Talk:Child development stages

Age seven up?

I'm doing a chart for NVQ of stages of development (age groups 0-3, 4-7, 8-12, 13-16) in different areas (physical, emotional, cognitive, communication, social)

I found this page very useful for the first two age groups - thanks to everyone who contributed.

ppppppppppppppppppp Just wondering why it stops at age six when children continue developing?

Obviously it's easy to ask that question when I'm not putting in the info but I think it would be a useful source of info.

style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.64.205.55 (talk) 16:12, 13 July 2010 (UTC) 

Five year old section

Physical, cognitive, and language development are repeated, but with different information, which means it can be about six year olds. Someone either merge information with existing lists or make a new section on six year olds.MewtwoDude (talk) 22:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Swimming Reflex

I watched the movie "Blue Lagoon," and noticed that the baby that the two main characters have moves its arms and legs on its own when submerged in water, when it is, at most, a few weeks old. It also did not show any signs of starting to drown. I realize it's just a movie, but when I asked my aunt about it, she said that at a young age babies have a reflex to hold their breath when underwater, and that they can swim a little too. I was just wondering -- is this true? And if so, when does this reflex disappear? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.39.148.218 (talk) 04:55, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I've heard this mentioned before too. The practice of Water birth involves giving birth to the baby in water, and though the Wikipedia article doesnt mention it, Im given to understand that the baby will start swimming around in there automatically. When does the reflex disappear? I dont believe it ever does. It's just that if you're not exposed to underwater environments until you're, say, ten years old, by that time you've long since outgrown relying on instinct to gauge your actions and you're going to say "whoa". This is all hearsay, of course, which is why I'm not posting it into the main article. Soap ^Talk/_{Contributions} 10:08, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal

I was looking for "developmental milestones", and found a very short stub on it. I think the former term is likelier to be searched than the current title of this list/article. Also, may be with effort (actually quite a bit), this list could be transformed into full fledged article with some (at least) preliminary explanation of what all aspects of development are considered.

Looking forward to some feedback.

—KetanPanchal^taLK 16:21, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Can't see why not! Could even divide the article in two perspectives, if needed: changes vs age, age vs changes. All in tables. Khullah (talk) 03:48, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the merger with "developmental milestones" and with the idea that people are more likely to look under those words if they are looking to find out if their kid is okay. However, I got here from the psych end of things, and I was expecting an overview of the stage theories of human development (Piaget, Erikson, Freud, etc). Is there a page with nutshells of those that then could fork out into the detail pages for each major theory? Mirafra (talk) 23:18, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Massive culturally biased errors are inevitable..

The simple act of breastfeeding an infant properly will result in a dramatically different set of milestones for an infant. For the most part, development of skills is slightly accelerated due to the well known benefits of breastfeeding, however, there is a large initial lag-time with certain aspects of hand-eye coordination for breast-fed infants simply because they have not been put into that do or die situation where they are forced to learn how to work a bottle.. additionally, stress has been shown to accelerate development of reproductive traits in many mammals (including humans), and I can't help but speculate that all the aches and pains of having to digest infant formula while simultaneously fighting infection without any help from the mothers immune system (via breastfeeding) must be pretty stressful..

Additionally, children who are abandoned into infant cribs experience far less human interaction than infants who's parents practice cosleeping at night. Crib infants learn quickly that they must cry out, and loudly, in order for their needs to be met, while a cosleeping infant will learn to communicate in other, more subtle ways, such as poking mom or dad awake when its time for a diaper change. This will obviously also have a dramatic effect on the development of infant social skills. Even worse, the use of daycare facilities where completely unrelated people care for numerous unrelated children for low wages does nothing to encourage growth in the ability to form strong, loving relationships.

