Childhood and Adolescent Development

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Revision as of 00:22, 3 November 2010

Contents 1 Childhood and Adolescent Development 1.1 Middle childhood: Ages six to twelve 1.1.1 Physical development 1.1.2 Cognitive development in middle childhood 1.1.2.1 Paiget's stages 1.1.2.2 Milestones 1.1.3 Effective development in middle childhood 1.1.3.1 Superego and conscious 1.1.3.2 Sexuality 1.1.3.3 Fears 1.1.4 Social development in middle childhood 1.2 Adolescence 1.2.1 Physical development in adolescence 1.2.1.1 Neurological 1.2.1.2 Endocrine 1.2.2 Cognitive development in adolescence

Childhood and Adolescent Development

Middle childhood: Ages six to twelve

• Age 7 has historically been and continues to be a turning point at which patients are considered to be in an age of reason.

Physical development

• Neurological changes are occurring which correlate to language regulation, handedness, and perception of complex stimuli.
• From 7 to 10, gross motor skill, balance, and coordination are developing rapidly.
• At 8 fine motor skills are mastered such as winking, tying one's shoes, and playing jacks.
• Sleep moves from 10 hours at age 8 to 8 hours at age 10.
• At age 10 boys and girls are similar in size.
• Girls show the first signs of puberty, boys begin about 2 years later.
  • Puberty in girls produces "hip rounding, nipple projection, waist accentuation, and early pubic hair follow the growth spurt".
  • Puberty in boys produces "a slight increase in the size of the penis and the testes, and the beginnings of pubic hair appear at age 10 or 11".
  • Growth spurts accompany at 10 years of age in females and 12 years old in boys.
  • Appetite changes are more dramatic in males than females.

Cognitive development in middle childhood

Paiget's stages

• Children become able to decentrate: focus on more than one dimension at a time; think coordinate axis.
• Also become able to:
  • consider others' perspective,
  • reverse operations mentally (addition and subtraction),
  • conserve quantity, weight, volume,
  • consider the motivations and needs of others when they consider right and wrong.

Milestones

• Perceptual-integrative abilities increase during this period.
  • School placement is important as it could lead to bad study habits if it is too easy or failure as a trend if too hard.
• By age 7, an understanding of time and calendars allows for increased delayed gratification.
• By age 10, children count forward indefinitely by 1s, 5s, and 10s; define concrete words, and memorize easily.
• By age 11, children interpret proverbs but do not yet understand sarcasm or irony.
• While elementary children in general think of death as punishment for bad behavior, 10 and 11 year olds are beginning to understand it's universal nature and to dissaccoiate it from bad behavior.
• By age 10 to 12, children have developed metacognition such that they understand something about what they know and how they learn.
• Thinking is outloud from ages 5-6, then internalized first as self-regulatory thoughts and then as problem solving streams.

Effective development in middle childhood

Superego and conscious

• Superego and conscious development produces more inherent control of behavior including increased ideas of parental authority and guilt.
• Self-control development often produces obsessions with collecting of something (stamps, cards, dolls, etc.).

Sexuality

• Sexual exploration is common among boys as is an increased interest in anal or sexual humor.
• Energy may not be entirely captured by school work such that games and gangs become interesting.

Fears

• Fears in middle childhood usually revolve around body integrity, appearance, and competence and usually are set in day-time situations.

Social development in middle childhood

• 8 year olds comprehend and follow basic rules.
• 9 and 10 year olds are able to be both competitive and socially polite.
• 11 and 12 year olds show an increased level of fascination with generating rules and understand that rules are a human contraption that can be changed as long as all parties agree.
• Boys and girls, but especially boys, tend to prefer single-gender play groups and wish to employ culturally appropriate gender roles.
• School aged children develop their own culture with rhymes, code words, and heroes.
• TV is bad because of sex and violence.
• Social stature begins to be a matter of responding appropriately in any given social situation so as to be acceptable to the group often an informal club or a more formal club like BSA, etc.
• Before adolescence, girls are acutely aware of the idea and expectation of attractiveness and may have irrational ideas about needing to diet.
  • This can be accentuated by the natural weight gain that comes with the onset of puberty.

Adolescence

• Adolescence is defined by:
  • developing a secure personal and sexual identity,
  • choosing an occupation,
  • defining personal values
• Because education may extend occupational choice, "adolescence" can expand well into the 20s.

Physical development in adolescence

Neurological

• By age 14 an EEG shows normal alpha-waves and dendrites have retreated to their normal adult lifetime positions.

Endocrine

• Puberty is sexual maturity to the point of fertility.
• While beneficial for boys to start puberty early, it is socially bad for girls.
• Girls now average menarche at 12 as opposed to 15 or 16 in the 1800s.
• Females average sexual maturity around 15 while men mature at 17.
• Puberty increases the adolescent's attention on their image and body physique as do the pervasive nature of sex and image in media and culture.

Cognitive development in adolescence