Why is Child Development Important?

In my summative task, I would like to speak about child development, covering some points why it is important to pay attention to the development of the kids while they are at the age of being taught.

This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Susanna M. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.

But saying child development we mainly understand physical, language, thought, and emotional changes that occur in a child from birth to the beginning of adulthood. During this period a child progresses from dependency on their parents to increasing independence. Child development also is strongly influenced by genetic factors.

During my teaching years, I have met lots of children who have different levels of development, react to everything differently, and have a different approach to the same things.

So, being a teacher I should consider all these factors and try to work with each of them individually. For it, I always ask the question what does child development include? Without knowing what it should contain I can’t do my best to help the child in his/her development.

So during my years, I realized that child development covers the full scope of skills that a child masters over their lifespan including development in:

• Cognition – the ability to learn and problem solve
• Social interaction and emotional regulation – interacting with others and mastering self-control
• Speech and Language – understanding and using language, reading and communicating
• Physical skills – fine motor (finger) skills and gross motor (whole-body) skills
• Sensory awareness – the registration of sensory information for use

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So, I concluded that child development is an important tool to ensure that children meet their ‘developmental milestones’.

But in any case, we always have problems and should try to find the best solutions for them. Problems in Child Development can be as follows:

genetics, prenatal circumstances, the presence of a specific diagnosis or medical factors, and/or the lack of opportunity or exposure to helpful stimuli. Specific assessment by the best-fit professional As the process of child development involves multiple skills developing simultaneously, there may then be a benefit in consulting multiple professionals.

We know that development and learning are thoroughly connected.

Although development and learning are often categorized in separate domains—such as social and emotional development, cognitive development, physical development and health, and general learning competencies—they are not isolated competencies. Instead, they each contribute to each other, they are not easily separable, and different organizations have different labels and ways of categorizing these domains.

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Parents play the most important part of child development.

There may be cases when they will underestimate their children’s abilities that will lead to a wrong and stressful development after which the kid will not be self-confident.

Taking into account all the problems I can say that child development is the base of the future that only depends on him/her. If in young years the child is not alone and is surrounded by teachers and parents there will be a time when they become adults and the only power they will take on their shoulders, and child development is important for this time.

And would like to end up my summative task by a poem after Diane Loomans, where she accurately describes how the parents should treat their kids for their future development for them not to be failures but a success.

“If I had my child to raise over again: I’d build self-esteem first and the house later I’d finger paint more and point the fingerless I would do less correcting and more connecting I’d take my eyes off my watch and watch with my eyes I would care to know less and know to care more I’d take more hikes and fly more kites I’d stop playing seriously and seriously play I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars I’d do more hugging and less tugging I’d see the oak tree in the acorn more often I would be firm less often and affirm much more I’d model less about the love of power And more about the power of love.”

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