Chapter Three: Domains in Development PDF

CHAPTER THREE: DOMAINS IN DEVELOPMENT After completing Chapter Three students will be able to: Describe the two major themes of child development: nature vs. nurture and continuity vs. discontinuity Define the four domains of development When studying develop...

CHAPTER THREE: DOMAINS IN DEVELOPMENT After completing Chapter Three students will be able to: Describe the two major themes of child development: nature vs. nurture and continuity vs. discontinuity Define the four domains of development When studying development, there is a lot to learn! As you read in Chapter 1, Child Development can be approached in a number of ways: time, domains, theorists, themes, cultural perspectives, and appropriate practice. Chapter 2 helped you to understand the theoretical perspectives, and most of the other chapters in this textbook will tackle time, cultural perspectives, and appropriate practice. Here, we are going to take a closer look at the four domains of development, and how they are related to the themes of “nature versus nurture” and “continuity versus discontinuity.” In Chapter 1, you read briefly about four domains of children’s development that we will discuss in this textbook: physical/biological, cognitive, social, and emotional. Before we start, it is important to recognize that other authors may separate development into more or less than four domains. For example, in other textbooks, you may see social and emotional development combined into a single domain; other sources identify as many as seven individual domains. In this textbook, you will read about four domains; we, the authors, chose these four because we feel they best represent the major areas that educators, psychologists, and researchers agree on. Plus, without too many distinctions between domains, we will be able to better explain how the domains are interconnected. Chapter Three: Domains in Development | 53 54 | Chapter Three: Domains in Development Themes of Development Before exploring the four domains, let’s take a moment to review the two major themes of Child Development. Nature versus Nurture As you read in Chapter 1, developmental psychologists have gone back and forth about what drives growth and change in children. Is it the environment (nurture) or is it built-in (nature)? A nurture-based perspective would argue that children are wholly influenced by the world around them, including the physical, social, and educational environments. On the other hand, a nature-based theory would state that children grow and change based on their genetic code, and there is little if anything that can be done to change that from the outside world. By now, you have probably come to realize that both perspectives are correct, in their own way. There are certainly aspects of development that are influenced by the environment, but there are just as many things that are genetically determined. Language is a fantastic example of this: the environment determines which language or languages a child speaks, but there are important biological factors that ensure a child CAN speak a language. For many aspects of child development, nature and nurture cannot be separated. Continuity versus Discontinuity In Chapter 1, you also learned that psychologists debate whether development occurs in a continuous or a discontinuous manner. Some theories, such as Erikson’s psychosocial model, explain development in stages; this is an example of a discontinuous theory and is often visually represented as a staircase. A child needs to “step up” to the next stage. Just like when you yourself walk up a set of stairs, it is not your whole body moving – you have to go one leg at a time and that is “discontinuous.” In terms of what discontinuous development actually looks like, imagine the difference between an infant who cannot walk and a toddler who can. These are two distinct stages and you can literally observe when a child moves from one to the other. A baby’s first steps are a huge developmental milestone that moves them from infant to toddler! On the other hand, continuous development can be seen in models such as Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. Continuous theories do not make clear distinctions between stages or phases. Instead of a staircase, you could imagine continuous development like a ramp. Over time, you can tell that a child has moved up along the ramp, but the small changes along the way can be hard to see. A great deal of physical development is continuous; children grow and change over time, but often that change is only easy to see when you look at the difference over months, rather than over days. Going back to Vygotsky’s theory, the concept of the Zone of Proximal Development is an example of continuous development; through interaction with others, children gradually change their level of ability relative to a task. Universal versus Individual Development Within each domain of development, there will be things which are universal, meaning they happen to all Themes of Development | 55 children and things that are individual, meaning they may or may not happen to any particular child. Very little about child development – or any development for that matter – is universal, but there are a few things that happen to almost all children, regardless of geographical location, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or culture. In each section, there will be an example of something that is universal, to help you think about how little of development is the same for every child! Development versus Growth When discussing physical development, it is sometimes