Early Childhood:

In early childhood or preschool years the gross motor development continues to rapidly
develop. Between the ages of three and six years old children are able to hop, gallop, and skip.
Eventually the upper and lower body skills will combine into more effective actions. A four and
five year old will begin to throw a ball using smooth, flexible motion that involves the shoulders,
torso, trunk, and legs. This movement helps the ball to travel faster. Children will begin to
integrate previously acquired skills into childhood and adolescents. Sex differences in ability
within the gross motor development is already apparent within the preschool years. At the age of
four to five years old children can walk down stairs with alternating feet, rides a bicycle rapidly
and steers smoothly, and runs more smoothly (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child development 9th
edition).
By the age of about three and a half children in early childhood should be using three
word sentences that clearly follow the subject-verb-object word order. They create sentences in
which adjectives, articles, nouns, verbs, and prepositional phrases start to conform into an adult
speech like structure. This shows that they have began to master grammatical categories in their
native language. Preschoolers will gradually refine and generalize their early grammatical forms.
As children begin to grasp these three word sentences they begin to add grammatical
morphemes. Grammatical morphemes are small markers that change the meaning of a sentence
(Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child development 9th edition). In Early childhood children begin to learn
new words and their meanings. When preschoolers learn a new noun they tend to assume it refers
to an object at the basic level of their understanding. This helps them to eliminate the
possibilities of the meaning of the word. For example: their basic knowledge for all dogs is to

call them a dog. They will later develop the category of an animal and then the type of dog, such
as beagle or greyhound (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child development 9th edition). This is why it is
important for caregivers and teachers to introduce new vocabulary words to their preschool child.
Researchers have shown that the ability to reason about transformations is evident and
they can engage in impressive reasoning by analogy about physical changes. Preschoolers can
over-come appearances and can think logically about cause and effect. Children in the early
years of childhood also begin to categorize things. They organize their everyday knowledge into
categories. These categories include objects that go together because of their common function,
behavior, and natural kind. A preschoolers rapidly growing vocabulary helps them to gain
general knowledge to support their skills of categorizing. An adults explanation has a major
influence on children's categorical learning. Preschoolers use logical, causal reasoning to identify
the interrelated features that form the basis of a category (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child
development 9th edition).
In early childhood children are emotionally learning how to talk about their feelings.
They are able to verbalize a variety of emotions, talk to themselves to help with self-regulation,
and change their goals so that they can interact socially with their peers. They use these strategies
to help themselves have fewer emotional outbursts. Preschoolers learn how to manage their
emotions by shifting their attention away from their frustrations. Preschool children will learn
how to regulate their emotions by watching how the adults around them manage their own
feelings. Preschool children are able to use their beliefs as well as their desires to be able to
predict others behavioral outcomes. This will become a powerful tool for reflecting on thoughts
and emotions (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child development 9th edition). Socially a preschooler will

begging to be able to judge the causes of many basic emotions for themselves and their peers.
They will be able to emphasize on external factors rather than the internal factors of why they
feel a certain way. At the age of four preschool children will begin to see that beliefs motivate
ones behavior. Once they understand this, then they will begin to be able to grasp how internal
factors can trigger emotions. Preschoolers will begin to understand what might happen because
of the emotions that their peers are feeling (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child Development 9th edition).
Children at the early childhood age develop their beliefs on theory of mind. At the ages of
three and four years old children start to refer to others thoughts and beliefs. They develop
theory of mind, which is a more advanced view in which both beliefs and desires determine an
action. (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child development 9th edition). Most preschool children from my
experience develop this theory of mind from their own parents and the environments that they
have been raised in. In early childhood children also try to alter others beliefs. This is because
they start to realize the power of belief to influence others actions (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child
development 9th edition). Because of a childs inner self ego, they believe that everything that is
their belief about something should also be the belief of others around them. This is what they
truly believe to be true at all times and it is very difficult to change their point of view. Most of
the time their beliefs also stem off of the environment that they have been exposed to and the
beliefs that their family has instilled into them.
At the age of about three to four years old children begin to verbalize their feelings and
use self-regulation skills. They will learn how to shift their attention away from sources of
frustration that will help them to be able to manage their emotions. Parents can help their
children to be able to self-regulate by the way that they act around their children. Warm, patient

