sentence

structures along with the corresponding growth in their ability to engage in

conversation made according to the listener's needs, requires both participation in

responsive human interactions and exposure to a rich language environment (Bruner, J.

40
1983). Most research on language development has focused on how children acquire the

rules that govern our use of language.

The two types of rules that have been most investigated are pragmatics, rules for

communicating in social contexts, and grammatical rules for combining words. Another

device is the use of a question as an indirect request. Because of egocentric thought and

social inexperience, young children do not fully understand the indirect requests. For

children, the simple pragmatic functions of language are often more important than the

specific meanings of sentences. When English speaking preschool children meet in

small groups with preschool children who speak another language, they may play

together for days without seeming to notice their language differences. An English

speaking 4 years old walked up to French speaking 3 year old and spoke in English. The

3 year old answered in French and they proceeded to play, acting as if they both

understood, taking turns, nodding in agreement, and so forth. This interaction

emphasized the similarity of pragmatic rules between languages while the meaning of

words is generally obvious from the context and from other nonverbal cues like the

tone of voice.

Children in the early preoperational period believe only in their own viewpoint, and

they think that what interests them interests everyone. This egocentrism leads children

to endless self-reporting and a strong feeling that other people know what they

themselves know. They frequently conduct a conversation as though it were a

monologue, changing the subject without being aware of the listener's response. At

about 4 years of age, children begin to master some of the more complex pragmatic

rules that were so difficult when they were younger.

Children must also learn grammar and the rules for forming words, phrases, and

sentences. They must be able to express such states and relations as possession,
41
negation, past action and conditional action. One of the most basic concepts is

organization of words into sentences. In order to distinguish one sentence from another,

each group of words in a sentence has a certain pitch, and stress, so that listeners can

distinguish one sentence from the next. English speakers generally drop the pitch at the

end of a statement and raise it at the end of questions. Most children recognize and can

infer meaning from intonation patterns sometime in the first year of life. This enormous

accomplishment reflects the special adaptation of the human species for acquiring

language.

Some psycho-linguistic researchers believe that we inherit species-specific strategies, or

operating principles, for perceiving speech. These language operating principles are

similar to the newborn's rule for visual scanning. In the same way, young children

listen to the language in ways that help to discover its meaning. These strategies for

perceiving speech make it easier to understand the rules of speech production. Three

important operating principles have helped to explain two of the best known

characteristic of children's early speech- telegraphic speech and overregulation. These

operating principles include paying attention to the endings of words, paying attention

to the order of words and word segments, and avoiding exceptions to language rules.

Telegraphic speech refers to a child's tendency to use only the two or three most

important words to express meaning. For example, a child says; "Mommy rice," rather

than "Mommy, I would like to have some rice." The average length of sentences steadily

increases during the period from 2 to 6 years. Telegraphic speech in different languages

has many differences as well as similarities. Since telegraphic sentences are often

ambiguous, interpretation often relies on contextual information.

The operating principle of avoiding exceptions to language rules, results in over

regularization as children apply a language rule to a word or phrase that does not
42
follow the rule. Statements such as "I goed out and throwed my ball at those gooses" are

common from English speaking children at this stage of language development.

Children speaking the same language seem to acquire rules in a similar order. Rules

that are simple and used often are acquired first followed by an understanding of and

an ability to combine more complex rules. Some grammatical forms that are not

particularly difficult to understand may enter a child's speech late because they are

difficult to hear. Since young children can only listen to language, they often make

mistakes due to the way a word or phrase sounds.

Preschool children are completely in love with language. They listen to it carefully and

chatter away for hours. By the age of six or seven they have acquired and mastered

most of the rules for speaking in their native language. This suggests that there is a

critical time, or sensitive period for acquiring language that begins at one or two years

of age, goes high in the later preschool years, and continues to some degree until 13 to

15 years of age. This special human sensitivity for learning language in the preschool

years seems to correspond to certain systematic changes in the brain and in the rest of

the nervous system at about this time, which are closely related to speech. The best

documented of these changes are called myelogenetic cycles. Each cycle is a period in

which myelin forms in a particular system within the brain. There are three

myelogenetic cycles in the system that is important to language (Lecours, 1975). The

first cycle, which occurs in the primitive brain (the brain stem and the limbic system)

starts before birth and ends early in infancy. It seems to be associated with the

development of babbling. The second cycle, which begins around birth and continues

until 3.5 to 4.5 years of age, takes place in a more advanced part of the brain. This cycle

appears to accompany the development of speech in infancy and the early preschool

years. The third cycle takes place in the association areas of the cortex of the brain,
43
which play a central role in intelligence. Although myelination of these areas begins at

birth, it is not fully completed until age 15 or later.