difficult to separate the concepts of “development” and “growth.” In everyday language, we typically use the word “develop” to mean the same as grow, improve, or get bigger. However, in psychology we use the word “development” whenever we are talking about change of any kind; it may or may not have to do with an increase, and there are plenty of examples from adult development where the concept actually refers to a decline or loss of something. In this section, and throughout the textbook, we will be discussing child development. Since children are at the beginning of their lifespan, nearly all of their development is a gain of some sort: they grow bigger, they learn language, they improve their social skills. Physical development is no different, but there are a few exceptions, which we will get to. So, as you read this section and move through the textbook learning about physical development in children, keep in mind that some of that development will mean physical growth, but some of it will refer to invisible processes and could include losses and declines. As you read more about the domains of development, try to pay attention to aspects that may develop continuously or discontinuously; look for aspects of development that may be more or less influenced by nature or nurture. 56 | Themes of Development The Four Domains of Development As you just learned, there are many domains in which children develop from infancy through school age. For this chapter, we are going to discuss four overarching domains: physical, cognitive, social, and emotional. The physical domain has to do with growth and changes in the body; the cognitive domain includes the functions of the brain, intelligence, and language; the social domain looks at how children develop skills for managing interactions with others; and the emotional domain covers internal states, such as feelings and personality. The Four Domains of Development | 57 Physical/Biological Development Of all the domains of development, physical development is the most obvious and possibly easiest to measure with modern medical techniques. Some aspects of physical development are universal, biological processes that all children experience, but there is a great deal of variation. For example, most children get taller and stronger as they grow, but the range of what is “normal” is vast, and can be influenced by a range of factors including nutrition, genetics, and experience. Here we will look at physical development such as changes in children’s height and weight, the development of gross and fine motor skills, and losing teeth. Height and Weight Typically, children grow physically larger in two ways: they get taller and they get heavier. It is considered normal, healthy development if these two things increase in ratio to one another; as height increases, so should weight. Often, we think of weight as being how much fat we are carrying around, but most of the human body is made up of other things which weigh a lot! As children grow, their height and weight are increasing because their bones are increasing in both size and density. On top of those bones are muscles, which are connected by ligaments and tendons. Internal organs, such as the lungs and heart, are also growing as they have more space to fill inside the ribcage. Throughout the body there are veins, arteries, and capillaries; all of these help to move fluid around for transporting nutrients and gases. If you have ever sat in the doctor’s waiting room, perhaps you have noticed a chart on the wall that indicates a “normal” weight range according to your height and age. Although these charts become less helpful in adulthood, for infants and young children they can be a quick way to determine if a child is physically developing along a normal trajectory. The chart below is one example that shows the normal distribution for the weight of a fetus during gestation up to 46 weeks. If you pay attention to the percentages on the far right side, you might notice that “normal” is a big range – 80% variance! This is because physical development – like most forms of development – can be widely varied across individuals yet still within a range that is considered healthy. Even at the 10th percentile, weight is considered appropriate; it is not unless the fetus weighs less than 2500 grams at term that the baby is considered low birth-weight (LBW). This image also indicates when and how much growth should increase over the span of gestation. As you can see from the two dark lines, a normally developing fetus should steadily gain weight for the duration of gestation, and then that growth should taper off around week 42. Throughout the chapters of this book, you will encounter additional charts and diagrams similar to this one which indicate the typical pattern of growth 58 | Physical/Biological Development for children from infancy through age 8. As you read through each chapter, keep these things in mind about the development of height and weight across childhood: 1. There is a wide range of variance within what is considered “normal” development. Children come in all sizes, and grow at different rates depending on a range of biological and environmental factors. 