Development of Children: Milestones and Theories

Running head: DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN
DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN
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DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN
Introduction:
Every child is seen to develop specific motor skills, cognitive skills, social skills and
others at specific ages. Developmental milestones are behaviours and physical skills seen
among children as they grow and develop (Dunken et al. 2017). Several theories have been
put forward by theories that explain such achievements specific to their ages. This would be
discussed in the assignment with specific considerations of children belonging between 3 to 5
years.
Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development:
Erikson had proposed eight stages of psychosocial development of human beings.
Each of the stage is mainly built up on the preceding stages and mainly paves the ways for
the following periods of development. During each of the stages, he believed that people
experience a conflict, which helps in serving as a turning point in the development of the
individual. According to this theory, the conflicts are centred in either developing a
psychological quality or facing a failure in developing that quality. During these times, the
potential for personal growth of the individual is quite high but the potential of failure is also
similar in the situations (Cherry 2017). The third stage of the theory is called the Initiative vs.
Guilt that are mainly found across preschoolers from the age of 3 to 6 years, such children are
found to be a lot capable of initiation of activities as well as assessing control that revolves
around the surrounding with the help of the social interactions as well as play. Children who
are found to be successful in this stage often feel capable and can thereby lead others. Those
children who are seen to fail in acquiring these skills are seen to suffer from the sense of
guilt, lack of initiatives and even self-doubt. Studies have found that when an idea balance of
willingness to work and individual initiative is successfully achieved by this stage of
children, the ego quality, which is also called purpose, is seen to emerge (Knight 2017). In

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DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN
this stage, the children start asking more questions as their thirst for knowledge grows. When
parents are seen to treat their children as nuisance, trivial as well as embarrassing of others
aspects of their behaviours as threatening, then the children may develop the feelings of guilt
for being a “nuisance”. Studies have found that too much guilt might make a child slow in
interaction with others and might inhibit their creativity. A healthy balance between that of
guilt and initiative is significant in the children in this stage. Success of this stage is believed
to lead to a virtue of purpose while failure would result in a sense of guilt.
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development:
The theory of cognitive development put forward by Jean Piaget opines that children
are seen to be moving through five steps of the mental development procedures. This is the
theory that is seen to focus not only on the development of an understanding on how different
children acquire knowledge but is also helps people to understand the nature of intelligence
developed in these four stages. As children are seen to interact continuously with the outer
world, they continually add on the new knowledge and thereby build upon an existing
knowledge and they adapt to previously held ideas for accommodating new information
(Bjorklund 2018). The second stage of this theory is called the preoperational stage and is
mainly found among children of ages 2 to 7. Firstly, children are seen to begin thinking
symbolically and they start learning the ways to use words and pictures in representing an
object. Secondly, children who are seen to belong to this stage are mainly egocentric in their
nature. At the same time, they are also found to be struggling to view different aspects from
that of the perspective of the different people that surround them. Third, such children are
seen to get better gradually with different patterns of the language and even that of the
thinking, yet they are seen to think about different things in very concrete manner (Barrouillet
2015). At this stage, the children are seen to learn things through the help of pretend play but
they cannot still understand the logic as well as taking into of view of that of the people