Child Development Milestones: Identification, Evaluation, and Early Intervention

This report discusses the identification and evaluation of child development milestones, including physical, social-emotional, and cognitive development. It also provides recommendations for early intervention to address developmental issues. The report suggests various therapies and activities that can help in the growth and development of children.

Learning and development
GDECE106 Assessment 2

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Identification of developmental milestones: physical, social-emotional and cognitive
development.................................................................................................................................1
Critical evaluation of the physical, social-emotional and cognitive stages.................................3
Recommendation on early intervention which is required to address evident development issue
.....................................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Development of a child refers to a qualitative transformation that results in better functioning of
organs whereas learning is an expansive process that refers to the change in nature, behaviour,
habits for getting better result and experience. Child grows and develop very rapidly in the first
five years and the areas involved in the development of a child are physical, language,
communication and emotional (Cantor, and et.al, 2021). This is also known as cognitive
development in which a children starts thinking , exploring and have the ability to figure out
things.in this report we will study about the identification of developmental milestone and will
discuss recommendation of early interventions required to address the evident developmental
issues .
MAIN BODY
Identification of developmental milestones: physical, social-emotional and cognitive
development.
Parents are very much aware about the development of their child and regularly examine that
their child is growing and learning progressively or not.as the age of children pass they cross
many milestones and those milestones should be properly identified by their parents so as to
understand them well. Parents need to track these milestones and understanding those milestones
is better for both parents and their children as well. Milestones for the development of a children
can be represent as a checklist which helps in representing what an average child can do at a
specific age (Forestier, 2019).it vary from children to children about what they do at a specific
age .for instance some children started walking at the age of one year while some can walk even
in the tenth month after their birth. Similarly there are many checklist which should be identified
about a children at a specific age in order to check the growth and development of the children.
Milestones includes physical, social, emotional and cognitive skills that children need to adapt
as they grow older. For example in starting a baby pulls up, then he started learning how to stand
and then followed by taking steps.by examine these steps the doctors and parents are able to
understand that the child is growing properly or not.
Types of child development milestones:
There are basically four types of milestones for the development of child. Most of the parents
know only about one of the milestone which is physical milestone but apart from this there are
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three more types of milestones for the child development like social and emotional development,
communication development and the last one is cognitive milestone.
1. Physical milestone-There are two types of physical development in a child which are
large motor skills and the other one is fine motor skills. The large motor skills involves
the activities like standing, sitting up, walking and standing and the fine motor skills
involves activities like grasping spoon, holding hands, drawing different shapes and
picking up small toys (Biddle, S.J., and et.al., ) For example, at the age of 9 to 12 month
children start to achieve physical milestones like standing up and walking.it is very
essential for a child to adopt all the activities which comes under physical milestone.
2. Cognitive milestone-This is also very beneficial for the development of a child as it
focus on child’s ability to think , learn, explore and solve problems of their own.an infant
who is learning to respond to physical expressions and learning alphabets in preschool
are the examples of cognitive development. Other examples of cognitive milestone is
looking for objects dropped on the floor (Ngoun, and et.al, 2020).
3. Social and emotional milestone-Social and emotional milestone focus on achieving a
better understanding of their emotions and also understanding emotions of others. This
milestone also develop the habit of empathy and involves learning of new things and
learn to play with other children’s.at this stage children interacts with others and started
making a social and emotional connect with other children’s.
4. Communication milestone-This is the last type of milestone which involves both verbal
and non-verbal communication. A new born baby or an infant know how to speak a
single word and a baby who is five years old knows the rules and regulations of grammar
all these comes under communication milestone. There are many other types of activities
involved in communication milestone like making cooing sounds and looking at the
person who is talking to them and responding them by smiling or by making some
sounds. All these are the types of milestones which a child have to adopt at different
stages of life for proper growth and development.Regular identification of a child is very
necessary for the parents to know whether their child is growing progressively or not.
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Critical evaluation of the physical, social-emotional and cognitive stages
It is very important to evaluate the milestones for the development of a children. Learning and
development makes the children more progressive and helps in the growth of the children. Here
we will understand the evaluation of four different milestones of child development. The
evaluation of the physical, social-emotional and cognitive stages of child development are as
follows:
Evaluation of physical stage-
Physical development is very much essential for infants and toddlers which includes physical
and motor skills in the first three years of the children. Physical development gives an
advancement in the ability of controlling bodies by the children.it refers to the development of
the body which include the growth and skills development of brain, muscles and
senses(Chernyshenko, and et.al, 2018). For example babies can sense everything around them,
they can sight, touch, smell and taste. They start hearing even before they born.an infant can
recognize the voice of her mother and can smell her just after the birth. From the birth of infants
they are well aware about the world around them as they learn to grasp and explore new things
by the help of their senses (Duncombe, and Preedy, 2021) .Gross motor skills and fine motor
skills are two different types of physical milestone. Gross motor skills involves large muscle
movements like walking, crawling, standing and many more while fine motor skills involves
small muscle movements like grasping objects. Physical development is very important for
infants and toddlers as this supports them in language development, social abilities and other
areas of learning (Hidding, and et.al.,2018). There are many things parents can do to help their
in growing physically.
 Parents should support the bodies and head of infants when they hold them
 Always help the infants to see the face of parents while talking