2. Not every scale is going to be the same in a depiction of growth, so pay careful attention to the numbers on the outside of the graph, which will help you to understand what is being measured. Some charts, such as this one, are considering weight compared to week of gestation. After birth, these variables may change to include length (for infants), height, weight, age (in days, weeks, months, or years), or possibly Body Mass Index (BMI). Gross and Fine Motor Skills Gross motor movements are those associated with the large muscles of the body: arms, legs, torso, etc. while fine motor skills are those completed with the smaller muscles such as those in your hands and fingers. As you will read in an upcoming chapter, control of your body depends on a good connection throughout your central nervous system (CNS). At birth, infants’ are still developing, and there is not yet a strong signal between the brain and the muscles. Additionally, in the compact environment of the womb, the fetus did not have much opportunity to stretch or strengthen muscles. For the first few months of life, the infant will be developing the brain-body coordination and basic muscle control necessary for both gross and fine motor skills. Once that foundation is set, however, physical development moves forward rapidly! At birth, infants cannot move on their own and yet by age 8 a child is able to walk, run, jump, and skip which takes an enormous amount of muscular strength and control! Fine motor skills take more time to develop than gross motor skills, because the smaller muscles of the body are generally more difficult to learn to control. While it is relatively easy to learn how to control a whole limb in space, it can be challenging to figure out how to work the tiny digits at the end of your arm! Have you ever tried to manipulate something very small, and found that it was hard to get your fingers to cooperate? Tiny movements, such as picking up a Cheerio in a pincer grip, or controlling the movement of your tongue in the back of your mouth to distinguish between /ch/ and /ch/ requires an enormous amount of control. This only comes with practice, which allows both the brain and the muscles to become familiar with the movement. Throughout the chapters of this book which detail each stage of early childhood (infancy, toddlerhood, preschool age, and school age), you will read in more detail about the specific milestones for physical development associated with each age. Universals in Physical Development Although there are always exceptions to every rule when it comes to human development, most of us are born without teeth, and then throughout our childhood we grow and lose one set before our adult teeth come in. Teeth are not the only universal physical development, but they might be the weirdest! Have you ever wondered where those teeth come from, and why we lose our baby teeth? As it turns out, we are born with all of our teeth; they are simply embedded in our skull until it is time for them to emerge! Most babies are born without any teeth (although neonatal and natal teeth are a thing!). The most common explanation for this is simply that in general human babies are born very early compared to every other mammal species; they are simply too young to have their teeth erupt yet. Human infants are born at a Physical/Biological Development | 59 point at which they are most likely to survive, but are not yet so large that they will get stuck in the birth canal. To make that happen, the head can only be so large, and that includes the bones of the jaw. In utero, the teeth themselves have formed, along with the bones of the skull. Check out the exceptionally creepy picture to the right – that is what a child’s skull looks like under an x-ray! In this picture, the first set of teeth have already erupted, but the “adult teeth” are still embedded in the upper and lower jaw bones. After birth, it takes approximately 6 months before the first set of “baby teeth” will start to come through the gums. In the meantime, most infants are able to “chew” soft foods without issue. Teeth are not essential for eating but do increase the range of foods that an infant can manage. Children keep this first set of teeth for somewhere between 5-7 years, depending on their rate of growth, and their overall health. These teeth are smaller simply because they must fit within the small jawbone of the baby. As a child’s skeletal structure grows, it creates more space for the teeth and actually widens the opening where new teeth can come in. Teeth start to feel loose when the socket they sit in starts to widen; when it becomes too large, the baby tooth will fall out and the adult tooth can move in. Remember, although we have discussed this as a universal piece of development, there are going to be exceptions. Some children do not develop teeth, or their teeth are problematic for some reason. Like everything, the environment can affect dental development. Anything that can influence how the skeleton develops can also impact the teeth. Additionally, oral hygiene in toddlers and young children can impact dental and cardiovascular health throughout life. Media Attributions Weight vs Gestational Age © Yehudamalul, via. Wikimedia Commons is licensed under a CC BY-SA (Attribution ShareAlike) license X-ray with juvenile and permanent teeth © Wikimedia Commons is licensed under a Public Domain license 60 | Physical/Biological Development Cognitive Development Cognition is the word psychologists use to describe the varied mental activities of your brain. Cognitive development, therefore, is the development of the processes of memory, intelligence, and attention. Additionally, language is usually described and measured as a cognitive process although it is connected to physical, social, and emotional development in important ways. Here, you will learn a bit about each one, and each chapter will provide more in-depth information. Memory In the next chapter on brain development, you will learn more about the physical mechanisms that create memories, but for now, it