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Unit 18 - Assessing Children's Developmental Support Needs (Assignment 1)
- Institution
- PEARSON (PEARSON)
I achieved a distinction for this assignment and I hope it can help others taking Lv3 Health and Social Care.
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Unit 18: Assessing Children’s Development SupportNeeds - Assignment One
Scenario:
Child development is the study of how children develop as they grow
physically, intellectually, linguistically, emotionally, and socially.
Children develop at different rates according to their environment, their
abilities, the stimulation they receive and the opportunities that they are
given whilst they are growing up.
One of the career options that you are considering is working within a
Family Centre, and part of the knowledge that you will be expected to
know, would be child development. This would help you to support
families within the centre in the future.
Contents:
Page 1 - 10: A.P1 - Explain patterns of growth and development of
selected children of different ages.
Page 11 - 12: A.M1 - Analyse stages of growth and development across
different areas for selected children of different ages
Page 13 - 21: A.P2 - Explain principles and theories that contribute to an
understanding of the children's growth and development
Page 22 - 28: A.M2 - Assess how theories can be used to identify the
children’s stages of growth and development
,Sumaiya Begum, S2200411
Page 29: A.D1 - Evaluate the extent to which theories of growth and
development can be used to support the selected children’s growth and
development.
A.P1 - Explain patterns of growth and development of selected children
of different ages.
In this report, I will be discussing the growth and development of children aged 0-8 years old.
From birth to 2 years is the birth and infancy life stage, and 3-8 years old is early childhood.
Growth is the physical measure of development, e.g. head size or height. On the other hand,
development is the complex changes in a person’s skills, abilities, and capabilities. I will be
looking at several types of development including physical, intellectual, neurological,
linguistic and memory.
Physical Development:
Physical development is the growth and physical changes that occur in the body, e.g.
weight, height, chest size. The most prominent period of growth and development is during
infancy (0-2) and Adolescence or puberty (9-18).
Locomotion is one aspect of physical development. It is defined by the movement or the
ability to move from one place to another. Locomotion can often be used by children for
athletic abilities such as balancing, crawling and walking. This development does not stop.
To balance is to maintain a controlled body position for a period. There are two types of
balance: static and dynamic balance. (NobelVoice, 2022) Static balance is holding a
stationary position while dynamic balance is remaining your balance when performing a
moving task.
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,Sumaiya Begum, S2200411
Fine and Gross Motor Skills are the basics of growth and development, vital to being able to
understand the physical development in a child. Fine motor skills are defined as the precise
movements of small muscles, such as the fingers and eyes. Gross motor skills are those that
use larger muscles, using simple movements. It develops from birth while fine motor skills
begin to develop eventually during the first two years of life.
One type of fine motor development is hand-eye coordination. It is when the eye receives
information from the surroundings (sight) and allows the brain to guide one’s muscles to
perform a task, such as picking up an object or writing. It is precise and necessary for
everyday activities.
Table 1.1 (Tutor2U, 2019)
Age Gross Motor Skills Fine Motor Skills
0 - 2 years Learning to walk at 6-9 months Moving objects from one place to
Can run at 9-12 months another
Involuntary hand movements at a few
months
Gripping objects
3 - 4 years Turn pages of a book Walking backwards and sideways
Dress themself (buttoning and Climbing stairs
unbuttoning clothing) Riding a tricycle
Being able to write steadily
4 - 5 years Using cutlery properly Hopping on one foot
Steady technique - threading beads Walking in a straight line, along a line
Running on tiptoes
5 - 6 years Confidently uses cutlery Learns to jump and skip
Steady pencil grip, and joins up Able to hop using both feet
handwriting
6 - 7 years Fully developed hand-eye Can ride a bike and jump with
coordination confidence
Able to draw complex shapes Can run with coordination backwards
Writing full name and short stories and forwards
on lined paper
7 - 8 years Cuts objects using scissors Can hop using both legs
Can run in a straight line
Cognitive and Neurological Development:
Cognitive development is explained as the growth of a child’s ability to think and
discover, and neurological development is a child’s development of the nervous system,
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, Sumaiya Begum, S2200411
stimulating growth in the brain and senses. Both types of development are closely related to
the brain and its abilities.
Thinking involves a process of three steps. First, we gather information using the five senses
of taste, smell, sight, touch, and hearing. There is the ability to retrieve information from
memories. Then, we take the time to understand what we learnt or retrieved, organising the
information to form clear concepts, helping to link similar experiences together. The decisive
step comes into play, productive thinking. All the information and understanding from the
previous steps are used to create, analyse, evaluate, and make decisions. For example, if a 6-
year-old girl smells fresh pastries, she will have gathered information and look back to
where she first smelled the scent. Whether that be walking past a shop or a parental figure
making it, she will have retrieved the information from her memories. After that, she will
organise the information and link it to the memory retrieved and finally, decide how to
respond, most likely to find the source of the scent.
This may also be related to the growth of abstract ideas. It depends on two factors:
● Children can connect prior knowledge to the newly learned information
● Patterns they can physically see
Before completely developing the concept, there should be a balance between knowledge and
practise.
Cognitive and neurological development relies on a child's memories. Especially in children,
recognition memory is very dependable. They can accurately recall and remember a person’s
appearance, the scent of a food, and sounds. It is even more accurate when recalling the faces
of parental figures, their environment, and even toys they play with. There are three stages to
memory:
● Organising the information for storage in the hippocampus
● Keeping the information in long-term memory
● The ability to retain and retrieve information
Development is greatest in the preliminary stages of life including infancy and early
childhood. Neurons create new connections and pathways in the brain depending on the
child’s developmental process. Many factors can influence the development of the child’s
brain and the connections it makes. Some include experiences, trauma, and parenting
methods:
● If a child experiences trauma early on, they will be affected by extreme stress
which can damage their growth and development.
● Maternal care while in the womb is largely responsible for development.
○ For example, taste can be influenced by what a pregnant mother eats. If
they eat more of one type of food, the child may develop preference
towards that food. This was found in a study not long ago.
○ If the mother is stressed during her pregnancy, she may affect the
cognitive and neurological development of the foetus.
● Parental techniques that encourage kindness and sharing actively influence the
child positively. If the child is sent to a ‘thinking chair,’ they will learn to reflect
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