The aim of this blog is for parents and educators to get information on important developmental topics and milestones that children go through. We highly believe that it is crucial for parents and educators to have knowledge on child development in order to raise and educate children that will grow and develop into well-adjusted and healthy members of our society.

This blog is the result of the contributions of FIU students:

• Astrid Sanchez
• Kiara Casellas
• Monica Silva da Costa
• Morgan Kurlander
• Notasha Brooks

towards the “Final Assignment Group Website” project for EDP3273, Fall 2018 – Professor Agnes Sheffey.

December 2, 2018

Theoretical Perspective on Intelligence

Spearman’s
Charles Spearman proposes that intelligence consists of a single pervasive reasoning ability (a general factor) that is used on a wide variety of tasks and several narrowed abilities (specific factors) in executing particular tasks. Spearman believes that children’s performance on any task depends on the general factor and any specific factor that the task involves. From Spearman perspective, measures of different language skills like: vocabulary, word recognition, reading comprehension etc. are all hugely connected because they all reflect both general intelligence and the same specific factor, which is verbal ability.

Cattell-Horn-Carroll Theory of cognitive abilities
Raymond Cattell, expanding on Spearman’s idea, found evidence for two different components of general intelligence. Firstly, he explains that children are some what different when it come to fluid intelligence, the ability to acquire knowledge quickly and adapt to new situations effectively. Secondly, children are different in crystallized intelligence, the knowledge and skills they have accumulated from their experiences, schooling and culture. Cattell states that fluid intelligence is largely the result of inherited biological factors, and crystalize intelligence depends on both fluid intelligence and experiences and so is influenced by both heredity and environment.

Gardner’s multiple intelligences
Howard Gardner believes that people have at least eight different abilities; therefore, he created eight stages of development.

• Linguistic intelligence – Ability to use language effectively. (e.g. making persuasive arguments.)
• Logical-mathematical intelligence – ability to reason logically, especially in mathematics and science. (e.g. solving mathematical problems quickly.)
• Spatial intelligence – ability to notice details in what one sees and to imagine and manipulate visual objects in one’s mind. (e.g. drawing a visual likeness of an object)
• Musical intelligence – ability to create, comprehend, and appreciate music. (e.g. composing a musical work)
• Bodily- Kinesthetic intelligence – ability to use one’s body skillfully. (e.g. dancing)
• Interpersonal intelligence – ability to notice subtle aspects of other people’s behaviors. (e.g. correctly perceiving another’s mood)
• Intrapersonal intelligence – awareness of one’s own feelings, motive, and desires. (e.g. identifying subtle differences in one’s experiences of such similar emotions as sadness and regret)
• Naturalist intelligence – ability to recognize patterns in nature and differences among natural objects and life-forms. (e.g. identifying members of particular plant of animal species.

Sternberg’s theory of successful intelligence
Mr. Robert Sternberg is of the belief that intelligent behavior emerges from a perfect equilibrium and requires functioning harmony between practical abilities, analytical abilities and creative abilities. To briefly put these into perspective, exercising our practical abilities includes application of and knowledge and skills previously acquired, to everyday situations. In terms of our analytical abilities, we should be able to evaluate, compare and contrast information. for example, weighing the pros and cons about what college to attend or something as simple as picking apart a question from your midterm exams. Creative abilities require us to utilize our imagination to invent new experiences by combining ideas within a new situation. Three additional factors that helps cements the theory of successful intelligence are role of the environment, role of prior experience and role of cognitive process.

Distributed intelligence
Roy Pea and David Perkins discovered that intelligent behavior solely depends on physical, social and cultural support. People can distribute there thinking in three of the following ways. First, the use of technology to handle large amount of information. Second, working alongside others to explore new idea and solving problems. Third, thinking about different circumstances you encounter using the various devices your culture provides.

Tests of intelligence

Intelligence tests are used to distinguish between children with special needs of whom might be better benefited from a customize curriculum and children with exceptionally high abilities who require more in-depth classwork to better advance their cognitive abilities. A few examples of the different types of intelligent tests that are available today are: Wechsler intelligent scale for children, Stanford – Binet intelligence scale, universal nonverbal intelligent test, and the cognitive assessment system.

