If you are taking the SPW course and you have chosen children as your target group, at some point you need to know which factors influence the development of the young child. Below is a brief explanation of this.
What is developmental psychology?
The study of behavior, thinking and experiences of people in different phases of life, from birth to the end of life.
Factors that influence development
Internal factors:
- Innate suitability (hereditary material, talent)
External factors
- Environment (opportunity for training, for example)
- Physical environment (think Chernobyl)
Impediments
Obstructive factors in the target group with regard to certain areas of development:
These may have their origins in the child, the family and/or the environment.
The child:
- Gender: from the age of 3, boys show more aggressive behavior than girls.
- Neuropsychological deficits or temperament characteristics at birth that can lead to increased impulsivity and disturbed emotion regulation in preschool age.
The family:
- Insecure attachment of the child to (one of) the parents.
- An unfavorable family climate: parents do not support children enough and/or use harsh punishments and inconsistent discipline. where parents do not provide enough support to children and often use harsh punishments and inconsistent discipline, increases the risk of the child developing behavioral problems. This can lead to deficits in problem solving and social information processing skills, deficits in developing competence and making social interactions more difficult.
- The parents give the child too little attention or a lot of negative attention.
- The parents are insecure in their upbringing.
- Lots of arguments at home between parents or a divorce between parents.
Area:
- Poverty and social exclusion. There appears to be a link between poverty and social exclusion, and behavioral problems in children. However, this association is partly influenced by family problems (e.g. marital problems) or parenting problems (e.g. deficits in parenting skills).
- Growing up in a highly polluted environment (Tsernobyl for example).
The problems that may arise in the target group:
- Children exhibit aggressive behavior towards other children.
- Children have an authority problem: they don’t listen to the teachers.
- Children do not respond to stimuli and are introverted.
- Lying, bullying, picking on.
- Children exhibit busy and impulsive behavior.
The aspects that are generally concerned with in this phase:
Children at this age are focused on acting and playing. They do this egocentrically and focused on themselves. The young toddlers play solitaire through parallel play: ie next to each other but not with each other. They discover their own identity, from there comes the no phase. They become less dependent. They also expand their language knowledge and practice gross motor skills. The older toddlers also practice fine motor skills, although this is not yet developed much.