Human beings undergo different stages of development as they grow from childhood to adulthood. As human beings undergo such changes, their body also changes to adapt to their environment. Such changes come due to nurture, which is the environment where they grow up and their biological make-up. Some such changes are observables such as physical growth, while people cannot observe some since they happened right inside the body. Physical changes, emotional changes, social, psychological, and also brain and nervous system are some of the areas where changes occur as people develop from childhood to adulthood. In this article, the scope is on child developments from childhood to middle childhood. The focus is to understand the physical, social, emotion, brain, and nervous system developments and changes that occur within this age frame.
Physical development
The early childhood stage begins from two years to six years. At this age, children grow quickly, both physically and mentally. In early childhood, the development is slower and more stable than during infancy. Many physical changes take place at the early childhood stage. At this stage, children tend to lose their baby fat and chubbiness and thus start to acquire an athletic look that would later define their physic at adulthood ( Harkness et al., 2015). Their trunks and limbs begin to grow longer as their abdominal muscles form, thus tightening the appearance of their stomach. Compared to girls at this early childhood, boys tend to be muscular, while female children tend to have fewer muscles. Three ‐ year ‐ old preschoolers can grow while at this stage to an approximate of 38 inches tall. They may weight approximately 32 pounds ( Harkness et al., 2015). For the next three years, healthy preschoolers grow an additional 2 to 3 inches and gain from 4 to 6 pounds per year. By age 6, children reach a height of about 46 inches and weigh about 46 pounds ( McCoy et al., 2016).
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As they proceed to the middle childhood that begins from seven to eleven years, more physical changes become evident. At this stage, however, the physical growth reduces and become slower than it was during the early childhood development period ( Miller, Goyal & Wice, 2015). The physical growth at this age bracket or stage considers a lot of variables such as ethnic, culture, gender, genetics, hormones, nutrition, environment, or disease. Such are factors that come to define the physics of a child at this age ( Miller, Goyal & Wice, 2015). At this age, both male and female children should acquire a physical and athletic appearance. At this stage also, both children, regardless of their gender, still have similar physical bodies until they reach puberty stage where numerous changes will occur to their physical bodies according to their sexes ( Harkness et al., 2015). Note that puberty is the process whereby children sexually mature into teenagers and adults. When they hit the puberty age mark, the children attain secondary growth where different physical changes will occur. It will help in differentiating female and male children physically. These include beasts and curves in females, deeper voice, and broad shoulders in males.
Brain and Nerve system developments
As children grow at an early childhood stage through to their middle childhood stage, they also develop in the brain and nerve system. Such developments are complex than physical developments, and they are only observable through cognitive traits and behaviors which children exhibit. The brain has both left and right hemispheres, which develops differently during child development ( McCoy et al., 2016). In early childhood, the left hemisphere develops fully while the right hemisphere may sometimes take before achieving full development. The right hemisphere will achieve its full development at the middle childhood stage ( Harkness et al., 2015). The left hemisphere predominates earlier and longer, which may explain why children acquire language so early and quickly. Another exhibition of left hemisphere development and domination at this stage is the preference to use one hand over another. 90% of the population uses the right hand while the rest use left hands ( Miller, Goyal &Wice, 2015). The left hemisphere developments perpetuate the predominant right hand. At this stage, too, the glial cells that nourish, insulate, and remove waste from the neurons without actually transmitting information themselves develop ( Harkness, Mavridis, Liu, &Super, 2015). The myelin sheaths also form within this period.
At the middle childhood stage, parts of the brain, such as the frontal lobes develop. It implies that a child at this stage will begin planning, reasoning, social judgment, and ethical decision making while interacting with people in their environment. Other brain parts, such as the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for the personality, also develops. They also develop differently in girls and boys ( McCoy et al., 2016). At this stage, the difference in gender reasoning and personalities such as cleanliness attunes to such brain structural developments. Their motor skills and neurons also develop as the children engage in doing more challenging tasks. Also, at this stage, boys tend to have vigorous brain development and nervous system development than female children, even though the difference is normally little ( McCoy et al., 2016).
Milestone
Social and emotional developments in early and middle childhood are a critical part of the kid's future life. At the early stages of their lives, children tend to be more possessive, and they sometimes tend to be alone watching their televisions. They are not socially active and tend to have shifting emotions ( Harkness et al., 2015). While their emotions can be intense, these feelings also tend to be quite short-lived. At this stage, there are limited differences between self-concept and emotional regulation between female and male gender. However, as these children advance to the middle childhood stage, they begin to understand themselves as male or female. They male begin forming their group while female associate more with similar gender ( Miller et al., 2015). The duties also vary at this stage as females tend to play the role of women while male associate with combative activities. Further, they tend to have a lot of peer relationships at this stage. They also tend to act impressively to their friends and start questioning their existence, including parental orders and authorities ( McCoy et al., 2016).
Early childhood and middle childhood development stages are marked with a lot of changes, both physically, emotionally, socially, and biologically. As discussed in this article, these changes are critical as they can later define a child's physics, emotional, and social skills.
References
Harkness, S., Mavridis, C. J., Liu, J. J., & Super, C. M. (2015). Parental ethnotheories and the development of family relationships in early and middle childhood. In The Oxford handbook of human development and culture .
McCoy, D. C., Peet, E. D., Ezzati, M., Danaei, G., Black, M. M., Sudfeld, C. R., ...& Fink, G. (2016). Early childhood developmental status in low-and middle-income countries: national, regional, and global prevalence estimates using predictive modeling. PLoS Medicine , 13 (6), e1002034.
Miller, J. G., Goyal, N., &Wice, M. (2015). Ethical considerations in research on human development and culture. In The Oxford handbook of human development and culture .
Glowiak, M., & Mayfield, M. A. (2016). Middle childhood: Physical and cognitive development. Human Growth and Development Across the Lifespan: Applications for Counselors , 251.