is enough to know that within your brain are millions of neurons, and many of them are designed especially to store memories. Memory is essential for navigating the world around us because it allows us to store vital information from past experiences, and things that other people have taught us. We know facts (semantic memory); we have experiences (episodic memory); we know how to do things (procedural memory); and we even remember things that haven’t happened yet (prospective memory) such as what you need to buy at the grocery store tomorrow. You have two kinds of memory: short-term memory and long-term memory. Working memory is an aspect of short –term memory. It is everything you are actively thinking about; long-term memory is everything you know but aren’t necessarily thinking about right away. Working memory has a very limited amount of space; as children develop the amount increases but even in adulthood, most people can only remember about seven distinct pieces of information. Our long-term memory, on the other hand, is extensive and we are able to store and recall a seemingly endless amount of information. So, if our working memory is so amazing, why can’t we remember being a baby! After all, that is when we were learning new things all the time, and our brain wasn’t cluttered with a lifetime of memories yet! There are a couple of possible answers to that question, but most evidence suggests that those early memories simply get buried as life continues to happen (Sneed, 2014) https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/why- not-remember-babies.htm Intelligence What does it mean to you when you hear the word intelligence? Perhaps you thought of “school smarts” – being good at particular academic subjects, for example. Or maybe you thought first of “street smarts” – having good common sense, and being able to get along in the “real world.” Some people think of Emotional Intelligence, which is the ability to understand your own and other people’s feelings. All of these things are right! Intelligence is both a cognitive and a social construct. This means that while there are very real mental processes that are related to intelligence, what gets valued or measured might differ among cultural groups. Intelligence is typically measured on a number of scales, that when added together provide a numerical representation of general cognitive ability: the IQ score. Typically, IQ is assessed once children reach school age, Cognitive Development Cognitive Development | 61  and so you will read more about IQ testing and alternative ways to understand intelligence in later chapters. For now, let’s quickly review the scales that are used for measuring intelligence: Working memory: how much information can be retained and recalled; Processing speed: how quickly information is used to generate an action or decision Visual-spatial processing: how accurately a person can create a 3D representation of a 2D image (typically done with building blocks) Language use, both productive and receptive Mathematical reasoning These are the underlying cognitive processes that are assumed to give rise to intelligence, but they are all just approximations of the kind of mental tasks that people do every day as they interact with the world around them (Bee & Boys, 2009; Berk, 2017). Intelligence is more than these processes; it is the behaviors and choices that come from having these processes working efficiently behind the scenes. In real life, intelligence tends to look more like problem-solving, critical thinking, and creativity. You are probably familiar with the concept of critical thinking because it is a major focus in school in recent years. How often do you hear about creative thinking, though? Creativity is a significant factor in the cognitive ability of young children, and it is only once formal schooling starts that creativity tends to take a backseat to critical thinking. Creativity allows children to manipulate objects or ideas in ways that are not necessarily their intended use. Sometimes we talk about “thinking outside the box”, and perhaps you have done a lateral thinking task. These are other ways to talk about creativity. But most of the time, we see evidence of creativity in the ways that children play: f`or example, using a hairbrush as a microphone, or turning a few household items into a fort. It is important to note that creativity is more than just calling something by another name. Creativity’s products are useful and fill a need or gap. In pretend play, that means standing in for an object that is not available which allows the game to continue. In later life, it means being able to see potential solutions to problems that no one else has seen yet. Previously in this book, you learned about intelligence, as well as different ways that intelligence has been defined to be more inclusive than just what is taught in school. Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences is one example that is used frequently in schools. As you read, think about the ways in which you are intelligent, and what that tells you about how your brain works. Do you learn quickly or prefer lots of repetition? Are things easier for you when you do them yourself or do you like to watch videos of others trying things, so you know how it is done? Are there certain school subjects you are more drawn to or do you think you put more cognitive effort into the things you learn on your own time? There is no one way to be intelligent! One of the best parts of working with young children is that no one has ever told them how to be smart, so they engage with the world in ways that make sense to them, which gives adults such as caregivers and teachers a unique view into their true cognitive processes. Language Language is generally considered a part of the cognitive domain of development, as it is closely tied to the ways in which children process information about the world around them and how they share their thoughts with others. Throughout this textbook, you will read more about how language develops at specific life stages, but here let’s briefly look at the importance of having spoken and written language in the first place. Language is one of the first cognitive tasks that an infant’s brain tries to tackle, even before the physical structures of the mouth, teeth, and tongue are coordinated enough for babies to talk. Starting shortly after 62 | Cognitive Development birth, infants show more interest in language sounds than in other ambient noises, such as barking dogs and the vacuum cleaner. Babies babble endlessly, practicing the language sounds they hear around them. As children grow, their language use becomes increasingly mature until they are able to pronounce words, make long sentences, and use language to get their way! Language is special in that it is more than a cognitive process. Of course, there are certain areas of the temporal lobe that are specially designed to process and create language, but those areas – like all areas of the brain – need input to fully develop. That means that in order to learn language, we need other people to talk to! Our social and emotional interactions are mediated through language, and we actively teach children to “use your words” to help navigate conflicts and express their feelings. Language is also an important way for parents, caregivers, and teachers to understand the internal states of children. In infancy, it can be frustrating for parents as they try to decipher the meaning behind an infant’s crying; is the baby hungry or tired or wet? As children develop language, this frustration is eased because the children can tell their parents exactly what is wrong and that allows the parent to ease the child’s discomfort that much more quickly. For a long time, parents had to wait well into their baby’s second year of life to gain access to these inner thoughts, but in recent years there has been a push to teach infants sign language. As it turns out, infants often can understand language long before they can speak it, meaning they can respond to direct requests from parents and caregivers, such as “Do you need a bottle?” Infants can also produce thoughts that express their desires long before they can give them voice; infants can use sign language to answer “Yes, bottle!” enthusiastically, or “No, no more” if they are done. This helps strengthen the parent-child bond because it removes the guessing game and frustration of not being able to communicate. Of course, as children learn to talk and share their inner thoughts, they also learn how to influence the inner thoughts of others through language. An Interesting Example of Cognitive Development: Lying It may seem counterintuitive, but telling a lie is a major developmental step in the domain of cognition! Let’s take a quick look at what mental processes are necessary for lying, and why that ability is an indicator of successful development. To tell a lie requires that the liar is able to hold multiple stories in working memory, as well as consider the knowledge available to each person who will hear the lie. Additionally, the liar has to be able to consider the range of possible outcomes and consequences of the behavior. Let’s try to pick this apart with an example. Sammy has been told to go brush his teeth, but when he gets upstairs he gets distracted by a toy and starts to play with that instead. When his father comes up a few minutes later, he asks Sammy, “Did you brush your teeth?” Before Sammy says “yes!” there are several things that happen in his mind. First, Sammy has to consider what is actually true (he did not brush his teeth), and whether or not his father has access to that information (no, because he was downstairs and could not see what Sammy was doing the whole time). This means Sammy is actively processing his experience and his father’s experience, and drawing a conclusion about what is different. Second, Sammy has to consider past experiences with this exact situation. Is this the first time he has forgotten to brush his teeth, or the 20th? If it is the first, Dad is not expecting him to have forgotten, but if Sammy always forgets, then he has to consider that Dad is expecting him to have forgotten. So now Sammy is adding relevant episodic memory to his working memory stores. Third, Sammy has to consider the possibility of either a truthful or a dishonest answer. If he tells the truth, will he get in trouble? If he lies, will Dad know? So now Sammy is working with knowledge of the present from two perspectives, knowledge of the past, and knowledge of the future all at the same time. It requires a ton of cognitive flexibility (Santrock, 2013). Cognitive Development | 63  It is worth it to mention here that this cognitive flexibility is by far the hardest and most risky part of learning how to tell a good lie, and the place where most young children (and teens!) go wrong. As our brains develop, one of the executive functions that has to slowly develop is the ability to anticipate all the potential consequences of an action, how likely each is to occur, and what the cost of each might be. Typically, we are not masters of this until our midtwenties, so it’s reasonable to expect that Sammy might not be right in his assessment of this situation! Admittedly, at first, children are not always great at this, which is why parents and caregivers often know when young children are lying. Also, there are very real social and emotional aspects of lying that need to be addressed with young children. But, from a purely cognitive perspective, when children begin to tell lies, it is a significant cognitive milestone. Social and emotional development are often combined into a single domain, social-emotional development. For this textbook, we will consider the two domains separately, although they are very closely related. However, picking them apart will allow us to have a deeper discussion about each, so that we can look at a few key concepts that have become important in the study of Child Development and Early Childhood Education recently. 