The child also grows teeth, they grow on their first few weeks but they come out of the tooth buds and show their first 2 front teeth usually the ones in the middle, between 4-7 months. They eventually grow out a full set of teeth usually when they reach their third birthday. Permanent teeth come out only when they are fully grown replacing the baby teeth. The baby's gum would swell and get sensitive, behaviour would also change, experience sleeping problems and they would often drool resulting to rash on the face.
When a baby is born, it has a soft spot of its head called the fontanelle. Babies have fontanels because the bones of their skulls have not fully developed yet. Sometimes, it could be sunken; the baby could be suffering from dehydration and malnutrition which can be solved by giving the baby enough fluid. Or it could also be bulging; this is a sign that the baby might have a serious illness like encephalitis which is caused by a bacterial infection, and other illnesses.
Intellectual Developments
On the first months of being born the baby may only cry; it’s their way of letting you know that they want or need something. Things like asking for milk, food, sleep or maybe nappy changing. The next months they learn to know how to say their “Oohs and ahhs” and “dadadas”, etc. Next, they learn proper single words like “Daddy” and “Mummy” and they are finally able to say the words. They gradually learn more and more words, trying to speak in the process. And eventually, they are able to produce sentences that make more sense like, “Want more food” and know how to use the magic words like “please” and “thank you”.
They’ll learn how to use the appropriate tone for words and sentences. When surrounded by other people, they’ll learn more and better about facial expressions and how it should be used. They also learn to associate things with other things like a ball, cup or water and they’ll learn what gestures are appropriate for phrases.
According to Noam Chomsky, “All babies have the ability to learn languages”. If you surround your baby with a lot of people, the baby will copy them and try to communicate and they’ll learn. The baby could learn any languages, not just English. It depends on what language you surround the baby with. For example, when one of the parents speaks a different language, if that parent keeps on speaking to the baby with that language, the baby will learn both English and the other parent’s language.
Another psychologist named Jean Piaget was also studying development of children. He had a ‘Cognitive Theory’ that had four stages of development: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and lastly, the formal operational. The first stage, sensorimotor applies to infants, 0-2 years old. It’s about how a child learns about the things around them. An example of this is when a parent shows the baby a picture of a cat, the baby learns the characteristics of the cat – four legs, two ears, one tail and it meows. When the child sees a cat in real life, they’ll know that it’s a cat. But suddenly the cat approaches the baby and strokes its fur on the baby and licks itself, the baby will add that information to its knowledge about cats, that they are furry and that they lick themselves. Piaget thought of them ‘index cards’ inside the child’s mind, each index cards containing information about something and how to react to them. They’ll also be able to remember faces of the people who come by often. They’ll remember based on their voice, or facial features. And be able to tell the difference between two people.
Emotional Developments
Emotional development of a child is based on the understanding of themselves and the other people around them. They form a bond with the carer, receiving love and affection it needs. They will feel safer and secure when having someone to care and love them. It will influence the child’s future; they will feel better about themselves and grow more caring and understanding as they spend more time with a carer who shows warmth to them.
The attachment between the child and carer will get them to understand each other more. The carer will know more about what and why the child does something. And this will help because at this age, the child will not entirely know how to express themselves and they won’t know how to properly say what they want and why they’re reacting. A British psychologist believed that all babies have a need to develop emotional attachment to their carer. The psychologist’s name was John Bowlby, he had a theory of attachment saying babies had to form attachment and create a bond with someone in order to survive. If a baby does not get the care and love that it needs when it’s young, there could be ‘long term consequences’ like becoming an emotionless psychopath, depression, aggressive and misbehaved.
They will also be able to feel emotions like jealousy, for example when their carer are playing with another baby, they will feel jealous and react negatively. This could also happen between siblings. And they’ll feel happy when they see their parents/carers, toys and when they see themselves in the mirror.
Social Developments
Infants learn how to communicate with other people as they grow. The first people they get close with are the main carers and the family members. First, they play alone when they’re only a few months old so they only think about themselves and do not know how to share or care about other people. But when they get exposed to other people, and get put with a group of other babies, they’ll learn to share things with others and soon they develop friendships and learn to socialize more.
