Chapter 7 General body growth trends Sleep Children grow rapidly between the ages 3 and 6 At around 3 children lose their babyish roundish and slender out As abdominal muscles develop the potbelly tightens This point the head is still large but the body parts are becoming more adult like Boys and girls typically grow 2 to 3 inches a year during early childhood and gain 4 6 pounds annually Muscular and skeletal growth progresses children become stronger Cartilage turns to bone at a faster rate bones become harder which gives the child a firmer shape and protects their internal organs Increased capacities of the respiratory and circulatory system build physical stamina Good nutrition helps support growth and muscle development o Night terrors when the child awakes abruptly early in the night from a deep sleep in a state of agitation thrashing about The child may scream and sit up in bed breathing quickly and staring or He or she is not really awake and may not remember it the day after Quite common Mostly occur between 3 13 Affect boys more than girls o Enuresis repeated urination in clothing or in bed 10 15 of 5 year olds more commonly boys wet the bed regularly More than half outgrow the condition by 8 without special help Is common and not serious If it persists beyond 8 10 may be a sign of poor self concept or other psychological problems o Encouraging good sleep habits Helping children go to sleep Establish a regular bed time routine 20 minutes of quiet activities reading singing lullabies quiet conversation NO scary or loud TV Avoid active play before bed Keep a small night light on to make the child feel comfortable Don t feed or rock a child at bedtime Stay calm and don t yield to requests for just one more story etc Offer rewards for good behavior at bedtime stickers on a chart or just a praise Send the child to bed later most common reason for sleep problems occurs when the parents send the child to bed to early Helping children go back to sleep If a child gets up take him or her back to bed Speak calmly but be firm and consistent After a nightmare reassure the child and occasionally check on the child o If they persist for more than six weeks talk to a doctor Night terrors DO NOT WAKE CHILD o If the child does wake don t ask any questions just put them Help child get enough sleep on a regular schedule o Overtired or stressed children are more prone to night Walk or carry a sleepwalking child back to bed o Childproof your home with gates at top of stairs and o Bells on your children s door so you know when they are back to bed terrors windows out of bed Gross motor skills physical skills that involve the large muscles o Ex running and jumping o Preschool children make great advances in these gross motor skills physical skills that involve the small muscles and eye hand Fine motor skills coordination o Ex buttoning shirts and drawing pictures o Gains in these skills allow children to take more responsibility for their personal care Handedness preference for using a particular hand o Because the left hemisphere of the brain which controls the right side of the body is usually dominant most people favor their right side o Brains that are more functionally symmetrical the right hemisphere tends to dominate making them left handed o Boys are more likely to be left handed than girls o 82 of the population is right handed Preventing obesity o Prevention of obesity in the early years is critical o Overweight children tend to lead to overweight adults o Make sure older preschoolers are served appropriate portions o DO NOT FORCE THEM TO CLEAN THEIR PLATES o Get involved with physical activities EXCERSISE Health and death o And SES the lower the family s SES the greater a child s risk of illness injury SES Social Economic Status Poor children are more likely than any other child to have chronic conditions and activity limitations to lack of health insurance and to have unmet medical and dental needs Access to quality health care is particularly a problem among black and Latino children esp who are poor o Smoke is a preventable cause of childhood illness and death Damage caused due to smoking is greatest during the early years of life when children s bodies are still developing Children exposed to smoke are at increased risk of respiratory infections such as Bronchitis and pneumonia Ear problems Worsened asthma Slowed lung growth Piaget o Animism tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive o Centration the tendency of preoperational children to focus on one aspect of a situation and neglect others o Egocentrism inability to consider another person s point of view a characteristic of young children s thought This may help explain why young children sometimes have trouble separating reality from what goes on inside their own heads and why they may show confusion about what causes what Ex Luis believes that his bad thoughts have made his sister sick o Conservation awareness that two objects that are equal according to a certain measure remain equal in the face of perceptual alteration so long as nothing had been added to or taken away from either object Ex when you fill two glasses with same amount of water one glass is short and wide the other is tall and skinny You ask the child which more contains more and they will either say the taller glass or the wider glass has more water When asked why he says This one is bigger this way stretching his arms to show the height or width Memory Vygostky Vocabulary o Recognition ability to identify a previously encountered stimulus Ex to pick out a missing mitten from a lost and found box o Recall ability to reproduce material memory The more familiar a child is with an item the better they can recall it o ZPD Zone of Proximal Development the difference between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with help o Scaffolding the temporary support to help a child master a task o Fast mapping process by which a child absorbs the meaning of a new word after hearing it once or twice in conversation o Social speech speech intended to be understood by a listener Ex explaining something o Private speech talking aloud to oneself with no intent to communicate with others Piaget saw private speech as a sign of cognitive immaturity Basically communication with self Emergent literacy Preschoolers development of skills knowledge and attitudes that underlie reading and writing o Pre reading skills can be divided into two types Oral
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