Physical & Cognitive Development of Early Childhood

Within just a few years, young children undergo enormous physical and cognitive changes. Physicians and educators like to keep track of these changes to place the child in the correct educational program and to offer additional assistance where necessary for the child to have a normal, successful life.

Zero to Two Years

• By one year of age, babies may grow as much as a foot in height and triple their weight. Reflexes such as sucking and grasping that are highly developed at birth wane or become voluntary by age two. Brain size may increase over 50 percent. At birth, a child's eyesight is very poor, but the ability to see progresses very rapidly. Most babies can roll over at six months, learn to crawl around eight to 12 months and walk between 12 to 15 months.

Two to Six Years

• Toddlers start to lose much of their baby fat around age three. It is normal for the child to grow as much as 3 inches every year, and by the time a child is six years old, they usually are between 3 and 3.8 feet tall and weigh between 32 and 46 pounds. Sensory development increases, with both gross and fine motor skills improving. Because the left hemisphere of the brain develops quickly during this period, children of this age start to excel in language development, gaining many words a day and using increasingly complex sentences. This is due in part to cells that protect neural pathways developing quickly during this time.

Seven to 11 Years

• Between the ages of seven and 11, children experience growth spurts that propel them near or to their adult height. Girls usually reach this growth spurt faster, but boys catch up about a year or two later. This is the period in which children usually experience puberty (maturation of sexual organs). Males gain muscle while females gain breast and hip size. In both sexes, the right side of the brain develops and the entire brain becomes nearly the size of an adult's. Abstract thought and rationalization becomes possible, and the child can perform a complex series of tasks. Gross and fine motor skills reach their peak (for childhood) during this period.

Concerns

• If a child's nutrition is inadequate, or if she is exposed to harmful substances such as alcohol, her growth and development may be hindered. For this reason, many programs exist to educate people on the importance of childhood nutrition and health, including during pre- and post-natal periods.

Considerations

• There is a great deal of controversy about the use of labeling and charting of children by physicians, teachers and other professionals. The debate lies in whether or not labeling (particularly in cognitive areas) results in self-fulfilling prophesies, and the fact that what is normal in one area is not normal for another (e.g., one community may have very short people with smaller babies, while another may be very tall with larger babies).