• Wechsler intelligence scale for children is used with children ages 6 – 16. It consists of 15 subtests where scores are combined to determine a total score, known as a full-scale IQ.
•  Stanford– Binet intelligence scales can be used with children 2 years old, adolescents and adults. This test requires multiple task (e.g. defining vocabulary words, finding logical inconsistencies in a story, or interpreting proverbs) as well as objects and pictures (e.g. remembering a sequence of objects, copying geometric figures, or identifying absurdities in pictures.)
• Universal nonverbal intelligence test is for children ages 5 – 17. It consists of six subtests which comprise of memory or reasoning regarding visual stimuli. This test is useful for children who have hearing impairments or language-related learning disabilities.
• The cognitive assessment system is based on the ides that cognitive processes identified in neurological research are the basis for intelligence.

Dynamic Assessment

Dynamic assessment is the process of assessing children’s ability with an adult assistance. For instance, it determines tasks that children are not able to do on their own. It provides in-dept and practice in behaviors and cognitive processes related to the task. Determining the extent to which each child has benefited form the instruction. Dynamic assessment is a new approach for assessing intelligence; however, it has proven to be more optimistic than traditional measures of assessing intelligence.

Developmental assessments with infants and young children

Assessing infants and young children can be challenging because infants may be fussy, sleepy, or even afraid of the person conducting the assessment. Also, young children have very short attention span and lose interest in the test’s questions. Because of these setbacks, assessment for infant and young children are not always reliable. Even so, teachers and other professionals need to monitor young children’s cognitive development. A few of the ways these tests are conducted are as follows:

• Assessment with infants and toddlers – infants are assessed as soon as they are born in the hospital. Doctors check their color, heart rate, reflexes, muscle tone and breathing. Each of these aspects gets a rating between 0 and 2.
• Assessment with preschoolers – the third edition of the Wechsler preschool and primary scale of intelligence is another frequently used assessment for young children. It is used with children ages 2 to 7.

Bioecology of intelligence

The bioecology of intelligence have several different influences that contribute to the genetic profile of children. These include: hereditary influences, environmental influences and demographic factors.

Hereditary Influences:

• Twin Studies – The name sates what this does, the study of monozygotic and dizygotic twins (identical and fraternal) and it shows how heredity affects IQ. Identical twins show a higher level of intelligence more than fraternal twins because they begin as a single fertile egg which then separates. So even if one sibling my get adopted and raised by different parents, the twin will still show similar IQ levels.
• Adoption studies – When a child is adopted, their IQ level will still be similar to their biological parents, this is because intelligence is mainly transferred through genetics.

Environmental Influences:

• Home Environment – Parents who interact with their children frequently and provide advance learning tools, activities, reading materials, teach motor skills, provide an opportunity for the child to developed intelligently. Studies have shown that children who had a somewhat strict learning regime at home scored higher on IQ tests than children who hailed from homes where parents who did not provide proper learning tools.
• Formal Schooling – Early introduction and regular attendance to schools have a considerably higher IQ than children who did not start early or attend regularly. Same applies to children who dropped out of school compared to the ones that remained enrolled.
• Early nutrition – Nutrition plays a highly vital role in the development of a child’s intelligence. During pregnancy and even afterwards (early years), lack of nutrition can limit neurological development and has adverse long-term effects on learning abilities.

Demographic Factors:

•  Socio economic – Lack of resources play a major role in a child’s intelligence level. Studies shows that persons who are below the poverty line or just above tend to have children who show a lower level of intelligence than their counterparts who may be of a better economic standing.
• Gender – Findings show that there is not a great disparity of intelligent when it comes to male or female. However after puberty the sexes show more individualistic traits in that,  boys are normally better at task including a higher level of mathematical thinking and girls are more better with reading and written materials.

Exceptionalities in intelligence

Some children and adolescents have exceptional abilities and other have significant cognitive delay. These exceptionalities are known as giftedness and intellectual disabilities.

