What is Child Development?
A child, upon its birth, undergoes various changes. The changes involve emotional, physical, and cognitive aspects. Right from birth until it attains a certain age, every child experiences different development. Every child grows and develops their abilities at their own pace. These developments come at different stages. At every stage, there is a milestone for a child to achieve. These are called developmental milestones. For the child's healthy growth, parents need to know about these developmental milestones.
Based on this, the development of the child can be charted into five stages.
What are the five stages of Child Development?
Newborn stage
This stage covers the period from the birth of the child to two months. The fetus would be accustomed to the darkness and the warmth of its mother's womb.
So, when it comes out as a baby, its entire environment changes. It loses its comfort, which has been enjoyed for months.
The baby will react sharply to everything around it, including light, noise, a change in temperature, etc. It responds to everything using its only known language, which is crying.
Once it is accustomed to the external environment, its cognitive abilities start developing. Babies start seeing objects, recognise faces and even respond to soft touches.
Infant Stage
This stage starts around 3 months from the baby's birth and extends up to one year. At the beginning of this stage, the infant's spinal cord will not be strong and will still be under development. So the baby will not be able to sit.
As time passes, the infant eventually rolls on the floor and tries to sit on its own.
This is also the stage where the child develops their teeth. In addition, cognitive development continues.
The child starts babbling, shouting, and even pointing at things. The motor senses start developing at a steady pace, which helps the child crawl around.
Toddler Stage
At this stage, the child's motor skills start developing faster. Babies at this stage are generally called toddlers as they try to stand up, walk around and even climb up steps.
This stage is crucial among the five stages of development to develop the child's language skills. It starts recognising the names of people and other objects.
The child's cognitive abilities will have developed well by now. Because of this, the child starts developing routines. It also creates the necessity to express itself. Hence, its language skills will automatically improve.
Preschool Stage
When the child attains an age between three and five years, its motor skills will have reached an advanced stage. It is hard for the children to sit idly. They are always in a rush to run and play around.
Children's cognitive abilities will also develop enormously. They start framing proper sentences and start pronouncing words.
Children can also draw proper structures and write lengthy sentences.
At this particular stage, children want to showcase their individuality. They start wearing clothes by themselves and also develop a proper toilet routine.
This stage is crucial for the overall development of children. So, parents must interact with them and lay out a conducive environment for their undisturbed progress.
School-going stage
Experts further classify this final stage into two sub-stages:
- Pre-teen stage
- Teen stage
Pre-teen stage
This stage covers children aged 6–12. This is the phase where they get influenced by the outside world.
They start developing friendships and experience new social bonds. They even want to be independent, which is entirely normal behaviour at this stage.
Teen stage
Children in their teen stage start forming their own opinions. This is also the stage at which children experience emotional tensions.
They start developing sexual desires and form amorous relationships. Moreover, they tend to develop various emotions (remove the link as it is a single word), like jealousy, love, etc.
Summing up
For every child, achieving developmental milestones at each successive stage is crucial. The above five stages of child development may differ among children. However, children growing up in a healthy environment eventually develop pertinent abilities at each stage.
