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One area of development that newborns face is the development of their reflexes. These reflexes include (but are not limited to) rooting and sucking. The rooting reflex helps babies to find and latch on to feed. This reflex can be triggered by brushing the side of a baby's face, which will cause their head to turn and their mouth to open. Pacifiers can be used to help with this reflex. Due to being adopted as a newborn, I had to be bottle-fed. My pacifier, however, helped me to develop my rooting reflex. I was unable to find my actual pacifier, but I was able to find a very similar model of one on Google.

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One are of development that infants focus on is their locomotion. Locomotion requires both gross and fine motor skills, and includes the process of rolling over, sitting unsupported, crawling, creeping, walking supported, and walking unsupported. Personally, I was walking very early, starting to walk unsupported at around 11 months old. The baby gate pictured is designed to keep infants and toddlers (and sometimes dogs/puppies!) away from potentially hazardous areas, as well as keep the infants/toddlers from darting off. However, I used our baby gates to grab onto, so that I could pull myself up from the floor to a stand, which helped develop my locomotion skills. Pictured above is the type of gate that my parents used, and we still use today to train our dogs.

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An area of physical development for early childhood is fine motor skills, which can specifically include the formation of the pincer grasp, as well as proximal distal development. The pincer grasp is characterized by early childhood children using their thumb and index finger to grasp and pick up objects. The game "Guess Who?" helps to develop this fine motor skill. The game includes flipping swatches with peoples' images down as the players try to discover which character each of them has. My dad and I used to play this game for hours on end (although I didn't always play by the rules!). Our pieces were particularly fragile, so I had to develop my pincer grasp to be very precise when flipping the swatches over so that they wouldn't break.

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An important area of focus for kids in early childhood is the development of friendships. At this stage of their growth, friendships become more dependent on day by day interactions. In preschool, a lot of friendships are based just on the sharing of toys. However, just because two early childhood kids are friends one day, that does not guarantee that they will have the same sentiment the next day. During my early childhood, my parents enrolled me in Brownie Scouts (the precursor to Girl Scouts). Most of the friendships in the group were still based on day to day interactions, but a few of the friendships I had did manage to survive all the way through school and into college. My vest, as pictured, was supposed to determine how far each person was coming along in the Brownie program based on how many badges/petals they had. However, this did occasionally cause friendships to fall out for a few days, but generally bounced back after higher-quality interactions.

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During early childhood, language is becoming increasingly sophisticated, making kids essentially sound like small adults. Grammar also becomes more developed, with the kids learning what cannot be said, regarding grammar rules. In my early childhood, I utilized several Leap Frog devices for word learning and phonics. These tools would help to build words, enforce letter recognition, and help with the phonics and pronunciation of words/letters. They also help with recognizing what words can be words (ie CAT vs JAT, where JAT is not a word), which can encourage the development of grammar skills.

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Self-esteem and social comparison are major factors in the social development of middle childhood kids. Self-esteem is defined as an individual's overall and specific positive/negative self-evaluation, whereas social comparison is defined as the desire to evaluate one's own behavior, abilities, etc. by comparing those skills to the skills of others. For me, personally, gym class was a major influence on my self-esteem and how I compared myself to others. Gym class is designed to promote physical activity, as well as friendly competition. However, my experience with gym class was not so positive. I was not very coordinated as a kid, which made playing sports rather difficult. This led to my peers getting increasingly frustrated with me when I was unable to keep up with them, which led to being outcasted and bullied, despite the fact that my dad and I would practice for hours to help me try to catch up. This made my self-esteem completely drop, and I constantly faced negative social comparisons. This experience still impacts my social life today, as now sports make my mood do a complete 180 degree turn. While we no longer have the ball my dad and I used to practice with, I did manage to find a picture of it on Google.

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During middle childhood, kids go through a slow, yet steady, growth period in which their gross motor skills continue to develop, leading to an increase in balance, coordination and strength. This growth period also involves an increase in muscle mass, as well as physical strength. Many kids, to further develop these areas of growth, participate in sports or other physical activities. Growing up, I was never really one for sports, as the few experiences I had were never very encouraging, but I did have a playset in my backyard. This playset allowed me to develop my gross motor skills in various ways, such as balancing on a swing seat, climbing up a rock wall to the top of the slide, etc.

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Middle Childhood - Cognitive Development

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Middle Childhood - Cognitive Development

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During middle childhood, kids go through significant academic and cognitive growth. A part of this growth is the development of grammar, pronunciation, intonation and syntax. This also includes metalinguistics, which is the awareness and understanding one's use of language. I developed my own metalinguistics by writing creative fiction stories around the age of 10, which are pictured above. These stories not only helped to encourage my creativity, but also expanded my vocabulary, diction, syntax, and particularly grammar. The image above depicts some of my writings from when I was just under the age of twelve.