• Children who have gifts and talent – someone who is gifted and talented has unusually higher intellectual abilities than that of their counterparts. Gifted and talented children need to be challenge in the classroom in order to build on their intelligence.
• Children with intellectual disabilities – someone with intellectual disabilities express significant developmental delays. Children with developmental delays usually perform poorly on intelligence test.  

 

Source: Child Development and Education by Teresa M. McDevitt, Jeanne Ellis Ormrod – Prentice Hall, 6th edition, 2010

 

Family

As agents of nature, parents give their children genes for basic human traits and for their own individual characteristics. As mediators of nurture families typically care for children, in affectionate relationships, and encourage children’s participation in routine activities. Children generally need one or more adults to advocate devotedly and persistently for their welfare and heads of family usually serve in this manner. Some change in family roles occur in a trend like, quantitative fashion, as when children gradually become more responsible for their own behavior.

 

 

 

 

Culture

The cultural contexts a child grows up in begin with family and extend to include the cultural group or groups with which the family identifies. Culture refers to the behaviors, values and beliefs that a group shares and passes on from one generation to the next. Children learn the values, beliefs, expectations, and habitual patterns of behavior of the social and cultural contexts in their lives. Cultures, for example, have characteristic ways of showing respect; there may be different rules for how to properly greet an older or younger person, a friend, or a stranger. For young children, what makes sense and how they respond to new experiences are essentially shaped by the social can cultural contexts to which they have become familiarized. All young children must adjust when they move from the security and familiarity of their homes into schools or early childhood programs. To better accommodate the realities of cultural and verbal diversity in schools and early childhood programs, teachers today need to work at being especially profound and receptive to the perspectives of children and their families that may be different from their own.

Community

A child’s community includes the local neighborhood and he surrounding area. Human beings are a social species with a natural inclination to congregate in communities. When a community contains friendly neighbors, decent housing, accessible playmates, safe playgrounds, and reasonably stable and well-paying jobs, it exerts nurturing influences on children’s development. Children’s experiences in communities show a few qualitative changes. Many changes are probably incremental in form, such as children gradually learning about a city’s neighborhoods as they venture farther from home.

Source: Child Development and Education by Teresa M. McDevitt, Jeanne Ellis Ormrod – Prentice Hall, 6th edition, 2010

Theories of Language Development

Modeling & Reinforcement Theory: B.F. Skinner’s theory that a child simply learns through observing and imitating the speech of others; children occasionally imitate specific sounds and general sound patterns and as they get older continue to pick up on words and expressions. Skinner suggest reinforcement also plays a role, praising or rewards increase mature language. Adults must be mindful that they are rewarding proper grammar.
Nativism: Noam Chomsky theorized that we develop language through a language acquisition device that is implanted in our biology, he explains that the brain is structured to focus on language, finding the left hemisphere to focus on controlling language functions such as producing and understanding speech. He expresses how early exposure is vital to a child’s development.
Cognitive Process Theory: This theory expresses that children have an innate skill that progresses to make sense of language. We are not born with a capacity to learn language but instead with the skills to understand language patterns. This theory states that children’s progress relies on their ability to pay attention and have infant directed speech so they connect and stay actively engaged in language. Children often develop a level of reasoning, and though may not have the right answers can begin to do process of elimination.
Sociocultural Theory: This theory places an emphasis on social interactions to foster language, which involves explicit instruction and indirect means of communicating. Vygotsky views can be seen in examples like “I do, We do, You do”. Allowing an adult to demonstrate proper language, allow the child to model with them, and provide opportunities for the child to apply the skills.
Functionalism: The functionalism theory expresses that we develop language because evolution has motivated us to learn. It’s useful to us, language helps us: acquire knowledge and exchange information, have social interactions and establish relationships, control our behaviors and mentally represent things in our head, and influence other’s behaviors.

