Childhood and

Adolescence: Voyages
in Development,
7e
Chapter 8: Early Childhood:
Physical Development

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 Learning Objectives (1 of 2)

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

8-1 Describe growth patterns during early childhood, focusing on
development of the brain.
8-2 Describe motor development in early childhood, focusing on gross and
fine motor skills and on handedness.
8-3 Discuss nutritional needs during early childhood and children’s
compliance and resistance to healthful foods.

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 Learning Objectives (2 of 2)

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

8-4 Discuss the “usual” childhood diseases and immunization, focusing on
the anti-vaxxer controversy.
8-5 Discuss sleep patterns in early childhood, focusing on nightmares and
sleep terrors.
8-6 Discuss elimination disorders in early childhood, how caregivers may
overreact to delayed development of self-control, and what psychologists
suggest about coping.

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 8.1 Growth Patterns

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What Changes Occur in Height and Weight During
Early Childhood?
• Growth rate slows after first 2 years
• Girls and boys tend to gain about 2–3 inches in height per year
• Weight gains are about 4–6 pounds per year
• Children gain height and lose some “baby fat”
• Boys as a group are only slightly taller and heavier than girls
• Noticeable variations in growth patterns from child to child

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Growth Curves for Height and Weight,
Ages 2–6 Years

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 How Does the Brain Develop During Early
Childhood?
• Brain develops faster than any other organ in early childhood
– At 2 years, 75% of adult weight
– By 5 years, 90% of adult weight
 Total body weight at 5 years = barely 1/3 of adult weight
• Continuing myelination of nerve fibers contributes to increase in brain
size
– Facilitates development of fine motor skills
– Reciprocal: Motor skill development and activity also promote myelination
– Cerebellum: Young child’s balance and coordination increase dramatically
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 Brain Development and Visual Skills

• Improvements in ability to attend to and process visual information

– Critical skills in learning to read
• Increasing myelination of parts of brain that sustain attention, screen out
distractions between ages of around 4–7
– Most children are ready to focus on schoolwork
• Processing speed improves, reaching adult levels by beginning of
adolescence
• Ability to scan visual material systematically improves
– 9-year-olds often do this; 4-year-olds almost never do

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 Are Some Children Right-Brained and Others
Left-Brained?
• In right-handed people, left hemisphere relatively more involved in logic,
problem solving, language, and math computation
• Right hemisphere generally better at visual–spatial functions, facial
recognition, color discrimination, aesthetic and emotional responses,
understanding metaphors, and creative mathematical reasoning
• Hemispheric functions overlap to some degree, and respond simultaneously
when focusing attention
– Corpus callosum connects hemispheres, aids their “cooperation”
 Myelinates rapidly; largely complete by age 8
 Children can better integrate logical and emotional functioning

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 What Is Meant by Plasticity of the Brain?

• Specialization of parts of brain not only enables more complex behavior but
also can result in loss of functions if some parts are injured
• Plasticity: brain often can compensate for injury to specific areas
– Greatest at 1–2 years old, then gradually declines
 May not be completely gone, even in adulthood
– After damage to parts of brain originally controlling ability to speak or understand
language, young children may dramatically regain it
– Factors in brain plasticity:
 “Sprouting” of new dendrites
 Redundancy of neural connections

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 8.2 Motor Development

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 How Do Gross Motor Skills Develop in Early
Childhood?
• Development of large muscles used for locomotion
• Greater individual differences, fewer sex differences
• Physical activity:
– Rough-and-tumble play
– Wide variations in activity levels
 Determined by interaction of genetic and environmental factors

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 How Do Fine Motor Skills Develop in Early
Childhood?
• Proximodistal development
– Gross motor skills develop earlier and more rapidly than fine motor skills
• Small muscles used in manipulation and coordination
• Children’s drawings
– Closely linked to development of motor and cognitive skills
– Four stages:
 Placement, shape, design, and pictorial

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 When Does Handedness Emerge? Are There
Advantages or Disadvantages to Being Left-
Handed?
• Handedness emerges during infancy
– Preference seen by 2–3 months, clear-cut by 4 months
– Increases markedly between 6–14 months
– More strongly established during early childhood
– Most people are right-handed
 Some are ambidextrous
 Despite cultural negativity toward left-handedness, research is mixed
 Variation in cognitive and motor skills greater within than between groups

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 Theories of Handedness

• Handedness runs in families to some degree

• Identical (monozygotic) twins often differ in handedness
– “Mirror opposites?”
• Relationship with prenatal testosterone
– Girls with male co-twins less likely to be left-handed
 Possible “prenatal testosterone transfer”
• In ultrasound studies, 95% of fetuses suck their right thumbs

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 8.3 Nutrition

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 What Are Children’s Nutritional Needs in Early
Childhood?
• Still need basics: proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins
• As children get older, they require more calories.
– Average 1–3-year-old needs 1,000–1,300 calories; average 4–5-year-old needs
1,400–1,600 calories
– Slower growth rate than infants: need fewer calories per pound of body weight in
early childhood
• Years 2, 3: Appetite decreases, becomes erratic; may develop strange
preferences
• Repeated exposure to sweet and salty foods increases preference
• Parents are role models in development of food preferences
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 My Daily Food Plan

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 8.4 Health and Illness

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What Minor Illnesses Do Children Develop in Early
Childhood?
• Colds; nausea, vomiting, diarrhea
• American children 1–3 years old average 8–9 minor illnesses a year
• From ages 4–10 years, this drops to an average 4–6 illnesses a year
• Benefits: stimulates immune system
– Creation of antibodies may prevent recurrence of illness in adulthood
• Diarrhea usually mild in the United States, but leading cause of child
death in developing countries
– Vaccines developed against rotavirus, often implicated

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 What Major Illnesses Do Children Encounter?