CHILDHOOD (4 – 9 years old)
Physical Developments
Aging 4-9 years, they grow much taller and gain more weight. An average child would grow at least 3-4 inches each year. Their facial features also develop and are more recognizable even when they grow older. They also lose teeth; usually the ones at the front but eventually the permanent teeth will come out. And they gradually lose baby fats as they’re very active and run around a lot. Their eyes also get better, they see better compared to when they were before where they could only see blurry shapes and colours as they’re near sighted when just born.
They develop physical skills like catching a ball, holding a cup, walking, talking, etc. When they’re at this stage, their skills are better developed than when they were still infants. Their muscles are much stronger and more controllable; at the age of around 3, they’re able to control their small muscles in their hands that enable them to hold things in their hands like using crayons for doodling and placing shapes into their proper hole. At around 4 years old, they learn how to eat without having the carer feed them. They’re able to pick up the spoon using their own hands. At this age, they also learn how to do their zippers on their own and even learn how to cut paper using a pair of scissors.
When they’re at around 5 years old, they start to have full control of their muscles. They’ll know how to do things independently like dressing and undressing themselves, feeding, walking, talking, and they’ll even know how to draw proper shapes like squares, circles and triangles. They’ll slowly know how to bath themselves, brush their hair and teeth.
And also their large muscles in the legs that let them walk around more freely and confidently unlike before when they would struggle to maintain their balance when standing up alone. The child would be able to climb up the stairs when they get to this stage. At first, at around 3-4 years old they will struggle so instead they crawl up the stairs and crawl backwards when coming down. But after a few months, they will learn how to walk up the stairs properly. There are also other skills they learn while growing up like hopping and jumping. They’ll learn to balance their whole body when jumping and landing.
Intellectual Development
Childhood is the preoperational stage is on Piaget’s development theory. Children at this stage are able to think, draw and talk about anything they remember. If they were playing with a toy and they were being taken away from them, they would still remember what it looked like. They would be able to draw it and describe its characteristics like what colour it was, what shape and how big, etc.
At this stage of development, the children learn a lot. They even begin to create their own world of imaginations and fantasy with imaginary friends. They are able to make up their own scenarios and characters like when they play house, they can pretend to be whoever they want to be as they’re very imaginative. As children at this age have more mature brains, they have the ability to remember people who are not there and who live far away like their favourite grandma. Places they have visited are one of the things they’re able to visualise as well. They’re able to remember past events as well, for example what meal they’ve eaten in the morning.
Children at this point are able to acknowledge what’s wrong and right. A child doesn’t want to get in trouble but their curiosity usually gets them to do what they’re not supposed to do. Most of the time, when a parent tells their child to not do something, the child would go and do it just because they’re curious of what will happen. And that way, they learn their lesson as they get taught the consequences for their actions. They envision what they want to do in the future or what job they want to do when they grow up like becoming a doctor, fireman, etc.
They also start going to kindergarten, and primary school at this age, so they learn a lot. Like reading and writing. They’ll slowly learn how to write, read and understand full sentences, are able to read a whole children’s book by themselves. And also, drawing; their drawings can be more detailed compared to when they were only doodling with big crayons when they were an infant. Drawings like houses with windows and a door or flowers. Simple adding and subtracting is also something they learn and sharing food and toys.
Emotional Development
A child will know how to feel shy around other people that are not familiar, but as they spend more time with each other, they learn to overcome that shyness. They also feel other emotions like surprise, embarrassment, guilt and empathy. They learn how to understand why they feel emotions. They’ll recognise what kind of emotions they’re feeling and learn strategies to overcome them. When they learn their emotions, they also learn other people’s.
At around 4, they may shout out “That lady is so fat” in public where the lady can hear, their carer would tell them that it’s offensive and not nice. The child will remember that and when the child experiences it themselves, they’ll realise that it doesn’t feel very good when someone talks bad about them. They learn how to empathize with others.
Self-esteem is important for young children. They should have friends at school that they are comfortable being with, teachers and family that will praise them when they do something good. If they don’t have any friends or being bullied at school and are not being shown appreciation to, they’ll feel down and have emotional issues.
Social Development
First day of nursery may be very frustrating for children. They feel anxious, that maybe they won’t be able to make friends, that they won’t like the school and teachers. But as time passes by, they’ll grow more comfortable with other people.