64 | Cognitive Development Social Development As we talk about social development, you will be reading mainly about how children develop their social interactions with other people, from infancy through age 8. Friendship in Early Childhood When you hear the term “social development”, what do you think of? A lot of people think first of friends – the people who we are social with. Friends and friendship are essential to healthy emotional and physical development in childhood. In infancy, friendship is about exposure that parents and other caregivers orchestrate. Infants are often curious about other babies, and typically will play with anyone they are put down next to. However, infants lack the social knowledge or language ability to navigate these interactions the way that older child do; infant “friendship” is really more of being in the same place at the same time than it is about an emotional bond. For example, infants playing together often explore their environment without any coordinated effort. If you have ever watched two babies playing, you may have noticed that their play is very individual and typically focused on an object that one or both of them wish to control. When babies interact, their play is often very exploratory as well. They smile at one another and react positively when they get a smile in return. They may touch each other, and it is common for babies to babble to one another in a conversational pattern. These behaviors all demonstrate the first steps towards understanding social interactions and what the range of possibilities are. As children mature into toddlerhood, their friendships start to become more about one another although the ways in which children meet and the types of interactions they have are still very different from what you experience as an adult. Once a baby becomes mobile, she is no longer stuck playing with the baby next to her; she can get up and walk away, and find someone else to play with. However, she still is limited to playing with the other children who are in her immediate environment – whether that is home, day care, or a playdate. As children begin preschool and then K-12 schooling, they are exposed to a much wider range of peers with whom to form friendships. In this exposure to new environments, children learn to manage social interactions and learn about people with different backgrounds, languages, and ideas. Meeting new people who don’t look like them is an important piece of social development for young children. It helps them to understand that not everyone thinks the same things, and that each one of us is an individual. It also plays an important role in helping children to understand which characteristics about themselves are changeable (cutting your hair, for example), and which are not (racial identity). Social Development | 65 Theory of Mind One example of where domains overlap is in the development of Theory of Mind. This ability is based on factors of cognitive development but allows children to have a wider range of social interactions. Theory of Mind is, in the most simple terms, the ability to understand that what is in your mind is different from what other people have in their mind. It means understanding that your thoughts are private and that unless you share them through some means, such as language, other people do not have access to them. It also means understanding that you can think about your own point of view and another person’s point of view simultaneously, and are able to separate what you know / are thinking from what they know / are thinking. It helps children to move from seeing the world as true/false and come to understand that there are shades of gray everywhere. It might be easiest to understand this concept if we use a scenario: Susie’s mother gives her a chocolate bar as a snack. Susie eats a few squares, then wraps it back up and puts it in the refrigerator. Then, she goes outside to play. While she is outside, her mother is making chocolate chip cookies but realizes that she doesn’t have enough chocolate chips. She gets the chocolate bar from the refrigerator, and uses all of it in the cookies. When Susie comes back inside from playing, she looks for her chocolate bar. Where does she look? Because you have a fully developed Theory of Mind, you know that Susie will look in the refrigerator, where she left her chocolate bar before going outside. Since she was gone, there is no way for her to know that her mother took it out and used it all. When this task is given to very young children, younger than 4, they typically will say that Susie will not look in the refrigerator, because the chocolate isn’t there anymore. Prior to the development of Theory of Mind, children treat all knowledge as universal: everyone knows the same thing. However, as they have more experience with social