Developmental Trends: Accomplishments and Diversity at Different Age Levels

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Infancy (Birth–2)

What you Might Observe

Physical Development:

• Motor skills including rolling over, sitting, crawling, standing, walking
• Growing ability to reach, grab, manipulate, and release objects
• Rudimentary self-feeding by the end of infancy
• Rapid brain growth

Cognitive Development:

• Ability to distinguish among different faces
• Rapid growth in communication, including crying, using gestures and facial expressions, synchronizing attention with caregivers, babbling, forming one-word sentences, constructing multiple-word sentences
• Ability to imitate simple gestures with a model present, moving to complex imitation of actions and patterns from memory
• Growing ability to remember people and things out of sight

Social-Emotional Development:

• Formation of close bonds with responsive and affectionate caregivers
• Use of words to name people, things, needs, and desires
• Playing side by side with peers but also interacting at times
• Increasing awareness of ownership and boundaries of self (“Me!” “Mine!”)
• Developing sense of power and will (“No!”)

Diversity:

• Considerable diversity exists in age when, and in manner in which, babies develop motor skills.
• Self-feeding and self-help skills emerge later when families encourage children to rely on others for meeting basic needs.
• Children’s temperaments and physical abilities affect their exploration of the environment.
• In unsafe environments, families may limit children’s exploration.
• Some young children learn two or three languages, especially when knowing more than one language is valued by caregivers.
• Ability to pretend is displayed early by some children and later by others.
• Nonverbal communication varies with culture. For instance, a child may be discouraged from making eye contact with an elder as a sign of respect.
• Children who have few experiences with peers may appear tentative, detached, or aggressive.
• Infants and toddlers who spend time in multiage settings interact differently than do those accustomed to same-age groups.
• Some children are encouraged by families to share possessions, and others are encouraged to respect individual rights of property.

Implications:

• Provide a safe, appropriate, sensory-rich environment so infants can move, explore surroundings, and handle objects.
• Hold infants gently, and care for their physical needs in an attentive manner.
• Learn and respond sensitively to each infant’s manner of approaching or resisting new people, objects, and events.
• Encourage but do not rush infants to learn motor skills, such as walking.
• Learn what each family wants for its children, and try to provide culturally sensitive care.
• Recognize that children’s early images of themselves are influenced by unconscious messages from adults (e.g., “I enjoy holding you” or “I’m sad and unable to attend to your needs”).
• Speak to infants regularly to enrich their language development.
• Find out which languages families speak at home.
• Communicate regularly with families about infants’ daily activities, including how much and what they eat and drink, how well they sleep, and what their moods are during the day.

Early Childhood (2–6)

What you Might Observe

Physical Development: