Characteristics of Childhood

Meaning

            Childhood is the period between infancy and adulthood i.e. from 2 to 13 or 14 years. During this period the growth is relatively slower than the infancy. However during this stage there is marked improvement in physical, mental, emotional, social and language development of a child. It is a period of slow growth and rapid development. It is the span of curiosity, observation and experimentation. The child learns to walk, runs, jumps, and plays with ball. And begins to acquire the concept of good and bad. This stage is also known as gang age.

Characteristics

1.         Relatively Slow Physical Growth – The growth process is slower than the infancy. Child develops resistance and immunity at rapid rate.

2.         Learning with Observation and Experimentation – Children mostly learns by observation (role model) and exploration to form their own concepts about things and objects.

3.         High Level of Curiosity – Children display curious behaviour and expect that their questions must be answered on priority basis by parents and teachers.

4.         Physical Activities – During this stage children heavily engage in physical activities and learn from them. Interestingly children dislike sitting due to hormonal interventions.

5.         Rapid Growth in Cognitive Domain – Children starts mental representation of objects, the concept of object permanence, egocentrism (self-focus), animism (thinking all things have life) develops (Jean Piaget), logical thought process starts etc.   

6.         Language Acquisition and Increase in Vocabulary – Vygotsky said that language is a social concept that is learned through multiple interactions and consequent experience. Chomsky asserts that children are born with language acquisition device and universal grammar.  These theories explain that childhood is crucial stage for language learning and increasing of vocabulary.

 7.        Differentiation in Gender – Children in late childhood learns to differentiate between genders on the basis of biological features in place of cloths which is the phenomenon in early childhood.

8.         Socio-Emotional Development – The dimensions of socio-emotional development are self (who she/he is), gender and morality (learn to differentiate between right and wrong or good and bad). These dimensions initiate the process of identity formation and personality development.

9.         Rationalized Thought Process – The thought process that was not so rational in early childhood becomes rational which is manifested through logical queries and usage of adult like phrases.

10.       Motor Skills – In the early childhood children engage in gross motor skills like hopping, jumping, running etc. These skills become finer like finger dexterity, pick objects with thumb and forefinger and eye hand coordination, puzzles etc. During this period the child’s preference for left or right hand also develops.

11.       Senses Development – The senses of vision, touch, hearing, taste and smell develops to new level.

12.       Perceptual Development – The psychological processes by which human brain processes the sensory data collected through sensory organs. Child learns and develops the relationship between foreground and background, size and shape constancy (the consistent size and shape of objects) etc.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development (Childhood)

            He described that 2-7 years is the ‘Preoperational Stage’ during which symbolic thought develops, object permanence is developed etc. but find it difficult to coordinate different physical attributes of an object. The second stage is ‘Concrete Operational’ during which the child reasons logically about concrete events and classify objects into different sets. And able to perform reversible mental operations.

References:

1.         O'Reilly, Michelle; Dogra, Nisha; Ronzoni, Pablo Daniel (2013). Research with Children: Theory and Practice. SAGE. p. 2. Retrieved 5 February 2019.   

2.         NCERT, XI Psychology Text book.