interactions, they will come to understand that is not true. This becomes essential for negotiating social interactions that involve the transmission of information and may require one person to make calculated choices about how much information to share with the other person: for example, knowing when you need to give extra information about context for someone to understand your story, or knowing when it is better not to share something that you shouldn’t know, or that might upset someone else! Going back to our discussion of lying, Theory of Mind can be related to children’s ability to tell lies and play tricks on people; the cognitive ability to hold multiple perspectives in mind simultaneously comes from Theory of Mind, and allows behaviors such as hiding things and other jokes that require one person to have more information than another (Crain, 2011). Media Attributions Children holding hands © Pixabay is licensed under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license Children with books © Pixabay is licensed under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license 66 | Social Development Emotional Development Social interactions help babies and children to gain important information about how their actions influence other people, including the feelings of others. This, in turn, can help children to understand their own feelings and learn how to manage them. Emotional development, however, is not purely a function of nurture. Important structures of the brain related to emotional regulation, attention, and self-regulation are actively developing throughout childhood and into adolescence. This means that emotional development may be a slow process that continues well into school-age. In early language development, the conversational pattern between infant and caregiver contains not only phonological information, but also non-verbal information such as tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language. These all provide clues about internal emotional states, onto which get mapped specific words that describe those emotions. There are only a few universal emotions, and they are the ones we see almost immediately in babies: sadness, fear, happiness, disgust, anger, and surprise. Infants are limited in how they can express these emotions, so they mostly cry. However, it does not take long before babies and toddler, develop a wider range of emotional behaviors. Fear may be expressed in tears, by hiding, or in issues with control of the bowel and bladder. Surprise may provoke fear or happiness, depending on the child’s temperament and the situation. Sadness and anger sometimes get wrapped up together in a temper tantrum when a toddler doesn’t get her way. As children grow, they become better able to describe and respond to their own emotions and the emotions of others. Even babies and toddlers can display empathy when they realize a peer is sad or afraid. Empathy and emotional intelligence are an important piece of moral development: the process by which children understand right from wrong, and how their actions influence the well-being of others. Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is a beautiful example of a stage theory in which children move from having a very limited, internal focus to understanding that emotions and actions can impact everyone. As you can read in this chart, as individuals grow from infancy to adulthood, their sense of morality also develops. In early childhood, most children’s morality is defined by adults around them, and avoiding punishment or gaining rewards (both internal objectives) are the driving force behind moral behavior. Not until later in life do we start to make moral choices based on people other than ourselves. Emotional Development | 67 Self-Regulation If you have ever been intensely happy or sad, you know that feelings are more than just emotional states: they also exist in our body as sensory experiences, and impact the way we interact with the people around us. In early childhood, emotions can be intense and confusing for infants and babies. They are not able to cognitively process the causes of their feelings, they just know that things are happening, and they cannot control them. Self-regulation is the ability to identify your emotions, understand what is causing them and how they are impacting your behavior, and taking steps to manage what is happening because of your emotions. In children, this takes several years – often well into adolescence – before they are able to do this consistently. For early childhood educators, helping children to learn words for their feelings and teaching strategies for helping children manage their emotions in healthy ways is important. 68 | Emotional Development Emotional Development Have you ever seen the movie Inside Out? It is a great representation of the “life” of our emotions inside our body! Perhaps you noticed in this movie that the emotions of the main character, who is a school-age girl, are much more dramatic than the emotions of her parents. This is exactly how our emotions operate! In children, feelings are intense and often cause problems without meaning to – just like Joy and the other emotions do in Inside Out. As we grow up, our emotions mature as well, and as adults we are much better at managing how we feel, and what we do to manage those feelings. Media Attributions Stages of Moral Development © Doris Buckley via. the ROTEL Project is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license Inside Out © Inside Out via. Disney+ is licensed under a All Rights Reserved license Emotional Development | 69 70 | Emotional Development