Trends in Language Development

Children’s language develops in building blocks. Starting in early infancy with phonemic awareness, then progressing to phonology, semantics, syntax, and then pragmatics.
Semantic Development: Starting very young, you can see an understanding to semantics at three to four months, where they begin to categorize words and sounds. At 8 months they say their first words, 12 months they know about 50 words and at 16- 18 months they have an explosion of development in vocabulary, knowing over 50,000 in oral development. Children have many ingenious strategies for learning meanings of words, fast mapping is a great example. They progress on their language, two types of language they work on is receptive which marks their comprehension and expressive which is producing emotions or statements. They do focus on lexical words which somehow connect to the physical, social, and psychological world. Overtime, they focus on the grammar aspect and continually refine their understanding of lexical words. Often times, they overextend or under extend when learning words, because they have learned the word but not fully understood its meaning; that is when we can redirect them and help them comprehend words.
To foster this development, talk regularly to the child, they pick up on patterns and sounds and are able to develop a categorization of the sounds. Also, as mentioned above, provide definitions to new words, so they learn the context of it and have examples of when to use it. Take those moments as teachable opportunities not just for the words but for the syntax and examples of when to use them. Providing them with positive feedback and encouraging them to read also aids in their development.

Syntactic Development

“Rules of syntax- the rules we use to combine words into meaningful sentences- are incredibly complex” (e.g. N. Chomsky, 2006)
Complex yet most of our knowledge about syntax is subconscious. Early syntactic knowledge builds on awareness of patterns in speech. Children rely heavily on word order to interpret and comprehend sentences. Once a child begins the process, they begin to semantic bootstrapping to form their syntactic categories. They will begin to increasingly incorporate syntactic rules to their questions and sentences. Beware of overregulation, where they haven’t grasped an awareness of endings yet. For instance, with word tenses, plurals, or word irregularities they may use common terms and not understand certain sentences need a different form of the word. An example is instead of saying “I went to school” they may say “I goed to school” because they know go but not the past tense of went.
To foster this development expand on their telegraphic speech, giving gentle feedback and proper modeling of the syntax. Expansion requires you to repeat a child’s short utterances in more complete and grammatically correct forms. Providing direct instruction and teaching word irregularities and providing lots of opportunities for the child to practice.

Development of Listening Skills

In the first year, infants learn to focus on primary sounds, or phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sounds in a spoken language that signifies different meanings. Phonemes make up our language, and one small change to a phoneme in a word can completely alter its meaning. For example, the word bite, changing the first sound to ‘f’ creates fight, changing the middle sound to a long ‘a’ creates bait, and changing the last sound to ‘k’ creates bike. Good listening varies in the mind of a child, so teaching them what your expectations are is important. A young child thinks good listening is just sitting quietly, a useful strategy to ensure the children are paying attention is comprehension monitoring, where every so often a teacher will orally ask questions to confirm they are paying attention. Helpful teaching tips to be mindful about is keeping an open positive mind. Some children may be scared to ask for help based on past experiences, don’t always assume they weren’t listening they just may not feel confident to ask, whether because of past experiences or cultures. Culture has a huge impact on the child’s manners and even their language, some native languages have different phonemes, because phonemes are particular to spoken language, some sounds don’t exist so be mindful as a teacher of the diversity in your classroom. In the later years, children begin to understand figurative speech or words with multiple meanings.
To promote good listening comprehension, provide developmentally appropriate opportunities for children to practice their semantic and syntactic skills and check frequently for progress and comprehension.

Development of Speaking Skills

In the first year, the infant will begin with cooing and babbling. As developing skills present information in small amounts so the child isn’t overwhelmed and can comprehend and make connections to the information. Discus expectations and allow them to progress with age. As they get older their pronunciation will improve and their conversations and narratives will increase in length, coherence, and depth. They also learn to adapt to their audience and listeners.
To promote these skills invite the child to conversations, ask lots of questions for clarifications and scaffolding, allow them to recall real events and encourage them to get creative with fictional ones, letting them exaggerate as long as they know they are stretching the truth and creating hyperbole stories.

