Milestone Chart For The Middle Childhood Development



Milestone Chart For The Middle Childhood Development

Introduction

What images do we have of school age children? One image is of energetic children running through a playground, laughing as they happily pursue their friends in a game of tag. Safe, strong, resilient, well-nourished, and self confident, they are able to interact with peers on an equal basis. These children are becoming more aware of the outside world—its opportunities, challenges, and fun (Bornstein, 2009). Yet, for other children, middle childhood may present a distinctly different picture. Some travel home through unsafe neighborhoods and let themselves into an empty apartment at the end of the school day. Once inside, they sit alone in front of the television, snacking on soda and chips. For these children, life presents few opportunities to participate in healthy activities with friends after school, to learn new skills, or to gain self-confidence. These two contrasting worlds of middle childhood highlight the differing effects of social inequality on child health and well-being.

To be successful, health supervision must be grounded in a solid base of knowledge about the physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and moral development of the child. In each of these areas, there is a known progression during the middle childhood years. There also needs to be an appreciation of the family, the school, and the community as the context within which children grow and develop (Johnson- Pynn, 2010). Children of school age should be active participants in health supervision. Whether this happens depends, in part, on the structure of the child's family, the cultural context, and the extent to which the child and the family are encouraged to form a health-promoting partnership with the health professional.

Physical Development

During the middle years, the child's growth rate is somewhat slower than in previous years, and certainly less rapid than the growth anticipated during adolescence. Nonetheless, major increases in strength and improvements in motor coordination do occur. These changes contribute to the child's growing sense of competence in relation to his physical abilities and enhance his potential for participating in sports, dance, gymnastics, and other physical pursuits. Monitoring the child's growth patterns and conducting periodic physical examinations to assess growth and development are important components of health supervision. Families can provide enormous support for healthy physical development. They can also work with communities to ensure that children have access to safe play areas, recreation centers, and parks, in addition to well-supervised play activities (Bjorklund, 2010). For children to flourish, communities must value children's physical growth and provide carefully maintained play facilities to help their bodies develop in a healthy way. Health professionals can augment their guidance on physical activity by advocating for such community facilities.

Cognitive Development

Children's readiness to learn in school depends on their experience. The synthesis of basic language, perception, and abstraction allows the child to read, write, and communicate thoughts of increasing complexity and creativity. Progress may appear subtle from month to month, but it is dramatic from one school year to the ...