Child development primer

1. Focus on early child development

This page gives you an overview of child development with a focus on its holistic nature and introduces an Indigenous perspective based on the Medicine Wheel.

Think about watching a child grow from being a totally dependent newborn to a very capable school age child. As you consider the transformation you can start to appreciate the remarkable changes that are part of human development. Throughout early life there are gradual and also distinct changes that take place.

Watch now as Jodie Kehl, a longtime Early Childhood Educator and Executive Director of the Manitoba Child Care Association, explains why it is so important for people who are going to work with children to understand child development.

Child development can be defined as the process by which a child changes over time. How a child develops depends on their genetic inheritance and their experiences, both prenatally and throughout life.

Although in this primer we are focused on the period from birth to age six, the study of child development covers the whole period from conception to maturity, a journey from total dependence to becoming a fully functioning adult.

Development is holistic

Child development is best understood from a holistic approach, recognizing the interconnectedness of growth. Children often learn several skills at the same time. For example, as children learn to crawl and then walk, they explore more and increase their understanding of the world around them. Children need opportunities to grow in every aspect of development.

Angela James is a researcher and scholar, who has held many roles in the Northwest Territories including Languages classroom teacher, Indigenous community school principal, numerous leadership positions with the Department of Education Culture and Employment and the President of Aurora College. Dr. James is a Manitoba Métis who moved to Yellowknife approximately forty years ago and married into a Chipewyan Dene family. Listen as Dr. James explains that all aspects – the body, the mind, the heart, and the spirit – are equally important.

Indigenous Medicine Wheel

The Medicine Wheel, also known as the Hoop of Life, or Sacred Hoop, is used by many Anishinaabe and Cree Nations in Canada and can be used to describe development. It is a worldview that focuses on the four dimensions of self: physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional. Looking at the Medicine Wheel holistically, it is a worldview of oneness, interconnectedness, interdependence, cycles, and patterns.

Watch as Joanna White, formerly an Indigenous Educational Developer at Red River College Polytechnic, describes the Medicine Wheel.

Each dimension of the Medicine Wheel is described below:

• Physical – the body and the physical spaces, places, and environments you inhabit and experience

• Mental – thought processes, language, messaging, self-talk, self-concepts (self-esteem, value, confidence, worth), learning, creativity and imagination

• Spiritual – core values/belief system, connection to self and people, places, and things in your life, focuses on intentionality and reflects our inner sense of purpose and belonging

• Emotional – feelings, our relationship to self and others and focuses on how relationality is important to have a balanced, harmonious life

Now watch as Joanna describes how each aspect of the Medicine Wheel impacts the others.

One aspect of the Medicine Wheel that may be less familiar is spiritual development. Watch as Dr. Angela James describes spiritual development in young children.

Adults with a deep understanding of the holistic nature of development and child development concepts are much better prepared for planning and providing optimal care.

Life-cycle stages

Development is often broken down into life-cycle stages – each stage with key features. The reading below shows one way to chart early human development according to ages and general characteristics. Keep in mind that while categorizing and labeling stages helps us organize our discussion of early development, there is a great deal of individual variation.

In the next videos, you will see clips of children from early infancy through the preschool years. Pay attention to the differences you see in the children at the different ages.

As you watch, jot down what you notice about the children at each age on this worksheet.

Developmental Domains

Although development is interconnected, the concept of developmental domains, somewhat like the four dimensions represented in the Medicine Wheel, is central to the study of child development. A developmental domain is like a category of related skills and abilities. Each domain involves a range of skills and milestones that children achieve as they grow and mature. This framework helps educators, parents, and researchers understand and support children’s overall development.

We can think of development in terms of five domains:

• Cognitive – this area of development considers all things related to how children think. This includes their ability to pay attention, to remember, to use creativity, and to solve problems. Much of what we think about in terms of the demands of formal school relates to cognitive development.

• Language – this area encompasses two types of communication: receptive (understanding/comprehension) and expressive (communicating with others). It includes spoken language, gestures, and written words.

• Social – this domain focuses on children’s sense of self and social relationships. It includes their self-concept and their ability to get along with others, to make friends, to take another person’s perspective, and to follow social norms.

• Emotional – this domain covers children’s abilities related to understanding, managing and expressing their feelings. It is also about being able to “read” another person’s emotions and act accordingly.

• Physical – this area of development looks at a child’s physical characteristics, health, perceptual and motor abilities. The latter includes fine motor (small muscle abilities like picking up small objects and using a pencil) and gross motor (large muscle abilities such as crawling, walking, and climbing stairs).

Sometimes people who study child development combine some of these categories, for example – cognitive/language and social/emotional. This is because there can be quite a bit of overlap between one domain and another, making it hard to define a skill as belonging to only one domain. If a child brings a tissue to someone who is crying, is this a social skill or an emotional skill? Certainly, there are elements of both, underscoring the holistic nature of development.

See how well you do with the task below that asks you to sort skills into different domains. For the purpose of this task, we combine the social and emotional domains because of the overlap discussed above.

Children do not come with instructions! As the previous two examples demonstrate, parents and caregivers of young children are faced with a steady stream of questions. For some questions, there may be many “right” answers – in other words, many different ways to tackle the issue. Having an understanding of child development makes it easier to consider the various possibilities and respond in a supportive, effective way. Listen to this example, from Dr. Joan Durrant, Child-Clinical Psychologist and Professor Emerita of Community Health Sciences at the University of Manitoba.

As Durrant says, adults who understand normal developmental expectations, needs and abilities, can consider children’s motivations and make sense of their behaviour.

Try the quiz below to test your recall of the information on this page.

The next page explores various theories of child development, considering different perspectives, historical periods, and value systems.