Language develops very efficiently for the majority of children. Parents can help in

getting natural language development by providing an environment full of language

development opportunities. With young children, for example, one helpful style of

interaction is a highly responsive one, in which the adult lets the child decide what to

talk about, expands on that topic, works hard to figure out what the child means,

suggests new activities, and pays more attention to what the child wants to say than

whether it is being said correctly. A good language teacher imparts the role of a

cooperative conversational partner rather than taking an explicitly didactic or directive

role.

Language teaching is most useful to young children when it is presented in the context

of their own activities. Older preschool children can learn language and they no longer

need to encounter each new language skill within a meaningful context. They can also

learn intentionally, benefit from explicit instruction, and use models as sources of

learning. At this stage simply responding to the child's interests may not be enough to

stimulate optimal language development. Talking about a wide variety of topics,

modeling an enriched vocabulary, engaging in talk about talk itself, discussing word

meanings, challenging children to explain themselves and to justify their own thinking,

setting higher standards for comprehensibility, and explicitly correcting errors: all these

are important in the language development of 4, 5, and 6 year old children. Children at

this age range are also expected to control certain language-related literacy skills that

probably emerge from being read to, from experience in looking at books with adults,

and from experience with letters, with pencils and paper, and with observation of adult

44
literacy activities. Parents can organize the environment to provide and encourage the

use of pre-literacy learning materials to foster such skills.

Stages of language acquisition in children

In most cases, children's language development follows a predictable sequence.

However, there is a great deal of variation in the age at which children reach a given

milestone. Each child's development is usually characterized by gradual acquisition of

particular abilities. Thus the correct use of English verbal inflection will emerge over a

period of a year or more, starting from a stage where verbal inflections are always left

out, and ending in a stage where they are nearly always used correctly.

There are also many different ways to characterize the developmental sequence. On the

production side, focusing primarily on the unfolding of lexical and syntactic

knowledge, it is:

Stage Typical age Description

Babbling 6-8 months Repetitive CV patterns

One-word stage

(better one-morpheme 9-18

Single open-class words or word stems
or one-unit) months

or holophrastic stage

18-24 mini-sentences with simple semantic

Two-word stage
months relations

Telegraphic stage 24-30 Telegraphic sentence structures of

or early multiword months lexical rather than functional or

45
stage grammatical morphemes

(better multi-

morpheme)

Grammatical or functional structures

Later multiword stage 30+ months
start

Vocalizations in the first year of life

At birth, the infant vocal tract is

in some ways more like that of

an ape than that of an adult

human. In particular, the tip of

the velum reaches or overlaps

with the tip of the epiglottis. As

the infant grows, the tract

gradually reshapes itself in the

adult pattern.

During the first two months of

life, infant vocalizations are

mainly expressions of discomfort (crying and fussing), along with sounds produced as a

by-product of reflexive or vegetative actions like coughing, sucking, swallowing and

burping. There are some non-reflexive, non-distress sounds produced with a lowered

46
velum and a closed or nearly closed mouth, giving the impression of a syllabic nasal or

a nasalized vowel.

During the period from about 2-4 months, infants begin making comfort sounds, in

response to a good interaction with a parent or close one. The earliest comfort sounds

may be grunts or sighs, with later ones being more vowel-like "coos". The vocal tract is

held in a fixed position. Initially comfort sounds are brief and produced in isolation, but

later appear in series separated by glottal stops. Laughter appears around 4 months.

Between 4-7 months, infants typically engage in vocal play, manipulating pitch (to

produce squeals and growls), loudness (producing yells), and also manipulating tract

closures to produce friction noises, nasal murmurs.

At about seven months, "canonical babbling" appears, where the infants starts making

extended sounds that are chopped up rhythmically by oral articulations into syllable-

like sequences, opening and closing their jaws, lips and tongue. The range of sounds

that are produced are heard as stop-like and glide-like. Fricatives, affricates and liquids

are more rarely heard, and clusters are even rarer. Vowels tend to be low and open, at

least in the beginning.

Repeated sequences are often produced, like bababa or nanana, as well as "variegated"

sequences in which the characteristics of the consonant-like articulations are varied. The

variegated sequences are initially rare and become more common later on.