They meet someone, start to share their toys and work together. When one’s playing with something and they want to borrow it, they’ll learn to take turns so they can both have fun and won’t be unfair between them. They’ll also talk to each other about anything like what happened in the morning. As they get to know each other they become closer friends, they look out for each other especially when one’s being bullied.
At around the age of 7, they learn their sexual differences and would want to only play with the same sex. They prefer this as they feel they have more in common, girls usually like dolls, houses and drawing while the boys like more masculine activities and toys like cars, building blocks, and running around all the time.
ADOLESCENCE (10 – 18 years old)
Adolescence is the stage with the most development. Their heights and weight will increase a lot and they also have puberty but the males and females both have different ways of maturing. And the females usually hit puberty earlier than the males who have the same age as them.
Physical Developments
Female
The first thing that develops when girls hit their puberty is their breasts. The sizes of their papillae (nipples) and areola (the circular area around the papillae) will keep growing until matured. Hair will also slowly grow from parts of the body like the underarms, legs and genitals.
Their bodies grow; feet growing longer, their arms, legs and hands too. Their faces become more acne prone, their faces get oily and they also get a lot sweatier. The reason why faces get oilier is because hormones are released which stimulates the glands to produce sebum, a fatty substance. Those glands that produce sebum are called ‘sebaceous glands’, they’re found on faces, chests, shoulders, backs and even on each follicle of every hair strand that’s why even the hair gets greasy when not washed daily.
The underarms also get very sweaty because of the apocrine glands that release sweat. When it forms together with bacteria on the skin, that’s when it gets smelly but when it doesn’t get in contact with bacteria it is odourless. They usually get released when the teen gets emotionally stressed.
Teenaged girls have menstrual periods which occur every month. It’s the extraction of bloody fluid from the uterus to the vagina. This usually begins when the girl is around 12-14 years old. When the egg is not fertilized, the lining of the uterus that has mucous and blood is released. The person could have experience pain like cramps, tiredness or sore breasts. Most go through mood swings, especially before they have their period. Periods usually lasts up to 1 week, or at least 3 days.
Male
For boys, some also get oilier skin because of hormones and they also sweat a lot more like what happens to females. They grow more body hair, mostly on the face, the jaw and above the lips, or grow chest hair and also on their sexual organs. During their puberty, they could have nocturnal emissions (wet dreams) which are caused by sexual dreams. Nocturnal emission is when a person is having an erection and ejaculates while asleep. Hormones called testosterone produces sperm which allows them to feel aroused and ejaculate.
When they hit puberty their voices change. They become deeper and more masculine whereas before puberty, their pitch would be higher and most likely sound feminine. The reason for this voice change is because the person’s larynx, also called voice box gets bigger and the muscles inside them called the vocal cords get thicker. The thicker the vocal cord the lower the voice. Also, the enlargement of the larynx is what causes the Adam’s apple to appear. Adam’s apple is the bump that is seen on a man’s neck, women don’t have this as their larynx doesn’t grow as big as the male’s do.
Intellectual Development
Teenagers grow more interested with important things like politics, social stuff and way of life. They will also start to think seriously about the future and set goals like what university to get in, what job they’d like to have or if they’re going to get married or not.
They act more mature; how they act to things, how to make proper decisions and the consequences of their actions. They want to be more responsible at school, home and public to ready themselves when they grow older and move out from their homes. At first, they’ll be uncertain of what kind of person they want to be, but as they grow they’ll grow more stable about their identity. They’ll learn how to stick with what they want, learning to make their own decisions without parents telling them.
Ability to express ideas is what they develop throughout adolescence. At first, they’re mostly expressing their ideas through acting it out but as they grow older they improve and use words more. They’re able to put across their ideas through words.
Emotional Development
When they grow, they’ll have emotional stability; they’ll know how to fully control their emotions. Teenagers grow more concerned for others, empathizing better with them than when they were younger. Feeling love, compassion and other complex emotions are also developed, especially towards the attracted sex.
Self-concepts are important for teenagers because when they’re still at the early stage of adolescence, they won’t know the right thing to do. If they have poor self-concept and think “I’m too fat”, “I’m too thin”, etc. they’ll become very frustrated, depressed and even suicidal. As they grow older, they’ll learn to love themselves more and eventually have a positive self-concept. They learn how to think that no one is normal or perfect and that it’s okay to be imperfect.
