Child Development: An Overview
by Rosh Vettiveloo

In order to fully understand your child's development, let us first look at the stages of development in a normal child. The stages of development I subscribe to is the Cognitive Developmental Theory by Jean Piaget. It seems to be the most suitable theory to follow when one is interested in monitoring the development of a child.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss researcher who, in his later years concerned himself with studying children. His research in the field of child development mainly focussed on studying the development of language, reasoning and intelligence. 50 years of his life was spent studying these aspects, in children. In his theory, Piaget believed that a child's intelligence was not determined at birth.

His theory is a developmental because the stages of development have to be experienced first by the child, rather than being part of a child's genetic build up. It involves the thinking process or the cognitive process. As a child develops, he learns to think more. This process of thinking involves the brains, the 5 senses - sight, smell, hearing, vision and taste, and finally brings about a reaction which we call behaviour patterns.

According to Piaget, from birth to 16 years, a child goes through 4 stages or milestones in development before reaching adulthood. The stages are as follows:

Sensory Motor stage: birth-two years (0-2yrs)
Pre Operational stage: two-seven years (2-7yrs)
Concrete Operational stage: seven-eleven years (7-11yrs)
Formal Operational stage: eleven- sixteen years (11-16yrs)

In the first stage, the Sensory Motor stage (0-2yrs), a child is egocentric and behaviours are reflexive in nature. Egocentrism means that a child feels that the world is he, and he is the world. The child is the centre of the universe and that everything revolves around him. In this stage a baby learns the cause and effect principle. For example, he learns that by crying he will be comforted. During this time the child is taking in information from his environment. The child uses his whole being to do this. The child experiences the environment through the 5 senses and through movement. He learns to crawl to get around and towards the end they learn to stand and walk too. They learn to make gurgling sounds and start early formation of words. Dr. Montessori, another expert in pedagogy, calls this period in a child's life the unconscious mind, and rightly so. The child is not consciously aware of what is happening.

In the next stage, the Pre Operational stage (2- 7 yrs), a child is more aware of his environment. Characteristics of this stage are that the child learns symbolisation and is still egocentric. At this stage a child will even be illogical. They have very little sense of logic As the child gets older, the egocentrism reduces and so do the illogical side of them. It is in this stage that a child learns the concept of symbolisation. For example, it is common for a child to make believe that s/he is “Spiderman” or “Cinderella”.

The language boom occurs at this stage. Vocabulary increases by leaps and bounds and the child learns to express himself far more effectively than before. They learn skills and understand emotions. Most parents will recognise this stage as the stage when children never stop asking questions. The “why” questions are asked. This is perfectly normal as they are desperately trying to make sense what is going on around them.

This stage is by far the most important stage in a child's life. It is important to give them a sense order to help them organised their thoughts thus, enabling them to better make sense of it. They are energetic and active, physically and mentally, and need to be stimulated in every possible way. Often, what a child experiences at this stage of life, leaves a lasting impression on them.

All kinds of skills are acquired at this stage. They learn to walk properly, to read and write and count and so on. The foundation for later life is laid down for a child in this pre operational stage. From here, information is merely built upon and taken into a different level.

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