Both vocal play and babbling are produced more often in interactions with the near

ones, but infants also produce them when they are alone.

No other animal does anything like babbling. It has often been hypothesized that vocal

play and babbling have the function of "practicing" speech-like gestures, helping the

infant to gain control of the motor systems involved, and to learn the acoustical

consequences of different gestures.

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One word (holophrastic) stage

At about ten months, infants start to utter recognizable

words. Some word-like vocalizations that do not correlate well with words in the local

language may consistently be used by particular infants to express particular emotional

states: one infant is reported to have used to express pleasure, and another is said

to have used to express distress or discomfort. For the maximum

number of times recognizable words are used in a context that seems to involve

naming: dog when the child hits a toy dog , wash while the child washes clothes under

running water, car while the child looks out of the window at cars moving on the street

below.

Perception vs. production

Clever experiments have shown that most infants can understand some words at the

age of 4-9 months, often even before babbling begins. In fact, the development of

phonological abilities begins even earlier. Newborns can distinguish speech from non-

speech, and can also distinguish among speech sounds .Within a couple of months of

birth, infants can also differentiate speech in their native language from speech in other

languages.

Early linguistic interaction with mothers, fathers and others at home is almost certainly

important in establishing these early abilities, long before the child gives any indication

of language abilities.

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Rate of vocabulary development

In the beginning, infants add active vocabulary somewhat gradually. Here are measures

of active vocabulary development in two studies. The Nelson study was based on

diaries kept by mothers of all of their children's utterances, while the Fenson study is

based on asking mothers to check words on a list to indicate which they think their

child produces.

Nelson 1973 Fenson 1993

Milestone
(18 children) (1,789 children)

15 months 13 months
10 words
(range 13-19) (range 8-16)

20 months 17 months
50 words
(range 14-24) (range 10-24)

186 words 310 words

Vocabulary at 24 months
(range 28-436) (range 41-668)

There is often a spurt of vocabulary acquisition during the second year. Early words are

acquired at a rate of 1-3 per week (as measured by production diaries). In many cases,

the rate may suddenly increase to 8-10 new words per week, after 40 or so words have

been learned. However, some children show a steadier rate of acquisition during these

early stages. The rate of vocabulary acquisition definitely does accelerate in the third

year and beyond. An estimate average of 10 words a day during pre-school and

elementary school years are noticeable.

49
Perception vs. production again

Benedict (1979) asked mothers to keep a diary indicating not only what words children

produced, but what words they gave as an evidence of understanding. Her results

indicate that at the time when children produced 10 words, they were estimated to

understand 60 words; and there was an average gap of five months between the time

when a child understood 50 words and the time when (s)he produced 50 words.

Combining words: the emergence of syntax

During the second year, word combinations begin to appear. Novel combinations

(where we can be sure that the result is not being treated as a single word) appear

sporadically as early as 14 months. At 18 months, 11% of parents say that their child is

often combining words, and 46% say that (s) he is sometimes combining words. By 25

months, almost all children are sometimes combining words, but about 20% are still not

doing so "often."

Early multi-unit utterances

In some cases, early multiple-unit utterances can be seen. Children tend to combine two

naming words together into one and speak. However, these combinations occur in an

order that is appropriate for the language being learned:

1. Doggy bark

2. Jane water (for " Jane wants to drink water”)

3. Hit cat

Since the earliest multi-unit utterances are almost always two morphemes long -- two

being the first number after one! This period is sometimes called the "two-word stage".

Quite soon, however, children begin sometimes producing utterances with more than

50
two elements, and it is not clear that the period in which most utterances have either

one or two lexical elements should really be treated as a separate stage.

In the early multi-word stage, children who are asked to repeat sentences may simply

leave out the determiners, modals and verbal auxiliaries, verbal inflections, etc., and

often pronouns as well.

Acquisition of grammatical elements and the corresponding structures

At about the age of two, children first begin to use grammatical elements. In English,

this includes finite auxiliaries ("is", "was"), verbal tense and agreement affixes ("-ed" and

'-s'), nominative pronouns ("I", "she"), complementizers ("that", "where"), and

determiners ("the", "a"). The process is usually a somewhat gradual one, in which the

more telegraphic patterns alternate with adult or adult-like forms.

Over a year to a year and a half, sentences get longer, grammatical elements are less

often omitted and less often inserted incorrectly, and multiple-clause sentences become

a very common fact.