Social Development
Most teenagers make effort to make friends. They build strong relationships with friends, but they spend less time with their families. They want to explore the world for themselves and find their identity. Peers are great influences to teenagers, they experiment. They would try things like smoking, drinking and even drugs. If they pick the wrong crowd, they get peer pressured into doing something they won’t like but if they choose wisely, they’ll have a better future.
Teenagers usually pick who they want to associate with who they have a mutual understanding with, the people with the same interests, clothing style and class. They understand each other, so it’s easier to hang out with them. They wouldn’t want to spend time with someone they don’t get along with. Teenagers communicate a lot; in all the ways like talking non-stop, texting or chatting on social networking sites.
When they’re still young, around 13 years old they’re less serious about relationships, thinking only of the present and making promises and not keeping them, cheating and not caring what the other person feels. But when they grow older and have more experiences like falling in love and getting their hearts broken they get more caring, serious and committed.
EARLY ADULTHOOD (19 – 45 years old)
Physical Development
People at this stage would now have reached their physical maturity. Females usually stop earlier than the males, they stop growing at around 18 years old while males stop maturing when they’re around 20-21. And while they grow, depending on how they take care of their body, they could have a really healthy, muscly body or they could gain a lot of weight.
At around 30-40 years old, people’s fertility and metabolic rate would slow down for both male and female. When their metabolic rate drops, they could start showing signs of aging like greying hair, wrinkles all over the body especially the face and around the eyes, and their eyesight could get blurry.
Also when the female is aged around 40, they stop having their periods and their ovaries stop producing eggs. If they’re not able to produce eggs, it means they can no longer conceive a baby. This is called menopause. They also start losing sex drive, one of the reasons why the woman can’t conceive.
Intellectual Development
They develop a lot intellectually around this stage as they’re gaining more experience and knowledge from what they went through before and from their jobs. They’ll know how to sensibly find solutions to their problems and think abstractly. Some may also want to learn more, improving their knowledge so they can do better in the industry.
On Piaget’s theory, this is part of the “formal operational stage”. This is the stage where the adult thinks more ambiguously, for example when they have a problem they wouldn’t only think of one solution, they would think of other solutions in case there are better ways to solve the problem. Thinking of different solutions and answers make a person very successful and more creative because it makes them think outside the box. But not everyone can develop this level of thinking that’s why not everyone succeeds in life.
People who move out from their homes develop a higher level of independence. They show that they don’t always need parents to take care of them, to cook for them or to pay for their bills. They’ve already begun thinking of ways to earn their own money by the time they move out of their houses, they know they can’t always lean and depend on their parents because someday the parents won’t be able to support them.
Emotional Development
At this age and stage of development, a person can feel a lot of different complex emotions. When a person experiences an unsuccessful relationship, they tend to lower their self-esteem and they become emotional. While a person who has a successful relationship gets their self-confidence boosted and also their well-being.
Being with someone makes a person feel pleasant about their lives because they give and receive love from someone important, and they also feel secure and not alone in the world. When they find that someone and decide to settle down and build a family, they begin to feel even more happy. Having children gives parents a reason to live and sense of responsibility. They feel very happy when they spend time with their children; when they hear their baby’s first word, seeing them walk for the first time and just simply witnessing their growth.
Unfortunately, there are also some people who feel the opposite. They might feel very uncomfortable when in public and they have trouble socializing. They’re most likely end up growing older without having someone to love them and that could lead to loneliness and isolation. They’d feel insecure about themselves and have very low self-concept.
Social Development
A person could be social or anti-social. One might have troubles trusting people and that’s why they find it hard to build relationships with people. Or another may feel very much comfortable being with a lot of people and making conversations. Strong built relationships are very important as adulthood may go through hardships in life and that’s when they need someone to console them and help them get through it.
Everyone needs someone to lean on once in a while that’s why it’s important to make and keep a friend. Like what was written before, friendships are usually found through mutual interests and principles. Most male friendships are less intimate than the female’s as they usually only show manliness and don’t want others to think that they’re weak. While female friendships are more close and serious, most talk about everything all day long. They share everything like experiences to clothes.
In regards to relationships, women usually get attracted to macho men and that is most probably one of the reasons why men act manly. They also prefer men who have ambitions and are industrious. Most want someone who can make them feel secure and loved. Men commonly prefer women who are physically attractive but not everyone; some men also see women’s personality as more important than their appearances. People want someone who they can take care of and vice versa.
