Developmental Psychology
How and why infants develop a fear of heights
Age and happiness Attachment theory Betty Hart's research with SES and vocabulary development. Additional article on The Power of Talking to Baby here Day care/child care here The overprotected kid Atlantic article on obsession with happiness in development. Six-year-olds and attention and future earnings Data on effective discipline. More on discipline here. Lying and theory of mind here. Jonathan Haidt's theories of morality and politics. Milestones Of Childhood (Marin Magazine, August, 2012) THERE’S NO SHORTAGE of information on when a young child will hit basic milestones such as first steps, first foods or first words. Later triumphs, however, get precious little press. So we asked pediatricians and child development experts to shed light on some of the important feats. Keep in mind that every child develops at his or her own pace. Form Friendships Long before a child has the verbal skills to declare a BFF, she can make connections with other kids. If you take your toddler to a playground, she may gravitate to a specific child, play alongside her and even imitate her actions. Developmental experts call this parallel play. What’s missing, however, are the foundations for more meaningful social interactions — skills like listening, responding and taking turns. These abilities don’t emerge until the preschool years. “A toddler’s top priority is skill mastery, mainly motor and verbal abilities. It’s just how we are neurologically wired,” says Barbara Bennet, a developmental behavior pediatrician and medical director of the Child Development Center at California Pacific Medical Center. “By age 3 these skills are more refined and, as a result, the child will take a greater interest in peers.” Tie Shoelaces A child is probably developmentally ready to learn to tie his own shoes somewhere between late preschool and early kindergarten. “It requires the same fine motor control necessary to properly hold a pencil, but the child must also be able to follow multistep directions,” says Michael Harris, a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael. Also, “I think with any skill that requires sequencing, there also has to be some frustration tolerance, and a 4- to 5-year-old is able to give a little more effort than a 3-year-old.” The advent of Velcro shoelaces has likely skewed the average age for shoe-tying a little higher, he points out: “If you don’t buy your kids lace-up shoes, there’s little incentive to learn.” Speak Conversational English Beginning around age 2, your child should be able to string together two- or three-word phrases such as “Mommy up” or “me no nap.” By three-and-a-half, linguistic skills are mature enough for four- to six-word sentences. But true conversational speech generally doesn’t happen until age 4 or 5. “Conversation is based on reciprocity,” explains Anna Vagin, Ph.D., a speech pathologist in private practice in Larkspur. “Linguistically that means the child can make verbal overtures, ask questions and respond appropriately to what other people are saying.” This ability often develops before grammar and pronunciation are perfected: “By kindergarten, children should be easily understood by others, even though they may still make simple grammatical errors and phonological substitutions.” Climb Stairs Watching your child learn to crawl is exhilarating — but also angst-provoking, as this newfound ability makes it that much easier to find trouble. According to a recent study at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, a child is treated in an emergency room every six minutes as a direct result of a staircase accident. “Learning to climb and descend the stairs is a gradual process,” says Rachel Bauer, medical director of Prima Kids, the pediatric arm of Marin’s Prima Medical Foundation. “Around the age of 2 a child will start being able to walk up and down stairs while holding on to something. By age three he should be able to walk without support, but may not take alternating steps,” says Bauer. The coordination needed to walk a flight of stairs with an adult gait doesn’t emerge until sometime during the fourth year. Stay Dry At Night Two-and-a-half seems the average age for graduating from diapers — but generally that just means daytime bladder control. Making it through the night without an accident usually comes later; for that, one of two things must happen. Either the bladder has to grow large enough to hold a full night’s output of urine, or the bladder has to signal the brain that it’s time for the child to wake up and use the bathroom. “Most children are dry at night by age 3,” says Darren Fiore, an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at UCSF Medical Center. “But even by age 5, around 5 to 10 percent of boys can still be wetting at night rather frequently; the percentage is much lower for girls.” Why? “It probably has more to do with sleep cycles of boys rather than bladder size,” Fiore explains. And, in fact, most pediatricians won’t even entertain the idea of a bed-wetting alarm until the child is at least 7. Even then it’s usually more of a laundry problem than a medical one; “some kids are just really deep sleepers,” Fiore says. Examine how testosterone, vasopressin, mullerian inhibiting substance (MIS), oxytocin, prolactin, cortisol,androstenedione, dopamine,and estrogen affect adolescent male brains. (See Brizendine, The Male Brain.)
Revisiting teenage dreams here. Describe traditional gender roles in the following Disney movies:
Teenagers
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Developmental unit study guide below;
January 2015 student-composed developmental psychology exam below
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