Perception vs. production again

Several studies have shown that children, who regularly omit grammatical elements in

their speech, nevertheless expect these elements in what they hear from adults, in the

sense that their sentence comprehension suffers if the grammatical elements are missing

or absent.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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Social development is a two-sided process in which children become increasingly

integrated into the larger social community as distinct individuals. The process of

acquiring the standards, values, and knowledge of communities and society is known

as socialization. The way in which individual children develop a characteristic sense of

themselves and a unique way to think and feel is known as personality formation

(Damon, 1983). Socialization which begins as soon as a child is born is especially

important during early childhood as the first understanding of the child's community is

made. It is a process that requires the active participation of both adults and children.

Parents set expectations for children's proper behaviour as well as the rewards or

punishments for their conduct. They also select and create the social contexts within

which children experience their environments and learn the rules of behaviour.

Children are active participants in this process. Their learning depends on their

interpretation of their environment and on what they choose to be important.

Children need to understand the social categories, roles, rules and expectations of their

families and communities in order to function in a social world. Effective socialization

assures that if a child comes to consider herself a girl, she will acquire the appropriate

behaviour for girls as defined by a particular social group. In order to understand the

requirements of this role, however, she must have certain skills and abilities.

The particular characteristics of personality for each child are unique because of the

particular genes and personal experiences. Some elements of personality are present

just after birth as when infants display a particular temperament. Personality is more

than individual temperament as it includes the way people conceive of themselves and

their characteristic style of interacting with others.

Individual personality development and socialization are two sides of the same coin.

Social development during the preschool years is closely linked to achievements in

52
cognitive and linguistic skills. The social environment is important during the

development of self. One of the most remarkable facts about social development is the

extent to which children adopt as necessary the rules defined by their social group. By

the time children reach their 6th year, a lot has been learned about the roles they are

expected to play and how to behave, how to control anger and aggressive feelings, and

how to respect the rights of others.

Social Identity

Psychologists believe that socialization occurs through

identification -- a psychological process that gives a feeling of who one is and who one

wants to be. But they disagree about the process by which it is achieved. The four

proposed mechanisms that help in our understanding of this basic process are

differentiation, affiliation, imitation and social learning, and cognition. According to

Sigmund Freud, children recognize that some objects in the external world are like

themselves and they therefore "endeavour to mould the ego after one that had been

taken as a model.” Identification follows a different course for males and females. Male

identification requires differentiation from the mother, while female identification

requires continued relation with the mother.

53
Social learning theorists have a different view on how children identify and adopt adult

roles. According to them, the process of identification is not driven by inner conflict but

occurs through observation and imitation. Behaviour is shaped by the environment and

children observe that male and female behaviour is different. Further, children learn

that boys and girls are rewarded differently and choose to behave in sex-appropriate

behaviours that will lead to rewards.

The belief that a child's ability to perceive the world is central to socialization is the

basis of the cognitive-developmental approach to sex-role acquisition proposed by

Lawrence Kohlberg (1966). In this view the crucial factor in sex-role identification is the

child's developing ability to categorize themselves as "boys" or "girls." This process

begins at about 2 years of age as children acquire a distinctive sense of self and the

beginning of complex concepts. According to this viewpoint, children form a viewpoint

about their sex and in spite of the environmental changes; they do not change their

perception.

There have been some conflicting theories about sex-role identification and

psychologists have traced the developing relationship between the earliest signs of sex-

typed behaviour and children's earliest concepts of what adults mean when the label

"girl" or "boy" is applied. The existing evidence suggests that during the preschool years

children gradually develop a well-articulated concept of what it means to be a boy or

girl in their culture and their behaviour is shaped by this knowledge. Between 2 and 6

years children are still piecing this conceptual structure together. Both biological and

social factors seem to play important roles in promoting both sex-appropriate

behaviours and the development of basic sex-role categories themselves.

Developmental theorists disagree about the parents’ power to shape the final results,

yet, they do agree on two points concerning the children's discovery of social categories
54
and initial mastery of behaviour considering their sex and include: (1) children conduct

some kind of mental "matching" operation that allows them to isolate key features that

they share with others; (2) later ideas of sex-appropriate behaviour are closely tied to

children's ability to categorize, observe, and imitate. Children of 5 or 6 have acquired

the idea that they are members of one sex or the other. Children use these abilities to

learn other roles and about the possible roles they may need to play in future.