Development of Metalinguistic Awareness

Metalinguistic awareness is the extent of which one understands the functions of language. You can see the development of metalinguistic awareness throughout a child’s life, even in early infancy. When the child begins to take interest in human voices, they begin categorizing sounds, creating cooing and babbling noises to repeat. This progresses to words, seeing a rapid increase in vocabulary at the age of 2. With that rapid increase in vocabulary, comes a miscomprehension of the words to its meanings. In middle school there’s an increase of temporal words and irregular words. Pronunciation is now mastered and they become better listeners and at sustaining conversations. Once learning the basics of language and communication, they begin to get linguistically creative. Around this time the best way to promote their development is encouraging them to read, preferably through books that promote figurative language so they can develop their metalinguistic skills. 

Second Language Acquisition

Exposure to a second language in first few years is vital. Children’s minds are open and absorb all the information, though they may have minimal delays first few years once they sort out confusions and develop their languages they become proficient and are considered bilingual because they have mastered two languages fluently.
In teaching, students that come from another background that doesn’t speak English causes a barrier between content and comprehension. Never the less, there are many methods for teaching these English language learning students in bilingual education. The methods are on a spectrum from how much native language is included to English classroom. It ranges from submersion, structured English immersion, immersion, foreign language instruction, and subtractive bilingualism.

Bioecology of Language

All the plethora of factors that affect the individuality of language development.
Gender: Statistics show that girls are more verbally active than boys, because of this extra practice they develop younger and begin to use words and sentences at younger ages. Qualitatively, boys seek to be more information providers, thus their conversations are more blunt and direct, whereas girls seek to establish relationships so they speak more tactful and polite.
Socioeconomic status: Diverse backgrounds affect a child’s language development because their entire social network is changed by their surroundings, this stems off the ideas of nativism and nurture. High income family children tend to ask more questions, whereas low income families are such a high variable group that often times their language development is affecting but other times not as much. It depends on other aspects of their upbringing.
Ethnicity: Another factor that affects a child’s language development is ethnicity, depending on where you are from or what culture you believe in, may affect how you speak in terms of pronunciation, dialects, and even manners. Some cultures don’t allow children to look at adults when they are talking to them. 

Exceptionalities of Language

Specific language impairment are disabilities characterized by abnormalities in producing or understanding spoken language. To the point where special education services are required.
If a child has trouble understanding receptive language, has trouble with articulation, fluency, syntax, semantics, or pragmatics, your child may need to be referred to for special education.
If working with children with SPL encourage them to speak often, patiently listen and ask for clarification on areas that were harder to understand in a positive way, and provide guidance on how to have and hold conversations.

Source: Child Development and Education by Teresa M. McDevitt, Jeanne Ellis Ormrod – Prentice Hall, 6th edition, 2010

 

Physical development in childhood is as important as cognitive, language and socio-emotional development. Gaining knowledge on physical development is crucial because it provide educators and parents the information needed to know what to expect in terms of physical development as children grow and develop. Knowing the most important physical milestones that children typically go through provide parents and educators with the tools to better cater to children’s needs and help the develop and thrive the best way possible.

Physical Growth in Childhood

Infancy (Birth through age 2): rapid period of growth in which infants rely greatly on reflexes to grow and develop (breathing, for instance, is a reflex as well as grasping). Between the age of 12-18 months onwards, infants become capable of holding their heads up, roll over, reach for objects, sit and crawl. In the second year of life, they become more confident when walking and learn to manipulate objects with their hands. It is important to notice that motor skills emerge in a cephalocaudal trend, which means that first children gain control of their heads and then the rest of the body and the Proximodistal trend, which means that movement starts from the trunk to the limbs – infants first learn to control their arms, then their hands and finally their fingers. Consider that at this age children do not use language to communicate, which means that parents and educators should pay close attention to the child’s needs, sleeping and eating patterns.

