Child psychology & Development

Getting to know your child as they develop can be one of the most rewarding parts of being a parent. Learning how your child views the world, teaching your child new skills, and mentoring them as they process big new feelings and changes is all part of being a parent, but it’s not easy.

As your child develops, they go through progressive developmental stages, from birth into adulthood. Environmental, genetic, and cultural factors can all affect a child’s development, and how quickly they progress from one stage to the next. It’s difficult for children to explain what they’re going through, much less to analyze their feelings. That’s where child psychology can help give you highly important and valuable information. Child psychology is the study of subconscious and conscious childhood development.

For more details refer the following link:

https://www.wwmedgroup.com/blog/child-psychology/

Few Important areas around Child psychology & Development are as follows:

·        Development: The study of child development is often divided into three broad areas: physical, cognitive, and social-emotional. Physical development, which generally occurs in a relatively stable, predictable sequence, refers to physical body changes and includes the acquisition of certain skills, such as gross-motor and fine-motor coordination. Cognitive or intellectual development, meanwhile, refers to the processes children use to gain knowledge and includes language, thought, reasoning, and imagination. Because social and emotional development are so interrelated, these two areas are often grouped together. Learning to relate to others is part of a child’s social development, while emotional development involves feelings and the expression of feelings. Trust, fear, confidence, pride, friendship, and humor are all part of one’s social-emotional development.

·        Milestones: Developmental milestones are an important way for psychologists to measure a child’s progress in several important developmental areas. Essentially, they act as checkpoints in a child’s development to determine what the average child is able to do at a particular age. Knowing the milestones for different ages helps the psychologist understand normal child development and also aids in identifying potential problems with delayed development. For example, a child who is 12 months old can typically stand and support his or her weight by holding onto something. Some children at this age can even walk. If a child reaches 18 months of age but still cannot walk, it might indicate a problem that needs further investigation.

·        Behavior: All children can be naughty, defiant and impulsive from time to time. Conflicts between parents and children are also inevitable as the latter 1.    struggle, from the “terrible twos” through adolescence, to assert their independence and develop their own identities. These behaviors are a normal part of the growing-up process. However, some children have extremely difficult and challenging behaviors that are outside the norm for their age. In fact, behavioral disorders are the most common reason that parents seek the help of child psychologists.
In some cases, these behavioral issues are temporary problems due largely to stressful situations, such as the birth of a sibling, a divorce, or a death in the family. Other cases involve a pattern of sustained hostile, aggressive, or disruptive behaviors that are not appropriate for the child’s age.

·        Emotions: Emotional development involves learning what feelings and emotions are, understanding how and why they happen, recognizing one’s own feelings and those of others, and developing effective ways of managing them. This complex process begins in infancy and continues into adulthood. The ?rst emotions that can be recognized in babies include joy, anger, sadness and fear. Later, as children begin to develop a sense of self, more complex emotions like shyness, surprise, elation, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride and empathy emerge. The things that provoke emotional responses also change, as do the strategies used to manage them.

·        Socialization: Closely related to emotional development is social development. Stated simply, socialization involves acquiring the values, knowledge and skills that enable children to relate to others effectively and to contribute in positive ways to family, school and the community. Although the process begins shortly after birth and continues into adulthood, the age of early childhood is a crucial period for socialization. One of the first and most important relationships children experience is with their parents or primary caregivers and the quality of this relationship has a significant effect on later social development. In peer relationships, children learn how to initiate and maintain social interactions with other children, acquiring skills for managing conflict, such as turn-taking, compromise, and bargaining. Play also involves the mutual, sometimes complex, coordination of goals, actions, and understanding.

For more details refer the following link:

https://www.sacap.edu.za/blog/category/applied-psychology/