Book Report
Thomas R.M believes that studying and understanding the growth and development of a child is helpful to train the young on how to live well. Children differ in emotional growth, physical, social and cognitive patterns. Children differ even if they are identical twins. Think of a child; you will find out that their response to the play, affection, people, and objects be it living or non-living in their environment is very different. In this book, Thomas R.M helps us to understand children better by discussing the principles of child development, the brain growth, and development of a child. He further gives a good guideline on how the different child development theories can be used practically in early childcare and education. The book report will later compare the different theories of Erickson, Piaget, Vygotsky, and Gardner.
According to Thomas R.M, child development is the change or growth that occurs in children starting with the infancy throughout adulthood. The study of child development helps the learner to build a good profile of what actions children can partake at various ages. For instance, you will find that children love to run at the age of two hence when your child is at the age of two, you will provide enough space for him or her to move freely. Another good example is that infants explore their environment using their body senses and knowing this will help you know that the baby toys are supposed to remain clean and safe for the proper health of the child. Thomas R.M emphasizes that understanding child development also helps us appreciate the different names given to young children at the various stages. For instance, infant describes a child from birth through the first year. The toddler is the name of a child from age one up to the third birthday because of their style of walking. Thomas describes the preschoolers asing children between ages three and six.
Child development has three main dimensions that are physical development, cognitive development and social-emotional development (Thomas, 2005). Physical development refers to a physical change in body form. It occurs in a relative, stable and predictable manner. There is a change in bone thickness and most of the body organs become active e.g. the hearing, vision, and muscles start to work. The body size and weight increases too. The physical skills that a child acquires like crawling and walking are part of physical development. The skills can be divided into gross-monitor development, which involves improvement of competencies, by the use of large muscles in legs and arms. The other class of the skills is the fine-motor development, which includes the use of muscle of hands and fingers to grasp or hold something. Thomas R.M clarified that the environment affected the physical evolution of a child. The environmental factors that he considers include the nutrition and activities that the child is subjected to.
Cognitive development is the second class of children development, and Thomas R.M refers to it as the intellectual development. It is the process through which human gain knowledge, reasoning, language, imagination and thought. Both language and thought are related, and they are used for remembering, planning and problem solving. As the child develops, more experience and skills are acquired. The other development dimension is the social-emotional development. Thomas R.M elucidates that the social and emotional development are interrelated. Learning on the way we live with other people is a social development while emotional development involves the expression of feelings towards other people. Social-emotional development, therefore, requires trust, fear, humor, pride, pleasure, and friendship. The way we express feeling at the adult stage was acquired long ago at childhood stage. Learning about these this will help train children on how they should live with other people.
Although every child is unique, the principles of development are universal to every child. These policies include cephalocaudal principle which says that a child firstly gains control of the head, followed by arms and then legs. The second principle is the proximodistal principle that says that development proceeds from the center of body outwards. The medulla spinalis develops before other parts of the body. The child’s arms develop before the hands and hands grow before fingers. The other principle maturation, which shows us that there is the occurrence of biological changes in children and these changes give children new abilities. They help children to develop their thinking capacity and make better decisions.
Scientists through comparison of brain images study brain development. The hours in infancy stage may have high impacts than in the middle age of human development. At birth, the brain of a child is tiny, and it develops as the child grows. Synapses also known as brain wiring increases rapidly because the more the connections, the more the messages that pass through the mind. Their growth is dependent on the child interaction with the world. They influence the ability of the child to learn and solve problems. Hence, learning about child development will help the parents ensure their children grow in a friendly environment so that the brain of their children is not affected at early stages of development. The ability of the child’s brain to develop is influenced by factors like trauma, poverty, exposure to environmental toxins, emotional or physical abuse and parent to child substance abuse which enters the body of the child trough blood.
Some of the theories explaining the development of child include Erikson’s psychosocial theory, which believes that development occurs throughout the life span. This approach provides new insights into a healthy personality of an individual. Erikson includes eight stages in his theory whereby at each stage there is the occurrence of crisis. Maturity and other social forces help in solving conflicts at each stage. Teachers and parents have a paramount role in recognizing these steps and offer social support, which can help children, solve the crisis. Piaget’s cognitive development theory is another development theory, which identifies the different stages of thinking. Piaget believed that there was the difference in thinking at various stages of development. Knowledge is gathered gradually as children interact in real life. The theory explains the mental operations. As children receive new information, they modify, organize and reorganize it to adapt and know how to use it. The argument applies to education because a teacher will try to put new knowledge to the brain of a child. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory elaborates that children build knowledge through experience they get from their interaction in real life.
The knowledge in this book is very critical for career development that relates to working with children. For children to grow better in the hands of parents and teachers, there is a need to understand how children grow and develop. Hence, the brain affects all stages of growth and development. The growth and development progress are almost the same for all children.
Reference
Thomas, R. M. (2005). Comparing Theories of Child Development. (6th Ed.). Australia: Thomson/Wadsworth.
