If there's anything that all parents can agree on, it's that children develop in different stages. One of the most intricate and delicate stages of development is the Early Childhood stage which lasts from 3 years to about 5 or 6 years old. It is known as the preschool stage and is the stage where children make big advancements physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. They begin understanding the world and how it works as well as exploring their own abilities and independence.
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all crucial to a child's development, especially their physical development. Keeping them active and feeding them healthy foods help promote healthy skeleton growth, body shape and helps fight illnesses and prevents disease.
Cognitively, children explore their creativity and begin using their imaginations. They also begin to understand the world and how it works as well as expand their use of language to communicate and help them solve tasks. According to Piaget's Cognitive Developmental Theory, children in this stage are in the preoperational stage in which they begin to represent the world with images, words and drawings. They also begin to reason and form concepts. However, children in this stage still tend to believe in magical creatures, such as the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy and are unable to preform functions. Preoperational thought is the beginning of their ability to reconstruct in thought what they have already been able to do physically and is divided into two sub stages:
The Symbolic Function Substage: The first substage that occurs during the ages of 2-4. In this stage children are able to represent objects that are not present which helps expand how they mentally view the world. Although they are developing, their thinking process is still limited. They are egocentric, meaning they are not able to distinguish someone else's perspective from their own. They also participate in animism, which is the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities (Santrock, 2014).
The Intuitive Thought Substage: The second substage which occurs between the ages of 4-7. It is in this stage that children use reasoning and become very curious about many things. Parents sometimes refer to this stage as the "Why?" stage because of the amount of questions that children ask them because they're curious about how things work. "Piaget called this stage intuitive because young children seem so sure about their knowledge and understanding, yet are unaware of how they know what they know (Santrock, 2014).
As parents, it's important for us to understand the impact that we have on our children's development and in this stage, our involvement is crucial. We can encourage healthy development by keeping them active and encouraging play. Chase them and have them chase you. Take them swimming or let them run around at a park. These activities are not only fun for them but will be fun for you as well since you're both creating awesome memories together.
Feeding them healthy meals will help give them that energy they need for all that running around that they do everyday. It also helps fuel their brains so they can continue opening up their minds to the world around them. Encouraging imaginative play also helps encourage creativity and logical thinking. Even if the situations they create are not real, imaginative play gives them opportunities for them to solve problems using reasoning and logic. Play time is never just play time for children, it's also time for them to learn more about themselves and how the world works.
Be active with them. Get involved. Be silly. It will benefit your child in many ways!
Source:
Santrock, J. W. (2014) Essentials of Life-Span Development. (3rd. ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