Cultures that practice proper breastfeeding and encourage mothers to directly care for their children day and night will have a very different set of milestones than cultures that encourage the abandonment of infants in cribs and daycare facilities. There is no real love in the coldness of a silicone nipple. Zaphraud (talk) 20:17, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Reading and Cognitive Development

i realize that this article is a generalized list, which is why I point out that some children can read by the ages of two and three. The article says that children "pretend to read" beginning at three, which is an overt generalization. I'm sure there are many others, but this was most noticeable to me. If the article could be made to come out of such a strict list form I'm sure it would be adviseable to include variations and avoid generalities. 24.16.246.124 (talk) 04:02, 1 March 2009 (UTC) Young reader

I agree -- this is an extremely important point about the whole nature of development. Let me see if I can put in some kind of discussion of that at the top. Mirafra (talk) 23:20, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

"Pretend to read?" So someone has asked a two year old if they're pretending to read or actually trying to figure out what they're looking at, given that they probably recognize the symbols they're looking at? Of course we're not talking about a being with great intelligence when talking about very young children, so it's much easier to predict and interpret behavior. That said, I think saying that children pretend to read starting at a certain age is quite presumptuous, especially in an article lacking good references and sources which anyone can access. Saying "shows interest in written text" would be better imo; not sure if the "offending" sentence is still in the article anyway. I know I was reading before 3, certainly not just going through the motions to imitate adults. This whole article is very fascinating to read, which is why I wish it was referenced better. 24.68.34.57 (talk) 23:54, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Specifications sorted by reached age

Where did this (massive) amount of information come from? The writing and punctuation style is inconsistent (particularly near the end; specifically the section titled "Six year old"), which suggests to me that it is an amalgamation of multiple lists, or someone added their own entries, without a source. Well, I don't think any of this section has a source, or at least not one easily checked, but I digress. Most of the points seem reasonable, but seem quite specific and numerous. I read this article roughly 1-2 years ago, and the information then was much more general, and there was almost nothing about development beyond age 4. Now there is a whole list, which, as I mentioned above, I have concerns about regarding its factuality and veracity. Anyone feel the same? Has an explanation? Has a reference anyone can view (as opposed to 3 books (1 very old, 1 somewhat old, and both those lacking ISBN) and 1 medical paper?

24.68.34.57 (talk) 23:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Most of this information comes from the denver developmental screening tool. An example can be found here: http://www.umsl.edu/~garziar/Media%20folder/denverresults_325.jpeg. It's a pretty common screening tool. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Developmental_Screening_Test Naranoth (talk) 04:11, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

child development

Child development Checklist for development of hearing The following checklist gives some of the general signs which shows that the baby’s hearing is developing normally. New born The baby is startled by a sudden loud noise (e.g. door slamming) and blinks or opens his eyes widely. 1 month The baby begins to notice continuous sounds e.g. (vacuum cleaner ) and pauses and listens to them when they begin. Young babies are often soothed by particular types of music and singing. 4 months The baby smiles at the sound of his mother voice, even when he cannot hear her. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.105.141.79 (talk) 19:27, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

There are several theories of child development...

And this article doesn't really differentiate between them. Erikson's stages are noted, but there's no discussion of Jean Piaget's stages, which are as prominent if not more. There should really be some sort of introductory paragraph summarizing ECE theory, and then maybe the strictly biological developmental markers could be separated out? Because in psychological development, there are lots of differing opinions. Dare I mention Freud? -- hurtstotouchfire via 68.98.138.189 (talk) 03:32, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I removed the two stages that were part of Erikson's theory. As far as I can see now (but I did not read every line in this article), the stages in the current article are not part of a theory but rather observed stages in young children. So the theories of Freud, Piaget, Erikson etc now all are on their separate pages, which makes much more sense than trying to create an article in which all of them are mentioned. Lova Falk talk 19:56, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Language sections

Although this is the English-language Wikipedia, its treatment of the topics is not supposed to be confined to the English-speaking world. The treatment and examples in the various Language sections presuppose, however, that the language the child is acquiring is English. A characterization like Uses the prepositions "on," "in," and "under" is totally inappropriate and inadequate for languages that don't have prepositions, which may be the majority of natural languages. I see no easy fix for the problem – even when another language has an obvious counterpart, such as a locative and other cases, it is not clear whether the (unsourced!) observation may be generalized to that language.  --Lambiam 15:43, 26 August 2010 (UTC)