Download PSY 605Developmental Stages: Infancy and ToddlerhoodPSY 605: and more Lecture notes Accounting in PDF only on Docsity! PSY 605 Developmental Stages: Infancy and Toddlerhood PSY 605: Developmental Psychology Developmental Stages: Infancy and Toddlerhood Introductio n From the span of birth to three years, so many things happen in such a small period of time! These stages of development are considered to be some of the most important ones for the child compared to any of the other stages as they grow. Many of these development areas begin building at warp speed from birth: physical, emotional, cognitive, and social development. All these developmental stages and milestones come together and have an influence on the child’s later years. As soon as the child is born, they begin to learn all they can about the world they have been brought into, storing all that information for future use. As they grow older, they become more and more curious, using their various senses of taste, smell, touch, sight, and hearing to navigate their new world. While the majority of children develop and go through these stages close to the same time as their peers, not every child is like that. How a child develops depends on their parents or caretakers’ help and how they help them as they grow. Birth to One Year From the moment of birth, infants start their developmental stages. Newborns are sensitive to everything around them and startle easily. For the first few months after birth, infants spend a lot of their time sleeping. When they are not sleeping, they use their abilities they were born with, such as sucking, crying, grasping, watching, and listening to navigate this noisy world they have come into. Piaget’s cognitive development theory, specifically the first stage: the sensorimotor stage, explains how infants begin to develop cognitively. During this stage, infants use their senses and learned motor skills to learn more about their environment and everything within it. (Lerner, Easterbrooks, Mistry, & Weiner, 2013) Babies soon start to discover who they can and cannot trust. This is the first stage of Erikson’s theory on psychosocial development. Babies learn who is the person or people who care for them, such as feeding, cleaning them up, protecting them, and providing much-needed close physical contact. (Berzonsky, 2004) According to Bowlby’s attachment theory, mother-infant bonding and trust-building are vital to this age. According to this theory, if the child grows and develops good mental health, the child needs a continuous loving and trusting relationship with their mother. This helps to build trust and even confidence. (Bretherton, 1992) As the infant grows, they become more mobile. Their curiosity allows them to crawl, then pull up to cruising the furniture, and soon after that, they start to walk. Babies are known to put everything they touch into their mouths and grab at things within their reach (especially stuff they shouldn’t be touching!) and start to test boundaries. Babies’ first way of communication is through crying. As they get older, they coo and smile to show happiness, and possibly their first words come out, such as “dah dah” or “mama.” One Year to Two Years Around one year of age, the majority of children already know how to move around, whether by crawling, furniture cruising, and even walking. They begin to mimic the adults they are around the most. They know what foods they like more than others and what toys are their favorites. Play becomes incredibly important during this period too. Piaget spoke of the importance of play at this age. Preference play or symbolic play begins during this age also. Symbolic play is essential because of the “projection of symbolic schemes onto new objects. At this level of symbolic play, children apply a familiar action pattern that they have
