Five stages of child development

What is child development?

A child, upon its birth, undergoes various changes. The changes involve emotional, physical and cognitive. Right from birth until it attains a certain age, every child experience different development.  Every child grows and develops its abilities at its 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 from the birth of the child till 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, 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 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 its teeth. In addition, its cognitive development also continues.

The child starts babbling, shouting and even pointing at things. Its 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 all the five stages of development to evolve 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 idle. They always have the rush of running and playing around.

The children’s cognitive ability will also attain enormous development. 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 belonging to the age of 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 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.  But children growing up in a healthy environment eventually develop pertinent abilities at each stage.