Early Childhood Development Stages

There are stages in the development of young children, stages which can be predicted with some accuracy. If you know what to look for, you can notice the entry of one stage after the previous one has been completed.

A newborn baby human is quite unable to meet his own physical needs. He definitely needs someone older or more mature to help him through those earliest stages toward adulthood. Baby people are not much like baby chickens who are able to walk and find their own food as soon as they hatch from the egg. Human babies cannot become nearly so free to survive on their own until years after their birth.

Humans are not born with many abilities to stay alive. They are able to vocalize the fact that they need something although they cannot tell anyone exactly what they need at first. They simply register their discontent by crying. The cries may be for food or water or because they feel too warm or too cold. Sometimes they cry because their backside is not comfortable and needs a new, clean covering on it.

The outlook for this helpless creature looks bleak. However, infant development is a fast-moving process. In just a few weeks, the wildly erratic movement of hands and legs becomes more under the infant’s control. He soon can usually get his thumb into his mouth with little difficulty. His muscle control is quite easy to notice. He learns to move his eyes to follow objects. He can often turn toward the direction from which he heard a sound. He even develops different sounds with different meanings although he does not yet form real words. His coo sounds reveal contentment. His cries can differentiate his needs for a clean diaper from his need for a bottle of milk.

Late in the infant stage, the child begins to enter the early child development stage. He becomes able to roll from lying on his back to lying on his front. Then, he begins working on crawling to get around. He learns to sit up and maintain his balance. Eventually, he will try to support his weight on his own feet and legs. Walking without the aid of another person is a high point in this early childhood stage.

Once a child enters the childhood development stage, he becomes harder to control. It is his exploration stage. He tends to get into everything, learning as he goes. His large muscles are more under control by this time.

Small muscle control is needed before the child is ready to begin school work. He can’t control a pencil until the small muscles are under his control. He must learn some social skills at this time. He is already aware that other people have feelings, too, and that he needs to control himself so as to not hurt others. Learning the give-and-take that is needed to succeed in the world makes him a better human.

Usually, all of those changes take place in less than six years. However, the baby chicken has become an adult and has produced offspring and is entering middle age within that same six years.