parents who use verbal guidance can help their preschooler to be able to do the same and pick up
strategies that will help them to regulate their emotions. These children are more likely to be able
to use private speech to regulate their emotions. When parents fail to express positive emotions
towards their child they are more likely to dismiss feelings of unimportance, have difficulty
controlling their own behavior, and continue to have problems managing their emotions. This
will interfere with their psychological development (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child development 9th
edition). Parents and caregivers can give preschool children strategies to help them to be able to
control their impulses. I have found it useful to help children calm down so that they can use
rational thoughts when in a situation where they need help self-regulating. I have also found it
useful to use turn taking skills, such as a timer and a list to help preschool children to understand
when it is their turn to be able to use something. This helps them to not get upset and to be able
to self-regulate their impulses if they need to use something that others are using. Lastly, I found
it useful to help preschool children that do not have the proper problem solving strategies to be
able to use their language to do so.
An example of atypical development within early childhood may be brain-damaged
children. These children may show delays in language development. By the age of five these
children caught up with their peers as far as vocabulary and grammatical skills go. The more
impaired ability in these children is their spatial skills. These children had problems with holistic
processing, which is a quick initial response, and being able to copy a design. They were able to
get the basic shape of the design but were not able to grasp the fine-grained details. These
children may have delays in vision, hearing, sensory, and motor development. They may have
difficulties solving problems, organizing, planning, with comprehension, and staying on topic.

They may also develop some behavioral problems such as: self-regulation, emotion-regulation,
poor social skills, and problems with adapting (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child development 9th
edition).
Another atypical development within early childhood can be signs of a learning
disability. Teachers and family members may realize that their preschooler is having difficulty
pronouncing words, difficulty rhyming, trouble learning their alphabet, days of the week, colors,
shapes and numbers. These children may not be able to follow simple directions and learning
routines. They may also have difficulties with fine motor development and may not be able to
hold a crayon, pencil, scissors, lace shoes, button buttons, and zip a zipper. By paying attention
to a childs developmental milestones parents, caregivers and teachers will be able to detect the
early signals of developmental differences. If there is early intervention it is better for the childs
normal development later on (http://www.helpguide.org learning disabilities and disorders).
Preschool children can be affected by attachment issues when they are infants. Securely
attached babies more often maintain their attachment status than insecure babies, whose
relationships with the caregiver is, by definition fragile and uncertain (Berk, Laura E. 2014
Child development 9th edition). Children who spent their first year in deprived Eastern European
orphanages bonded with their foster parents. They did show elevated rates of attachment
insecurity, and are at high risks for social and emotional difficulties. Many of these children
become sad, withdrawn, anxious, and too friendly. They eventually develop cognitive
impairments, hyperactivity, depression, and social issues by the time they are in early childhood
and adolescents (Berk, Laura E. 2014 Child development 9th edition).

In a research study of 24 Mexican immigrant children from California and Arizona who
had four year old children a study was conducted about different parenting styles. The
requirements of the study is that the children were first or second year immigrant children and
were four years old in age. The study looked at parents that were born in the United States versus
in Mexico. Researchers looked at how these mothers death with compliance demands from their
four year old child. A compliance demand is when their child demanded their mother to do
something for them that they needed. Data showed that most of these mothers from the Mexican
immigrant descent responded using commands and reasoning. On more than one occasion the
mothers used a strategy more than once to achieve a particular behavior from their child. In this
research practice the majority of these mothers relied on low-power assertive and inductive
practices. These mothers most frequently used commands when tempting to achieve compliance
because of the young age of their child (Livas, Alejandra 2008 The Role of Culture in Early
Childhood: An Examination of Diverse Parents Beliefs and Practices in Relation to their PreSchool Aged Children).
Parents can be involved with their children by helping develop language and literacy
skills. Before they are 6, children can recall parts of a story, use future tense, begin to tell stories,
and can say their name, age, gender, and address. Parents can read to their child on a daily basis
and then asks them questions about the story. This will also help their comprehension skills.
Parents can also help their children learn their letters at home. By the end of the preschool
period, most preschool children will know their upper and lower case letters. They will begin to
understand that letters and their sounds begin to make up the sounds in words. Parents can also
foster development in language skills and phonological awareness by playing some games with

rhyming words and phonemes. Parents can do this by saying silly rhyming words and clapping
their names or silly names to see how many syllables their are (www.scholastic.com Language
and Literacy Development in 3-5 Year Olds). Parents can also be involved in their childs
learning by being a good role model and knowing what interests their child has. Parents can do
this by exploring nature with their child, reading, cooking, and counting together. Parents can
show their preschool child the importance of learning at school by teaching them at home too.
They need to show them how exciting and meaningful this learning can be. Parents need to be
aware of what their child loves so that they can make their learning experiences meaningful to
them. www.pbs.org PBS parents The role of parents).