What we observe:
• Reflexes
• Rapid growth and weight gain
• Growing ability to move around
• Increased self-help skills such as feeding
• Gain understanding about their environment through their senses
• Oral phase where everything goes into the mouth
• Cephalocaudal and Proximodistal trends of development

What can we do to promote healthy physical development?
• Allow time for “tummy time” so infants gain strength to be able to execute other crucial movements such as crawling
• Encourage movement such as crawling and walking
• Use sensory stimulation such as singing, clapping, sensory toys that can go in the mouth to help the child explore their own body and the world around her

Early Childhood (Ages 2 through 6): big changes occur in gross motor development (think big muscles moving – walking, running, climbing, etc.) and fine motor development (think small muscles moving – writing, cutting, gluing) during this age period. Children become coordinated enough to ride tricycles and throwing and catching ball. At this age they love to play and use their body to navigate their world. In fine motor skills, they learn to dress and undress themselves, hold pencils, write, play with blocks and puzzles, etc. Play, for instance, is extremely crucial for children at this age because through playing (pretend play, manipulating objects, playing outside) children learn about their bodies and to navigate the world around them.

What we observe:
• Loss of “baby appearance”
• Lots of energy to practice gross motor skills such as running, jumping, skipping, riding tricycle and scooters
• Naps start to not occur anymore, which may cause fussiness
• Rudimentary pencil grip
• Lots of pretend play

What can we do to promote healthy physical development?
• Provide ample amount of time for outdoor play
• Give ample opportunity for pretend play/role play
• Incorporate intense physical exercise as well as rest and quit time
• Provide children with puzzles, building blocks and arts and craft to help them develop fine motor skills

Middle Childhood (Ages 6 through 10): during this period, children demonstrate slow but steady growth in terms of weight and height and during this period children also lose their first set of teeth to have them replaced by permanent ones. At this age children still appreciate movement very much and movements that once looked jerky or awkward now become smooth. They gain appreciation for sports because now they can play better due to the improvement of motor skills. Additionally, at this age children start to get better at drawing, their writing becomes more legible and they also take new more complex activities such as sewing due to advances in fine motor skills that come during this period. An important fact about this age group is that during this time children become more sensitive about their appearance, which is connected to their self-esteem and many times their sense of worth. It is important for parents and educators to be aware of that because this sensitivity may alter behavior.

What we observe:
• Steady gains in weight and height
• Loss and replacement of teeth
• Participation in organized sports
• Handwriting and drawing (fine motor skills) get better
• Take on more challenging fine motor activities such as sewing and more advanced arts and crafts such as scrapbooks
• Gross motor skills such as running become more coordinated
• Start to become more aware and self-conscious about physical appearance

What can we do to promote healthy physical development?
• Incorporate physical movement in some academic activities
• Allow for frequent breaks where children get to move
• Provide daily and frequent opportunities for play
• Encourage children to participate in sports
• Encourage activities that help children refine their fine motor skills but don’t penalize children that have fine motor skill delays

Early Adolescence (Ages 10 through 14): this period comes with great changes such as puberty which comes accompanied by a growth spurt, hormonal change and gains in weight and height. For girls, the menarche (first menstruation) can be the cause of a great amount stress (or in many cases also excitement), boys also go through a great amount of changes such as the spermarche (first ejaculation) and lots of body changes like girls. This period of their life can be very distressing due to all of the physical changes that they go through, which means that is crucial for educators and parents to alert adolescents about the physiological changes that they will or are going through to try and reduce stress.

What we observe:
• Periods of rapid growth
• Beginning of puberty
• Self-consciousness about physical behavior
• Some risk-taking behavior due to the sudden hormonal change/imbalance

What can we do to promote healthy physical development?
• Be a good role model for healthy eating and physical activity
• Talk to them about the physical changes that they are going through
• Encourage productive use of their time
• Teach and talk about physical harassment and bullying

Other important information to consider…

Eating habits

The food that one eats influences the way he/she grows and develops because the nutrients we need to keep our body functioning are found in food. If we don’t feed our bodies the right types of food, it won’t work efficiently. For children, this applies even more because as they grow into adults, they need enough nutrients to ensure they have the important nutrients to nourish their bodies in order for them to grow and develop healthfully. It is important for educators and parents to understand that the foods we feed our children and students is directly linked to how they grow and develop. If children only eat junk food, they are probably not getting the important nutrients that promote growth and development and also are at a high risk of becoming overweight, which in turn means children can be introduced to a vast array of diseases that come with weight gain. Most of the time is not easy to get children to eat what is healthy for them, however, if we serve as good role models it may become easier. We have more control over what young children eat, however, once they get older it is harder to control what they eat, so a combination of good role modeling from us as well as educational instruction on what is healthy and what is not healthy to eat should be helpful. In schools, educators can add healthy eating habits to their curriculum and at home parents can have healthy foods available for children to eat. In case of poverty, it is crucial that schools have a healthy eating program for children to get at least one healthy meal a day if possible.