• Globally, greatest causes of death for children under age 5 are, in order: pneumonia,
diarrhea, malaria, measles
– Malnutrition connected with half these deaths: lowers resistance to illness
• Advances in immunization, antibiotics, and other medications have dramatically
reduced serious childhood diseases in the United States.
– Nearly one-third of U.S. children under 18 years (20 million) have chronic illness:
 Arthritis, diabetes, cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, asthma, migraines
– Major childhood diseases largely eradicated in the United States still kill children in
developing countries
 Two-thirds die of pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, tetanus, whooping cough, and tuberculosis
• Air pollution, unsafe water, no sanitation, lead poisoning

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What Is the Role of Accidents as a Cause of Death
in Early Childhood?
• Motor-vehicle accidents are single most common cause of death
• Followed by drowning and fires
• Homicide is fourth
• Accidental injuries occur most often to low-income children
• Legislation to prevent accidental injury has reduced some injuries
– Child safety seats required in automobiles
– Window guards required in high-rise apartment buildings
– Safety standards for toys, flammable clothing

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 Recommended Immunization Schedule from
Infancy through the Age of 18, United States, 2020

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 8.5 Sleep

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 How Much Sleep Do Young Children Need?

• Need less sleep than infants

– 10–11 hours per 24 hours
 Commonly, 9–10 hours at night and 1- to 2-hour nap
 Bedtime routine
• Bath, pajamas, brushing teeth, being read a story

• In the United States, many children take a transitional object to bed

• Favorite blanket, stuffed animal

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 What Sleep Disorders Affect Children? (1 of 2)

• Sleep terrors (night terrors)

– More severe than nightmares
– Occur during deep sleep, early in the night
– Outgrown by late adolescence
• Nightmares
– Occur more in mornings, during REM sleep
• Children with frequent nightmares or sleep terrors may fear going to
sleep and develop insomnia

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 What Sleep Disorders Affect Children? (2 of 2)

• Sleepwalking or somnambulism
– More common in children than adults
– Occurs during deep sleep
– Onset between ages of 3 and 8 years
– Myths:
 It is not true that sleepwalkers’ eyes are closed, they will avoid harm, or will
become violently agitated if awakened
– Assumed to reflect immaturity of the nervous system
 Incidence drops as children develop

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 8.6 Elimination Disorders

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 Toilet Training

• Maturation plays a crucial role

– Few children can be toilet trained in first year
– Goes smoothly if parents wait until third year
• Children not toilet-trained within reasonable time frames are said to
have enuresis, encopresis, or both

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 What Is Enuresis?
• Enuresis is failure to control the bladder at the “normal” age
– Bedwetting: nighttime “accident”
 Nighttime control is more difficult than daytime control
 Occurs in 10% of children
 Equally common in boys and in girls until age 5; then becomes twice as
common in boys
 Incidence drops as age increases
 Occurs most during deepest sleep
 Causes: Organic; psychological; stress; sleep disorders; nervous system
immaturity
 Children tend to outgrow it by adolescence, usually by age 8
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 What Is Encopresis?

• “Soiling” or encopresis: lack of control over bowels

• More common among boys
• Overall incidence lower than that of enuresis
• More likely during the day
• Physical causes (e.g., constipation) and psychological factors
– May follow harsh punishment of toileting accidents
• Resolves by age 7–8 years in most children

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 Self-Assessment

• Which subjects in this chapter did you find most challenging and thus
need to review?
• What are some things you learned from this chapter that you never
knew or had considered before?
• What are some things in this chapter that you think are valuable to apply
in your own life, such as in school, at work, or at home?

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 Summary (1 of 2)

Now that the lesson has ended, you should have learned how to:
• Describe growth patterns during early childhood, focusing on
development of the brain.
• Describe motor development in early childhood, focusing on gross and
fine motor skills and on handedness.
• Discuss nutritional needs during early childhood and children’s
compliance and resistance to healthful foods.

©2022 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 33
 Summary (2 of 2)

Now that the lesson has ended, you should be able to:
• Discuss the “usual” childhood diseases and immunization, focusing on
the anti-vaxxer controversy.
• Discuss sleep patterns in early childhood, focusing on nightmares and
sleep terrors.
• Discuss elimination disorders in early childhood, how caregivers may
overreact to delayed development of self-control, and what
psychologists suggest about coping.

©2022 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part. 34