Understanding Children

Physical Stages of Child Development:

Infancy	Birth-18 months	Walking, simple language, attached to parents
Early and Middle childhood	18 months--6 years	Language well established, knows gender differences group play; ends with readiness for schooling
Late childhood	6-13 years	Many cognitive processes become adult except in speed of operation; team play
Adolescence (young adult)	13-20 years	Attains highest level of cognition; independence from parents; sexual relationships

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in Child Development: Maslow's hierarchy states that the lower, primary needs must be adequately satisfied before the higher need can be addressed and "self-actualization" achieved.

1. Children need to experience security and physical well-being.

2. Children need to love and be loved.

3. Children need to belong.

4. Children need to achieve competence.

5. Children need to know.

6. Children need to experience beauty and order (aesthetics and cognitive knowledge).


The diagram below indicates proportional values as well as incremental ones.

Erikson's Psychosocial Development: Erikson sees maturation as a series of psychosocial conflicts, each level of conflict must be resolved before the child can move to the next level.

Trust vs. Mistrust	Birth-18 months	Children require security (through physical comforts and affection)
Autonomy vs. Doubt	18 mths-3 years	Children must establish own individual identity in relation to others.
Initiative Vs. Guilt	3-6 years	Children realize their own responsibilities and become aware of interpersonal conflicts.
Industry vs. Inferiority	7-11 years	Children's determination to achieve success, often in concert with others
Identity vs. Role Confusion	11-18 years	Children involved in discovering personal, cultural and social identity
Intimacy vs. Isolation	Young Adulthood	Young Adults strive to form strong friendships and to achieve love and companionship. Failure to form an identity during adolescence may now result in difficulty forming intimate relationships.
Generativity vs. Stagnation	Adulthood	Generativity includes such respons- bilities as raising and caring for children and productivity in one's work. Adults who cannot perform these tasks become stagnant and often depressed.
Ego integrity vs. despair	Maturity	Older adults achieve ego integrity if theycan look back on their lives and view life as productive and satisfying. Disappointment leads to despair.

Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Levels:Piaget sees a person's intellectual or mental development occurring in steps, each building on the previous one. He divides intellectual development into four major periods some of which are divided into stages.

Sensorimotor Period

Birth-2 years

Children incapable of establishing object permanence and are entirely egocentric

Preoperational Period

2-7 years

Children establish object permanence; two stages: Pre- conceptual stage (subjective logic) and Intuitive Stage (Developing language skills, awareness of world around them).

Concrete Operations

3.7-11 years

Children use rudimentary logic and problem solving. Begin to understand time and spatial relationships.

Formal Operations

11-15 (?) years

Young peole capable of formal logic, exchange of ideas, comprehending view point of others, understanding social relationships which require human interaction. No longer bound by concrete problems, have the ability to deal with abstrations and consideration of hypothetical questions.

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Three levels of moral judgment and their stages.

Level 1: Moral values reside in external happening, in bad acts or quasi-physical needs rather than in persons and standards.

Stage 0 Premoral

Stage 1 Obedience and punishment orientation. The child defers to superior power or prestige, or wants to stay out of trouble.

Stage 2 The child realizes that right action satisfies its needs and occasionally others' needs. Self-interest is paramount. Trade-offs are valued: "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." Loyalty and gratitude don't enter the picture.

Level 2: Moral values reside in performing good or right roles, in maintaining the conventional order and pleasing others.

Stage 3 The "good boy-nice girl" orientation. The main thing is to get approval by pleasing and helping others. The child conforms to majority or "natural" behavior.
Stage 4 The "law and order" orientation: doing one's duty, respect for authority, and maintaining the social order for its own sake are seen as "moral" actions.

Level 3: Moral values reside in principles separate from those who hold and enforce them, and apart from a person's identification with the enforcing group.

Stage 5 The legalistic orientation. The rights of others as well as individual rights are recognized. Rules agreed upon by the whole society are accepted as binding, yet looked upon as subject to change. Rights and duties are derived from social contact.
Stage 6 The conscience or principle orientation. Universally agreed upon ethical standards rather than "rules" guide moral conduct. The ideas of justice, respect for others, and equality are examples or moral "ideals."
Stage 7 Cosmic orientation: reason. To be true to universal principles and feel oneself part of a cosmic direction that transcends social norms.

Bandura's Social Learning Theory:
--It is good to keep in mind that Bandura and other like-minded theorists assert that children learn vicariously--that is, by observing the behavior of social models.

--Books, then, can and do play an important part in a child's physical, social, moral, and intellectual development. It is very important to choose good books for them by using the information regarding child development before us .
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