Self Regulation

While making their basic sense of identity, children also

learn which behaviours are considered good and which bad. They are expected not only

to learn and adopt the rules of proper behaviour, but also to follow these rules without

constant supervision. Piaget proposed that children's beliefs grow out of their

experience of the restriction placed on them by powerful adults. From the child's

perspective, older people make the rule, compel the children to do so, and decide what

is right and wrong. According to Piaget, as children enter middle childhood and begin

to interact with their peers other than situations that are directly controlled by adults,

the morality of constraint gives way to a more autonomous morality.

By the end of infancy children can plan their own actions according to the standards of

the society as to which are good and bad. In order to behave according to social

standards, children must acquire the capacity to control their own behaviour. Self-

55
control includes both the ability to inhibit action and to carry through actions according

to pre established rules even when one does not wish to do so. Preschoolers are popular

for their lack of self-control and the necessary need for supervision. Behaviour is simply

a direct response to the environment; they are being controlled "from the outside." The

direct response to being hit is to be angry and hit back. Children who inhibit the

impulse to hit back and seek an alternative response are displaying a degree of self-

control. Children who do not understand short-term versus long-term cannot measure

"short-term" versus "long-term" gain.

During the preschool period, children begin to spend a lot of time interacting with their

peers. Through this process children learn to be accepted by their social group. They

also show their anger when their goals are challenged; at other times their personal

desires will be subordinated for the good of the group. Learning to control aggression

and to help others is two of the central processes in preschool social development.

Aggression and Prosocial Behaviour

Soon after birth, children begin to display both aggression and

socially constructive behaviour. The earliest signs of aggression are the angry responses

of newborns when their rhythmic sucking is interfered by others. The first signs of

56
helpful social behaviour appear just as early when newborns react to the cries of other

babies and start crying themselves. It is believed that this crying is the earliest form of

empathy, sharing of another's feelings which is the beginning for a number of helpful or

prosocial behaviours.

Aggression is a kind of behaviour that is difficult to define and it generally refers to

situations where one person commits an action that hurts another. As children mature,

two forms of aggression are common, like instrumental aggression and hostile

aggression. Instrumental aggression is directed at attaining something desirable, like

threatening or hitting another child to get a wanted object. Hostile aggression is more

specifically aimed at hurting another, either for revenge or as a way of showing

dominance. Observations reveal that by 2 years of age, children are concerned with

their ownership rights. Possessing and the possibility of winning are new elements in

their interactions.

Between 3 and 6 years, the way of expressing aggression goes through several other

changes. Physical charge over possessions decrease but the amount of verbal aggression

like threats or insults increases. During this stage, hostile aggression that is where a

child attempts to hurt another also appears.

Generally it is assumed that punishment suppresses children's aggressive behavior.

Some child development specialists argue that parents who control children's behavior

through physical punishment or threats actually create more aggressive children.

Others have suggested that when punishment is used as a means of socialization, it

helps to suppress aggression, only when the child identifies strongly with the person

who does the punishing and when it is done quite often. If punishment is used

inconsistently, it may provoke children to further aggression. Since young children use

aggression to gain attention, one strategy is to ignore the aggression or to pay attention
57
to children only when they are engaged in cooperative behaviour. Another strategy is to

engage children in a rational discussion making them aware of the feelings of the

aggressed. The most successful techniques for teaching self-control of aggression go

beyond suppression of aggressive impulses and children are requested to stop their

direct attacks and consider other ways to behave.

Pro social behaviours like altruism, cooperation, and empathy are quite common

among preschool children in addition to aggressive behaviour. A major stimulus for pro

social behaviour is empathy, the sharing of another's emotional response. Infants are

born with an ability to empathize and this capacity increases with age. Preschool

children become skilled at interpreting and responding appropriately to the distress of

others. Research seems to suggest that the development of empathy in the preschool

period results from the child's increasing command of language and other symbols

(Hoffman, 1975). Language allows children to empathize with a wider range of feelings

that are more subtly expressed, as well as with people who are not present. Children

love to empathize with people whom they have never met by getting information

indirectly through stories and pictures.

Parents become anxious to encourage pro social behaviour and eventually develop

many strategies to promote this goal. Two methods that seem to be helpful include

explicit modelling in which adults behave in ways they want the child to imitate, and

induction, where they give explanations that appeal to children's pride, their desire to

grow up and their concern for others. In reality, strategies to increase pro social

behaviour do not happen in keeping away from efforts to decrease aggressive

behaviour. A great variety of techniques combine with each other and therefore a

number of socialization patterns is created.

58