Child Development: Key Concepts

• Child development is the field of study devoted to understanding constancy and change from conception through adolescence.
• Developmental science is a larger interdisciplinary field that includes all changes experienced throughout the lifespan.

Three Spheres of Lifespan Development

• Physical development involves the body's physical makeup, including the brain, nervous system, muscles, senses, and the need for food, drink and sleep which determine behaviour.
• Cognitive development involves the ways that growth and change in learning, memory, problem-solving, and intelligence influence a person's behavior.
• Socio-emotional development is the ways in which individual's interactions with others and their social relationships grow, change, and remain stable over the course of life.

Reasons to study child development

• Child rearing and education
• To inform social policy
• Insights into human nature
• Whether playing violent video games increases aggressive behavior.
• Examples include early vs later experiences
• Parenting moved from a unidirectional to a bidirectional model.
• Theorists began to focus on children's needs and the impact that parenting, either positive or negative, could have on children.
• Democratic approaches to parenting are important.
• Encouragement, setting appropriate limits, mutual respect between family members and collective decision making are important.

Theories

• Theory is an orderly, integrated set of statements that describes, explains, and predicts behavior
• Theories are flexible ideas, reflections, and observations.
• Theories are focused on finding meaning and order from observations.
• Theories are influenced by the social context, experiences, educational background, and opinions of the theorists behind them.
• Psychological theories and approaches concerning parent-child relations build one on top of the other.
• Five main approaches shift in thinking: psychoanalytic, psychosocial and related approaches, behaviorist, cognitive behavioral and related approaches, humanistic and related approaches, systemic family systems and related approaches and neuroscience and related approaches.
• Erik Erikson focused on mental change as a process throughout the lifespan (extension of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical approach covering the lifespan).
• Each stage of life has its own 'psychosocial crisis' which ideally needs to be resolved.
• Significant others assist or inhibit the developmental progress at each stage.
• A person's psychosocial attitudes and feelings reflect how well they meet and master a particular stage.
• Reciprocal interaction within the family is a key component.

Behaviorism and Social Learning Theories

• Behaviorism views directly observable events-stimuli and responses-as an appropriate focus of study
• Traditional behaviorism includes Classical conditioning (Ivan Pavlov and John Watson) and Operant conditioning (B. F. Skinner).
• Operant conditioning affects behavior is affected by reinforcers and punishment.
• Social learning theory (Albert Bandura) sees modeling (imitation or observational learning) as a powerful source of development

Cognitive Theories & Jean Piaget

• Cognitive development refers to how humans come to know and understand the world through cognition based on schemes.
• Sensorimotor Stage (birth-2 years)
• Preoperational Stage (2–7 years)
• Concrete operational (7–11 years)
• Formal operational (11 years on)

Sociocultural Theory & Lev Vygotsky

• Emphasizes self-efficacy and self-esteem.
• Emphasizes social interaction
• Social interaction is the basis of a child's learning
• A child's culture shapes the thinking about and understanding of their world.
• Children are curious and actively involved in learning.
• More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• Children use language to power mental development
• Scaffolding is key
• Involves Assertive and supportive care.
• Interdependence is central to development.

Attachment Theory and Parenting & John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth

• The theory focuses on the connection between an infant's early bonding experiences with a parent or caregiver.
• The ability to form trusting and loving relationships later in life is key.
• Consistent, loving parents or significant reliable caregivers allows development of trust and is the foundation for attachment.
• Interruptions may be caused by absent or inadequate parenting which can elicit separation anxiety.
• Instinctive attachment is a biological need which is strengthened by care and responsiveness.
• Harry Harlow studied monkeys in situations with wire-mesh and terry-cloth surrogate mothers.
• Results pointed out that infants need physical contact and comfort.

The Family as a System

• Bidirectional influence concerning the climate of the family group.
• Changes in family life and family functioning.
• Structural functionalism refers to the social roles of family members and how they integrate with other social institutions.
• Families operate in ways similar to other systems in nature.
• Processes of making decisions, setting goals, and establishing rules to regulate behavior should be clear.
• Understand how families respond to change, and their need to seek homeostasis (balance).
• Composed of subsystems of each system.

Principles of Family Systems Theory

• Wholeness is when a family is greater than the sum of its parts.
• Interdependence is what affects one family member and also affects every other family member to an extent.
• Patterns regulate member behavior and allows anticipation of each other's behavior.
• Rules (implicit, explicit, negotiable, non-negotiable), roles, communication styles (verbal, nonverbal, contextual).
• Reciprocal Interaction and Feedback: causality involves the reciprocal interaction between people and systems.
• Boundaries establish limits that distinguish a family system from all others and differentiate the members within the family systems.
• Entropy is the disorder or chaos in system functioning that results from lack of information or input from outside the system as a means of resolving a crisis or problem.
• Adaptation refers to adjustments that allow the family to continue to function effectively.
• Homeostasis refers to stability over time (dynamic equilibrium).
• Equifinality is when families share common goals but members reach these goals differently.

Ecological Systems Theory and Parenting & Urie Bronfenbrenner

• Focus on role and effects of different environments on individual and family functioning (including parent-child relations) from a sociocultural view.
• Consists of five nested layers of bidirectional interactions: Microsystem, Mesosystem, Exosystem, Macrosystem and Chronosystem.
• Microsystem refers to the environments provided by family, peers, school, and neighborhood.
• Mesosystem refers to interactions between all other systems, facilitates communication between microsystem and exosystem(ex: academic performance and social interactions influenced by child's family life and vice versa).
• Exosystem refers to government agencies, community programs, employment setting of parents.
• Macrosystem is larger culture including broad views, generalized beliefs, behavior patterns, and value systems of a particular society.
• Chronosystem refers to the dimension of time; organization of events and changes over the lifespan of an individual at a particular historical time.
• Each perspective emphasizes somewhat different aspects of development and is based on its own premises.
• The perspectives provide different ways of looking at development.
• One should maintain an eclectic theoretical orientation which recognizes that no single theory can explain the complexities of lifespan development and that each theory contributes a different element of development.