Physical Activity

Children were not made to remain still and quiet all the time. They need to move and run around in order to develop their physical domains. We need to encourage movement and physical activity if we want children that learn in school and are academically successful because if they have their physical activity needs suppressed, they aren’t able to focus, which in turn causes low academic achievement. As parents and educators, we need to provide children with ample opportunities for physical activity and incorporate physical activity on children’s day to day activities. Young children love to move around, run, jump, skip, climb, etc. and older children like to participate in sports, so we should encourage them to do so in order to contribute to their physical development and consequently their cognitive development as well.

Rest and Sleep

Many times, we oversee the importance of rest and sleep in child development, which is dangerous. If children and adolescents don’t sleep and rest enough, it compromises their development because for instance, it’s during sleep that major physiological tasks the body needs to go through occur. If children don’t rest and sleep enough, their bodies don’t develop appropriately. As a rules of thumb, infants and toddlers must take naps during the day, young children should have quiet time during the day to recharge their batteries and adolescents should be getting enough sleep in order to accomplish their daily school tasks.

Source: Child Development and Education by Teresa M. McDevitt, Jeanne Ellis Ormrod – Prentice Hall, 6th edition, 2010

All Children have a set of genetic instructions that influence their characteristics at birth along with their growing physical and psychological features.

Genes

Also known as the basic unit of heredity. Genes contain the instructions that support life, growth, human traits and individuality.
• Uniform Genes Make it possible for children to develop basic. Human possibilities such as communicating with language, walking and forming social relationships.
• Variable Genes contribute to a child’s individuality.

Blending Heredity and Environment

Genes react to conditions that originate outside the environment in addition to inside. As children grow the environment continues to influence their genetic expression. To reach full genetic potential children should be exposed to many areas of development including but not limited to:

• Opportunities to physical activity
• Exposure to light
• Protection from illnesses
• Obtaining nutritious meals
• Affection from caregivers
• Encouragement to act with self-control

Problems in Genetic Instruction

Sometimes problems occur when the two sets of 23 chromosomes combine into matched pairs during conception. This is when the genes inherited from each parent pair up.
• Chromosomal abnormality occurs when a child has an extra, missing or wrongly formed chromosome. These abnormalities can be caused by a variety of factors. These abnormalities can cause major physical and cognitive problems. Occur in about 1 in 150 births.
• Single Gene defects occur when a child inherits a single gene defect rom one parent or both

This 40-week period of development inside a mother’s womb is a crucial time for development as the body and brain grow, senses develop along with the body’s organs. Outside factors can affect development during this time. It’s important that a soon to be mother
• Avoid harmful substances or teratogens such as alcohol, prescription and nonprescription drugs along with any other infectious agents that could cause harm to the fetus.
• Seek proper medical attention during pregnancy.
• Speak up, and seek advice as needed
Once the baby is born Use of such substances should be avoided by both mother and father to ensure the safety of the child

– Children learn and act differently in large part being due to heredity. In knowing this information, parents, teachers and other caregivers can create opportunities for such differences.

What can you do?
• Make allowances for individual differences.
• Remember that though children have inherited characteristics, temperaments, talents and deficits can be steered with physical activity, social interaction and school instruction.
• Intervene when children struggle.
• Encourage children to make growth promoting choices.
• Consult with parents and specialist for a child with an exceptional need

Source:  Child Development and Education by Teresa M. McDevitt, Jeanne Ellis Ormrod – Prentice Hall, 6th edition, 2010