Toddlers Physical, Cognitive and Socio-Emotional Development - Essay Example

Infancy and Toddlerhood For my project, I had selected to study a toddler, who is part of the infancy developmental period that Santrock had identified in his work. As far back as the middle ages, scholars have contemplated on the “nature of childhood,” and what can be done to ensure their satisfactory growth (The Life-Span Developmental Perspective, 7). In this paper, I will demonstrate whether or not the toddler I chose to study is developing along the same lines as proposed by Santrock, by examining the toddler’s physical, cognitive and socio-emotional development. Apart from using Santrock’s contentions, I will also be using Freud’s work to analyze the toddler’s developmental period. The toddler I chose to study is my 20 month nephew, Alec. He is capable of walking, can speak and knows the names for many things around him, and I often see him scribbling with crayons on paper. According to Santrock, children through 18 or 24 months fall under the infancy and toddlerhood development period (The Life-Span Developmental Perspective, 17). In this development period, infants are heavily reliant on their adult caretakers to teach them how to speak, how to move, take part in social learning, and so on (The Life-Span Developmental Perspective, 17). At the end of the first year of this development period, infants gradually learn how to walk, through exercises like rolling over, crawling, using furniture as support (Santrock, 127). In the second year of this stage, infants are more independent in exploring the world around them; they interact with others more easily, and can run for short distances and have greatly enhanced motor skills (Santrock, 129). During this stage, infants’ color vision improves and they are aware of size and shape constancy (Santrock, 136). Apart from this, infants can create “schemes” to understand the world around them; this is part of Piaget’s theory of infant development, and he also claims that infants coordinate “sensory experiences,” with “physical, motoric actions,” (Santrock, 149). According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, major development milestones of this period include things as being able to walk on one’s own, running, being “enthusiastic” about interacting with other children and being able to copy other’s behaviors, and being able to distinguish colors and shapes, and playing “make believe,” (Toddler Growth & Development, n.p). To study my nephew’s development in the infant and toddlerhood stage, I will focus on the physical, socio-emotional and cognitive aspects of his development. Under the cognitive area of his development, I will look at his memory, and his ability to retain information. Though some researchers claim that infants as young as 2 months can remember events till the second year of their life, others argue that such infants are displaying “implicit memory,” (Santrock, 158). Infants in the infant and toddlerhood stage have rather “fragile” conscious memories, and only months after the second year can their memory become more reliable (Santrock, 159). Another aspect of infant cognition entails imitation; Piaget has found that infants aged 18 months and older are able to copy and repeat actions that they have seen done several hours or days ago, a phenomenon he calls “deferred imitation,” (Santrock, 159). With my nephew, I carried out an experiment to gauge his memory skills. I took him to the kitchen and showed him that I was keeping his toy truck behind the fridge. When I came back the next day and asked him where his truck was, he made gestures towards the kitchen. Moving onto the physical aspect of my nephew’s development; for this, I will be looking at his gross motor skills. These are “large muscle activities,” such as walking (Santrock, 127). According to Santrock, infants learn how to walk in response to what they see as surfaces that are “safe for locomotion,” (Santrock, 128). Also, in their infancy and toddlerhood stage, they are able to walk backwards, can keep their balance while squatting, and can kick and jump (Santrock, 129). With my nephew, his motor skills had developed accordingly, since when I gave him a ball to play with, he was able to kick it and run after it. Sometimes he would stumble when he was chasing the ball, but mostly he was able to stay on his feet. Also, I tried to make him walk backwards by holding his hand for a few seconds, and then letting go to see if he could keep going; he was able to walk backwards. Lastly, I looked at my nephew’s socioemotional development. According to Oswalt, children are able to “use their emotions, expressions, and emotional understanding,” by interacting with older caregivers (Oswalt, n.p). An infant’s temperament indicates how quickly and for how long the child can express emotion; accordingly, there are three types of temperaments ranging from easy to slow-to-warm up child (Santrock, 118). My nephew falls under the easy child temperament; this temperament entails that the child is generally happy, has a “regular” cycle of eating and sleeping, and does not make a fuss when met with any kind of change (Child Temperament, n.p). For instance, when I asked him to come to my house for dinner, he readily agreed and did not mind eating the different food in my house. Also, when I brought a new friend to his house, he did not hesitate in sharing his toys with my friend. I would also like to mention Freud’s analysis of development. For him, children aged to 1 and a half years are in the oral stage, where infants derive most pleasure from doing things with their mouths (The Science of Life-Span Development, 30). Asking my nephew’s mother any such activities that he performed earlier, I found out that he did indeed enjoy having a pacifier in his mouth, and teething on chew toys. The anal stage is next, with the child deriving pleasure with the anus and “eliminative functions associated with it,” (The Science of Life-Span Development, 30). For this, I asked my nephew’s mother, and learned that he was potty trained, and that he would use the bathroom when he needed it. In conclusion, my nephew is developing according to the guidelines set by Santrock in his “Lifespan Development.” Though I did not have enough information to map his development according to Freud’s theory (since he has only gone through two of these stages), I am fairly certain that he is developing in a positive and satisfactory manner. References "Child Temperament."Http://www.psychpage.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. . Oswalt, Angela. "Infancy Emotional and Social Development: Social Connections." Http://www.sevencounties.org/. N.p., n.d. Web. . Santrock, John. "Life-Span Development."Http://www.scribd.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. Santrock, John. Life-Span Developmental Perspective.N.p.: Http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/, n.d. PDF. http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0072414340/16719/san14340_ch01.pdf Santrock, John. The Science of Life-Span Development.N.p.: Http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/, n.d. PDF. http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0070905738/80324/LSDChap02_1.pdf Santrock, John. Socioemotional Development in Infancy.N.p.: Http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/, n.d. PDF. http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/dl/free/0078035422/990237/san35422_Chapter_4.pdf "Toddler Growth & Development."Http://www.healthychildren.org/. N.p., n.d. Web. Read More