ADULTHOOD (45+ years old)
Physical Development
People at this age are still continuing with their greying of hair, wrinkling of skin, losing hair/balding, gaining more weight, appearing of aging spots on face, and slow failing of senses (touch, smell, taste, hear and sight). They might have difficulties reading, like hearing, the eyes’ structures could also start declining. The muscles in the eye may not be able to rotate fully anymore, the pupil may react slower when exposed to brightness and darkness and the eye surface called the cornea could become less sensitive. The lenses of the eye could turn yellowish and clouded. For people who have trouble reading, they could get reading glasses letting them see more clearly.
They might also have more trouble hearing especially high pitched noise as the little organs in the ear like the eardrums and the small hairs that help turn vibrations to signals sent to the brain might start to fail. Most people get hearing aids so they can hear properly and normally.
As people get older, the taste buds in the tongue decrease from approximately 9,000 taste buds. Also, the mouth produces less saliva making the mouth dry which could affect a person’s sense of taste. They could have problems differentiating sweet from salty and sour from bitter. They might not even be able to tell the difference between fresh and spoiled food. They could possibly get food poisoning without them even knowing.
For the smell sense, the nose could produce less mucous and the nerve endings in the nose could fail. If there’s less mucous, the odour might not stay for very long for the nerve endings to detect. And if the nerves are unable to detect, it could get dangerous. When there’s fire, gas and smoke around a sleeping elderly, they might likely not notice it because they’re not sensing the smell and they could possibly die.
The sense of touch also starts to grow weaker as the blood flow will decrease when flowing to the spinal cord, nerve endings or brain. Touch receptors like the Pacinian corpuscles won’t be able to function properly and the person may not be able to feel a thing when they’re being hurt. And also when feeling hot or cold, they might not be able to tell the difference which could lead to medical conditions like hypothermia, frost bites or burns. It’s only the little structures in ears, eyes, noses, etc. that fail, other things like system organs (i.e. lung and heart) also function improperly when getting older. It could affect their physical strength and coordination.
Hormone production decreases when aging resulting to a lot of different changes in the body. For both men and women, the results could be that they feel less sexually active and energetic, and less appealing. They have poorer appetite as they grow older, grow weaker and weaker, and are only able to focus for a short period of time.
Intellectual Development
Postformal thinking is usually what people at this age develop. This is another stage of Piaget’s cognitive theory, a person who develops postformal thinking is more mature than ever; more flexible, logical, willing to accept the responsibilities and morality.
Adults in this stage think differently from younger people like the adolescents and early adults. They use ‘crystalized intelligence’ which uses information they learned throughout their whole life. While the adolescents and early adults use ‘fluid intelligence’ that uses abstract thinking when dealing with unusual and unfamiliar situations.
Some people go back to college or university to finish what they weren’t able to finish when they were younger. Because jobs may require workers to finish a certain level of a course so they can be qualified that’s why they go back and finish their unfinished education.
Emotional & Social Development
At the first part of adulthood, people may have jobs that limit them from going out and socializing. But afterwards, when they get to the retirement stage they’ll focus more on socializing and bonding with the family and friends. People at this age would likely lose people close to them like their spouses or their children moving out from home. This would cause despair to the elderly and could make her feel isolated. Some would feel unwanted or useless especially when their own children are not paying as much attention to them and their needs and spending quality time with them which could get the elderly to act up.
Some could feel scared of death as they grow even older and can experience ‘midlife crisis’; feeling trapped and pressured by their responsibilities. They might start thinking about disappearing forever and that could lead to depression and regret, because they’ve not done everything they wanted to do and it’s too late to do them. But some also are very open and are not afraid of dying. Their spouses may have passed away already and that would make them more accepting to the fact that they’re going to die because they would think they’d see their dead spouse there.
Having a close relationship with someone can help people cope with aging as they won’t feel alone. Being active in society, living in residential homes with other people who can relate with each other and taking part in hobbies and activities with other people can affect an elderly’s emotional development positively as it can increase their self-esteem.
References:
Parenting (2015) 9 New-born Reflexes
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Oswalt A. (2015) Early Childhood Physical Development
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DeBord K. (2013) Childhood Years
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UMM (2013) Puberty and Adolescence
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