Week 4

Chapter 6 goes over growth occurring in an infant from the ages of 2-6 years old.  The growth period is also graphed in figure 6.1 on the bottom of page 131.  This graph I found interesting because of how close the weight/height is and also how close the height starts, and then departs as the age increases.  As of weight at the younger age there is a gap, but as the child gets older and gets to the age of 6, the boys and girls weight almost meet at the same lbs.  I found that interesting only because in my eyes, boys would always be much taller than girls and weigh more than boys due to a boy’s body structure of muscle.  I can relate to his as remembering my size at the age of six (of course with the help of pictures) and then to look at my brother when he was six years old.  He was still taller than I was, and had a little more weight on him than I did as a female at the age of six.  These graphs are a clear image if you do not have someone of an infant to compare with. 

Gross moor skills and fine motor skills was something new that I learned in chapter 6.  This happens when the child is 2-6 years old, otherwise known as an important time for growing motor skills.   There is a lot that is developed over these years such as psychological, social behaviors, and biological these are some of many issues that can also include a child’s stress level, nutrition the child is getting, and disease.  Stress at this young age could be caused in school while away from their parents.  This worldwide problem is called bullying.  My opinion of bullying is that while away from home with other children learning social skills, and feeling the changes in their brains at the same exact time, is that the adults at school need to be able to handle these situations ASAP.  I think that if the bullying can stop at school when it first starts to occur both children will have more academic success, and more success developing their social skills.

Language development is a key milestone with children, and has no formal training.  I found it very interesting while working with young children that all of their skills such as, incorrect language models, children learn sounds, and then combine sounds into words, following that they put those words that are grammatically correct into sentences.  On page 142 in Chapter 7 of LIFESMART it is proven that when children move into the first grade they have a vocabulary range of up to 14,000 words.

Child development in a child begins in the early stages of their social life, also known as social development.  Social relationships are a big part in this transition of a child’s life.  A parent’s role in this time period of a child’s life is curtail the process of behavior learning also occurs, so if a child is bad they get a time out or even worse, a spanking.  On page 143 of LIFESKILLS, Figure 6.8 contains a chart on the effects of spanking a child on bad behavior.  This chart shows that you can avoid spanking a child and to just reprimand them on their bad behavior, this seems to be more accurate in improving a child’s behavior, as to spanking a child three times there is no change in cognitive ability.  I don’t think this is the answer to raising children in the social development time in their life because of the mental affect spanking also has on children.  While having a child develops a social mind, I would want that to be the only thing developing.  If a child is worried about why did mommy or daddy spank me, again after doing the same thing that might confuse the child if they are not presented the bad behavior and positive way to change the behavior at the time of spanking.