Child Development

             Physical development is one of the first areas of maturation that is noticed mainly because it is easily perceived. It entails the growth in body height and weight as well as all other physical attributes. There are two perspectives that define the pattern in which children grow they are the cephalocaudal principle and the proximodistal principle. The first principle says that children grow in a downward distribution starting with the head going all the way to the feet. The second principle says that children's growth takes place in an outward distribution starting in the center of the body and moving out to the extremities. A more unnoticeable growth that takes place is in the case of myelinization, which is when neurons become coated with myelin, an insulating substance, which allows the transmission of nerve impulses to occur faster and successfully. The more sufficient nerve impulses take place the more likely it is for children to have productivity in motor development. Motor development is broken down into two categories, gross-motor skills and fine-motor skills. Gross-motor skills apply the use of the larger muscles, such as leg and arm muscles, that may be used for crawling, walking, running, jumping, and throwing things. The fine-motor skills apply the use of smaller muscles, that may be used to grasp, manipulate, reaching for things and also the use of both hand and eye coordination. Within the stage of physical development as well as all other developments there are always possibilities for handicaps. The most basic categories for physical handicaps are speech disorders, hearing and visual impairments, and different types of skeletal, orthopedic or motor skill handicaps. Out of these the most prevalent are speech handicaps that could be a result of hearing, neurological, or developmental problems or malformations present at birth. .
             The second part of child development is cognitive development, which deals with the growth in knowledge, the ability to perceive, think and understand and to use those skills to solve practical problems.