Gordon Biddle, Early Childhood Education: Becoming a Professional Instructor Resource
Chapter 5
Child Development and Milestones
In order to understand how children learn and development, it is important to look at
brain development. Portions of the brain grow rapidly in the first few years of life. Connections
or synapses form based on information gathered during experiences. These synapses can be
erased or eliminated if the child does not repeatedly obtain experiences from their environment.
In understanding the arousal states in infancy, we can learn the best time to interact with the
baby. During this time, the caregiver can see the reflexes of rooting, sucking, grasping, and
sucking. The child will also begin to acquire fine motor and gross motor skills.
Piaget’s cognitive milestones are discussed because of their importance in cognitive
development. However, there were some weaknesses in his theory, which are identified.
Language is an essential component of cognitive development, but a certain level of cognitive
development is needed before language can be produced and understood. The major language
milestones are briefly discussed, as well as stages of grammar expression. Another important
area in development includes emotional and social milestones, such as attachment and
friendships. Finally, this chapter ends with information on atypical development, including gifted
and talented children and children with special needs.
What are the Major Physical and Motor Milestones?
• The Physical Development of the Brain
o Neurons are the basic brain cells that carry and store information.
o Myelin sheathes protect the neurons. They grow rapidly until around age five.
They determine how fast information is carried from one neuron to another.
o The brain has a lot of plasticity, meaning that it can adapt and recover very well if
• Arousal states are the place or state of being which includes being asleep or awake.
o Regular sleep is where the infant spends the majority of their time.
o Irregular sleep is when the baby is sleeping but breathing occurs irregularly and is
accompanied by jerky movements and changes in facial expression.
Gordon Biddle, Early Childhood Education: Becoming a Professional Instructor Resource
• Reflexes are in-born, genetic movements that help the infant to interact with his or her
world and survive.
o Rooting happens when you touch a newborn’s cheek.
o Sucking occurs in response to something touching his mouth or lips.
• Motor Skills
o Fine Motor Skills
▪ Prereaching occurs when an infant clumsily reaches for or swats at objects
in her visual field.
▪ Visually directed reaching begins when the infant uses her eyes to
o Gross Motor Skills
▪ Head control means an infant is able to keep his head steady in an upright
position and move it voluntarily.
▪ Rolling
▪ Sitting
o Self-help skills
▪ Dressing
• The Development of Coordinated Movement
o Movement is pleasurable for children, which suggests that movement has
important implications for psychological development.
o Perception is the use of the senses.
Gordon Biddle, Early Childhood Education: Becoming a Professional Instructor Resource
▪ Taste
▪ Smell
What are the Major Cognitive Milestones?
• Brain Development and cognitive development are intertwined and also parallel each
other.
• A child’s early experiences with the environment are important for brain development
and learning, but they do not determine what will happen in the future.
• Cross-modal perception is the ability to integrate and coordinate information from two or
more modalities, or senses, and develops and enriches over time.
• Piaget’s theory of cognitive development:
• Beyond Piaget
o New research shows that children accomplish some tasks sooner than the age
Piaget identified.
o Piaget’s work has been continued and improved.
What are the Major Language Milestones?
• The brain keeps on developing into adulthood.
Gordon Biddle, Early Childhood Education: Becoming a Professional Instructor Resource
o Stage 1 is two word utterances/telegraphic speech (A young child produces
telegraphic speech by saying phrases such as “up mama.”)
o Stage 2 involves utterances slightly longer than two words (Young children
produce sentences from approximately three to five words long with the addition
of prepositions, articles, case markers, regular past tense, and regular plurals. For
instance, a child might say, “I love mama.”)
• The development of speech involves producing word sounds whereas language refers to a
whole system of communication.
• The development of literacy involves just a basic awareness and understanding of
language.
o Phonemic awareness is an understanding of the structure of reading and writing.
o Stages of writing
▪ Recurring is where young children repeat the same strokes.
▪ The generative principle is when children come to understand that there
are rules for putting letters and other writing elements together.
• The development of storytelling
o The ability to tell stories develops with language.
o Allowing children to tell their own story helps with language development.
Gordon Biddle, Early Childhood Education: Becoming a Professional Instructor Resource
What are the Major Social and Emotional Milestones?
• Attachment is a bond or emotional tie to another person who plays a special role in the
infant’s life.
• Stages of Attachment
o Asocial phase (0-6 weeks). Many kinds of social and/or nonsocial stimuli
produce a favorable reaction. At end of period infants show a preference for
social stimuli, such as a smiling face.
o Phase of indiscriminate attachments (6 weeks to 6-7 months). Infants enjoy
human attention in an indiscriminate fashion. They enjoy attention from all
humans, including strangers.
• Psychosocial development
o Erikson’ theory of psychosocial development: four stages apply to early
childhood
▪ In the first stage, an infant must come to make sense of and trust her
environment.
▪ In the second stage, a toddler must come to understand and to control his
competencies and his own body.
• Friendships or peer relationships
o Peer relationships make a unique contribution to a young child’s life above and
beyond the contributions made by adults.
o There are important friendships with peers that occur during the first year of life.
Infants seem to consistently respond to each other’s attempts at socializing.
Gordon Biddle, Early Childhood Education: Becoming a Professional Instructor Resource
o Between twelve months and twenty-four months infant peer relationships become
more complex.
o Researchers have concluded that toddler’s friendships are true relationships where
sharing, loyalty, helpfulness, togetherness, mutual interest, preference, and
positive affect all take place.
What are Some Implications of Developmental Milestones?
• Implications of developmental milestones for education and learning of all young
children
o Six strategies to enrich the developmental areas of children
▪ know the children: the strategy most impacted by developmental
milestones
▪ create a classroom community
▪ establish a structure
• Developmental milestones and atypical development
o Gifted and talented children: The main solutions are to correctly identify these
youngsters and to provide them with educational experiences that correspond to
their needs