Developmental Stages Matrix Essay

Some physical changes is that the head changes and grows slowy to 90% when we reach the age of 5. Children are less like to have injury to the brain due to the plasticity of the brain at the young age. The maturing brain also increases its speed of processing. Between the ages of 8 and 12, the children get much faster at performing a mental task, such as adding two numbers together The first stage is the Sensorimotor Stage, which starts at birth and extends until the infant is about 2 years of age. During this stage infants gain knowledge through actions that allow them to directly experience and manipulate objects around them. They also gain practical knowledge about the effects of their actions, such as grasping or pushing objects. Also object permanence which occurs at the end of the stage, where the infant realizes that just because they can’t see an object it does not mean that it does not exist. The baby is a at a natural biological stage of being with the mother. There is a baby mother bond that goes on. It was said that even fathers who spend more than three hours with the baby caregiving can loose testosterone levels. It takes a while for the baby to just go to any stranger. Early Childhood Childrens muscles start to get stronger to where they can roll over, sit up straight, and hold their necks up. They get strong enough to walk around holding objects and crawl around the house. They grow more teeth and gain the ability to talk more and more. The second stage is called the â€Å"Preoperational Stage† and appears between birth and two years old. In this stage children are just beginning to develop their thinking skills and can  use words, symbols and images to represent the world. During this stage, young children’s play becomes increasingly imaginary and filled with fantasies. As children develop cognitively, their play will move from simple make-believe to plots involving more characters and scenarios, games with sophisticated rules, etc. According to Piaget, playing isn’t just fun; it is an important part of brain development. Children grow and start saying that everything is mines. They go through a selfish mode and can have difficulty sharing. They have temper tantrums but simultaneously they want love. These little tempers are very short though and and go from anger to love very quickly. Some would call this a mood swing. Middle Childhood Children start growing from the ages 6 to 12 and reach puberty. Children start to get sexual maturation, the hormones in the body make biological changes. Boys get testosterone and girls breast change and start to form. The voices change and there is also change in size of the body. They gain moral reasoning of right and wrong. Cognitive abilities such as concentration and memory improve significantly during the middle childhood years. Kids this age have much better attention spans than they did in early childhood and they are better able to remember information for longer spans of time. Their ability to pay attention for longer periods is improved and their selective attention is also much better. Children start spending more time out in the world with their peers. They are spending less time with their parents and trying to identify themselves. They start dealing with peers of the opposite sex and experiencing life. They also go through some sort of peer pressure which can be posit ive or negative.