Child Development Milestones: A Guide to Motor and Cognitive Growth

Posted on Aug 7, 2024 in Physical Education

Psychomotor Development

Driving behaviors are the first and most apparent from the beginning of development.

Fundamental Laws

  • Cephalo-caudal Development: Body parts closer to the head are controlled first, with control spreading downwards.
  • Proximo-distal Development: Parts closer to the body’s axis are controlled before those further away (e.g., shoulder control before elbow control).

First Year

A) Postural Control Development

Postural control develops through maturation and stimuli, generally following these milestones:

  1. Head Control: Lifting the head in line with the trunk occurs around 3-4 months.
  2. Sitting Position: Babies can sit with support around 4-5 months and independently around 7 months.
  3. Crawling: Movements and displacements begin around 8 months.
  4. Standing and Walking:
    • Around 9-10 months, the child can stand with support.
    • Around 11 months, they can walk with a single point of support.
    • Around 12 months, they can stand and walk independently.

B) Motor Development

  1. Initially, motor activity is diffuse and controlled by subcortical centers. Movements are not intentional.
  2. After four months, the cerebral cortex intervenes, coordinating and inhibiting motor activity.
  3. By the end of the first year, active participation of the cortex allows for coordinated motor activity and object manipulation.

Around 3-4 months, hand-eye coordination emerges, and primitive grasping begins around 6-7 months. Initially, grasping is ambidextrous, but hands become more versatile with intentional pressure. By 10 months, the child uses a pincer grasp with the thumb and forefinger. Around this time, the evolution of hand movement for grasping reaches its final stage.

Second Year

A) Motor Development

During the second year, children develop skills like running, jumping, and climbing stairs.

  • 12-15 Months: Walking becomes more autonomous, and grasping precision approaches that of an adult, though releasing objects remains challenging.
  • 15-18 Months: Muscle control improves, allowing for repetitive throwing. Running begins but is unsteady.
  • 21 Months: Hopping emerges.
  • 2 Years: Walking is preferred, but stopping or turning sharply remains difficult. Fine motor skills progress, allowing for independent eating, though spills still occur. Daytime bowel control is usually achieved.

Third Year

Leg movements become more precise, improving running, climbing, and descending stairs. Fine motor skills advance, enabling activities like drawing vertical lines. Tool use, such as with brushes and scissors, begins. Children can string beads and screw lids. Gross motor skills allow for balancing on one foot, tiptoeing, riding a tricycle, and navigating stairs with alternating feet.

Body Schema Construction

  1. Children develop a mental image of their body, including knowledge of body parts, awareness of the body axis, and lateralization.
  2. Lateralization, the preferential use of one side of the body, begins around age 3 and concludes around age 6. Preferences can be homogeneous or crossed. Some children show clear preferences early, while others remain uncertain during the preschool years. Lateralization should be defined by age 5, certainly before learning to write.

Cognitive Development

: FIRST YEAR: a block of cognitive behavior typical of this period is called object permanence that develops over the 8 / 12 months. First, suction reflexes are tuned to the exercise. From the second or third month are behaviors that differ from its predecessors because they are not directly reflex, such as thumb sucking. During this period the activities have no purpose outside themselves and are restricted to the baby’s body. From approximately the 4th month there is a first differentiation of the action and its result and this what I really want the baby. Thus, even though their actions do not have a clear purpose preset, the baby tries to repeat the actions that have led to an interesting result. Towards the end of the 8th month begins a stage that marks a significant leap in the development of intelligence. There, in the child’s behavior, not only a clear intent, but also the cpacidad to use their knowledge in a coordinated manner to achieve an end to new situations. First cause / efecto.Al end of the first year, the child’s activity, there is still limited to the application and combination of known schemes. One of the most representative achievements of this first year is that the baby can now organize their actions to achieve goals that have been proposed. The child can and to subordinate means to ends. He knows because the obstacle was the goal before, you should start to get away cause the desired effect. SECOND YEAR among the most important achievements of the 12 to 18 months are those behaviors that involve a more advanced understanding of the means-end relationships. The big gains between 18 and 24 months are based on the emergence of symbolic function, ie the ability to internally represent actions, objects and events. Classified on the basis of similarity. It is capable of working with collections: relationships between two sets of elementos.Respecto to imitation, the child is able to perform a deferred imitation. Between 2 and 3 years the game appear symbolic. The distinction of playing estew redice in the use of symbols that can act as if .. THIRD YEAR symbolic function is the psychological process that allows to denote significant meanings. However, despite the child is not limited to directly manipulate reality but it represents qe tb, their performances are still very linked to acción.Discrimina discrete amounts. Identify up to three objects, count to three. It is able to perform combinations of means-end action.