Chapter Eight

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Chapter Eight

• The Play Years
• Biosocial Development

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Body Changes

• Body Growth Slows
• Shape becomes more streamlined
• Gone is the protruding belly
• Girls retain more fat
• Boys become more muscular

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• Skeletal Growth Continues
• 45 new growth centers emerge (epiphyses)
• Lose baby teeth
• Asynchronies

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Body Changes
5
Genes and Ethnic and Cultural Differences

• In multi-ethnic countries
• Children of African decent are tallest, then
  Europeans, Asians, and Latinos
• Most influential factors
• genes, health, nutrition
• Other influencing factors
• sex, birth order, geography
• South Asia and India boys are better fed. WHY?

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Eating Habits (208)

• Food should be nutritious
• isnt alwaysoften far from ideal
• enough caloriesnot enough vitamins and
  mineralsmajor nutritional problems are

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Eating Habits

• Appetites decrease because growth has slowed
• Picky eaters
• Emotional climate at mealtimes important
• By age 7, low-SES children about
• Poor diet suppresses the immune system

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Body Changes

• Eating Habits
• Just right
• 75 of 1500 parents reported that their
  childrens just-right phase peaked at about age
  3...
• have things done in a particular order or in a
  certain way
• strong preference to wear or not wear certain
  clothes
• prepare for bedtime by engaging in a special
  activity, routine, or ritual
• strong preference for certain foods

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Speed of Thought

• Myelinationprocess by which axons become
  insulated with a coating of myelin, a fatty
  substance that speeds transmission of nerve
  impulses

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Speed of Thought

• thoughts follow each other fast enough for
  children to perform one task after another
• fast processing essential for fast and complex
  communication
• experience affects rate of myelination
• Infants myelinate in the visual and auditory
  first
• Play years myelinate in the memory and reflection

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Connecting the Brains Hemispheres

• Corpus callosum

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Connecting the Brains Hemispheres, cont.

• Left Side, Right Side
• lateralizationspecialization of the two sides of
  the brain
• left brain
• right brain

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Brain Damage Left Half of brain controls the
right side of the body and is the logic, analysis
and language hub. The left side notices the
details. Right Half of brain controls the left
side of the body and is the emotional and
creative hub. The right side grasps the BIG
picture of things. See page 212 example
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Planning and Analyzing

• Prefrontal cortex (or frontal lobe) is the last
  part of the human brain to reach maturity
• executive functions

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• Maturation of the Prefrontal Cortex
• Notable benefits of maturation of the prefrontal
  cortex occur from age 2 6
• sleep becomes more regular
• emotions become more nuanced and responsive to
  specific stimuli
• temper tantrums subside
• uncontrollable laughter or tears become less
  common

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Planning and Analyzing

• The area in the very front of the brain that is
  least developed in nonhumans, absent in RATS and
  other lower animals
• Not complete until mid-adolescence
• at about age 3 or 4 impulse control is more
  likely and formal education is more possible

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Planning and Analyzing, cont.

• Perseverationthe tendency to persevere, to stick
  to a thought or action long after it is time to
  move on
• occurs normally in young childrenanother aspect
  of immature self- control
• Much less occurring in 5 year-olds

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Educational Implications of Brain Development

• By age 6, children are ready for formal
  instruction
• before, brain not sufficiently developed in ways
  it needs to be, but now child can
• sit still for more than an hour
• scan a page of print
• balance sides of body
• draw and write with one hand
• listen and think before talking
• remember important facts
• control emotions

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Motor Skills Cont.

• Gross Motor Skills
• Center of gravity shifts to trunk and balance
  improves
• Walking, running smoother
• Catching, throwing, swinging, riding
• Children learn basic motor skills by teaching
  themselves and learning from
• Fine Motor Skills
• Self-help dressing, eating
• Drawing

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Gross Motor Skills cont.

• Children need three things to develop gross motor
  skills

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Fine Motor Skills

• Small body movements are harder to master
• pouring, cutting, holding crayon, tying
• lacking the muscular control, patience, and
  judgment needed
• fingers short and fat
• confusion over which is dominant hand (age 5)

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Progression of Drawing Skills

• Scribbles during 2nd year
• First Representational Forms
• Label already-made drawings around age 3
• Draw boundaries and people
• 34 years
• More Realistic Drawings preschool to school age
• Early Printing Ages 35
• CHILDREN ARE NOT USUALLY SELF-CRITICAL

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Progression of Drawing Skills cont.

• Childrens art is more complex in cultures that
  emphasize drawing
• Schooling supports drawing
• Drawing follows the same sequence (scribbles,
  lines, boundaries, tadpole person)
• Bellybuttons!

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Individual Differences in Motor Skills

• Boys are ahead of girls in force and power
• Girls are better in fine motor and hopping and
  skipping
• African-American children tend to have longer
  limbs, better leverage in running and jumping.

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Injuries and Abuse

• are the most common
  cause of childhood death
• Boys more prone than girls
• SES is a powerful predictor of many accidents
• poison, fire, falls, choking, and drowning
• 1 to 4 year olds have higher accident rates than
  5-15 year olds

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Serious Injuries

• Injury control/harm reductionthe idea that
  accidents are not random, but can be made less
  harmful with proper control

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Child Maltreatment

• Intentional harm to, or avoidable endangerment
  of, someone under the age of 18.

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Child Maltreatment

• Abuse and neglect
• child abuse
• child neglect

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Child Maltreatment

• Types of abuse physical, sexual, emotional, and
  educational
• Neglect twice as common as abuse
• one sign is failure to thrive an otherwise
  healthy child gains no weight
• another is hypervigilance excessive
  watchfulness, often witnessing abuse can cause
  this

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• Warning Signs of Maltreatment
• The first signs of maltreatment are