 Place toys near them and give them an opportunity for grasping.
 Provide them many opportunities like sit them on the lap and support them by holding
their neck and back.
 Introduce infants to heaping and connecting toys.
Evaluation of social-emotional stage-
Having an emotional wellbeing during the early stage of child makes them strong I social
relationships. Infants who are emotionally happy can make good and positive relationships with
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their peer and elder ones (Kim, and Tubbs Dolan, 2019). Social and emotional development is
very necessary for the development of child. The infants knows the familiar faces and started
recognizing them .they like to play with their parents and others too. They seems happy and give
response to the emotions of other people. They love to see themselves in the mirror.it is very
helpful for infants to remember them their social and cultural values. Parents should help their
infants for developing them socially and emotionally by providing the following ways:
 Self-regulation
 Empathy
 Turn taking and sharing
 Positive relationship with adults and peers.
Evaluation of cognitive stage-
Infants and toddlers start growing as they interact with the world and people around them.
Cognitive development is very important for each toddler and their family members too. They
key of having a cognitive development can be achieved through nurturing and responsive care
for the care of the body of child (Barch, and et.al., 2018).as they grow they started to learn how
things work and they start understanding the world around them. Parents should do following
things for the development of cognitive stage of their child:
 Give safe place for movement and crawling to the infants.
 Provide a good and positive nurturing relationship to the toddler.
 Start recognizing the needs of toddler and understand them at different stages of age.
 Offer safe and appropriate material for exploring like musical instruments, board books
and many more
 Observe the infants on regular basis so that parents can understand what is lacking in
them.
Recommendation on early intervention which is required to address evident development issue
Development issue is a problem face by child in early stages in growing, developing and
progressing (Whitebread, and Neale, 2020). It can be due to parental, genetics behaviours,
complication during child birth or some external factors etc. Early intervention are mainly
focused on such areas such as physical development, behaviours development, cognitive
development and emotional and social development of children's development. Physical
development includes children's brain and bodies many children are facing such issue that is
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their heights are not up to the mark and not proper growth of brain accordingly to their age. For
this they can use psychosocial intervention to improve mental health in their early stages of
development. Cognitive development involve children learning and thinking capacity it can be
improved by activities which help child to improve their thinking capacity and learning
capabilities such activities help in early intervention that is during first or early three years of
life. By stories, jokes, books reading and riddles can help them to improve their thinking
capability and help them to grow on proper direction. And by simple puzzles game, memory
game, arts and crafts, sorting of colours, shape, finding and hiding object such games help child
in boost their memory and learning ability (Chronis-Tuscano, and et.al 2018). Behavioural
development that is related to children behaviour like how they affected by cognition and
physical development for these therapies can be used in early intervention to address such
development areas such as occupational therapy helps in fine motor skills (the skills which
required for helps smalls muscle movement), play and self-learn skills like toileting, dressing
etc. Physiotherapy it helps in balancing body which improve their crawling, sitting, walking, and
running, jumping and throwing. Speech therapy which help in language, speech, eating
(chewing, swallowing and sucking) and drinking skills. Psychosocial therapy helps in
developing behaviours, emotions and relationship. These therapy helps child in their early
intervention development issue. Emotional and social development like how child cope with
behaviour and emotions. Give them optimal or proper nutrition in their growing stages.
Preschool help them in growing their learning skills and learn new things with other children
with same age group, and they provide proper area for playing with other children help them in
learning coordination and behaviour of talking etc. Some physical exercise help child to strong
their bones, muscles and health growth also help in developing of motor skills and thinking
skills.
CONCLUSION
This report discuss development milestones such as social-emotional, cognitive and physical
development, and how they can be identified with suitable example. Critical evaluate the
development issue and recommendation for early intervention. Moreover, it includes suggestion
to address development issue such as occupational, speech, physiotherapy and psychosocial
therapy which help in child development and activities like arts & craft, solving puzzles,
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arranging number and letter games, stories, sorting or arranging colours and shapes etc. which
help them in growing their learning capabilities and exercise also help them in physical
development.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Cantor, P and et.al, 2021. Whole-child development, learning, and thriving: A dynamic systems
approach. Cambridge University Press.
Forestier, S., 2019. Intrinsically motivated goal exploration in child development and artificial
intelligence: Learning and development of speech and tool use (Doctoral dissertation, Bordeaux).
Ngoun, C., and et.al., 2020. Cambodian Developmental Milestone Assessment Tool (cDMAT):
Performance reference charts and reliability check of a tool to assess early childhood development in
Cambodian children. Early Human Development, 141, p.104934.
Duncombe, R. and Preedy, P., 2021. Physical development in the early years: exploring its
importance and the adequacy of current provision in the United Kingdom. Education 3-13, 49(8),
pp.920-934.
Biddle, S.J., and et.al., 2019. Physical activity and mental health in children and adolescents: An
updated review of reviews and an analysis of causality. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 42,
pp.146-155.
Hidding, L.M., and et.al.,2018. An updated systematic review of childhood physical activity
questionnaires. Sports Medicine, 48(12), pp.2797-2842.
Chernyshenko, O.S and et.al, 2018. Social and emotional skills for student success and well-being:
Conceptual framework for the OECD study on social and emotional skills.
Kim, H.Y. and Tubbs Dolan, C., 2019. SERAIS: Social Emotional Response and Information
Scenarios: Evidence on construct validity, measurement invariance, and reliability in use with Syrian
refugee children in Lebanon. NYU Global TIES for Children https://doi.
org/10.13140/RG, 2(23945.60007).
Barch, D.M., and et.al., 2018. Demographic, physical and mental health assessments in the
adolescent brain and cognitive development study: Rationale and description. Developmental
cognitive neuroscience, 32, pp.55-66.
Chronis-Tuscano, and et.al (2018). Future directions for research on early intervention for young
children at risk for social anxiety. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology. 47(4). 655-
667.
Whitebread, D., & Neale, D. (2020). Metacognition in early child development. Translational
Vancouver
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