Development of Children: Emotional Regulation and Social Interaction

Student’s Name
Professor’s Name
Course Number
Date
Children Development
Introduction
Child development refers to the series of language, physical, emotional, and thought changes that arise in a child from birth to the beginning of adulthood. In this time, a child develops from depending on their caregiver to become independent. The child’s development can be manipulated by genes, incidents amid prenatal life and environmental facts, and their learning capabilities. A child’s development can be improved through therapeutic interventions and the proper home practices approved by speech and professional therapists. Parents support healthy childhood by providing good health, adequate nutrition, safety and security, chances for early learning, and responsive caregiving. Children’s developments include various skills that children can master over their childhood periods, such as cognition skills, sensory awareness, emotional regulation, social interaction, speech and language, and physical skills.
Cognitive Skills
Cognitive skills help children to acquire the ability to learn and solve a problem. They include attention, logic and reasoning, long-term and short-term memory, visual and audio processing. These are skills that the brain uses to earn, pay attention, read, learn, remember, and solve problems. Piaget identified four stages of cognitive skills in children’s development (Babakr 3). First, the sensorimotor stage occurs from birth to two years, where a child learns about the world using the manipulation of objects and their senses. Second, the preoperational stage involves children from age two to seven, where they develop imagination and memory. A child can understand ideas of the future and past and things symbolically. Third, the concrete operational stage happens to children of age seven to eleven. Children are more aware of their surroundings as well as the feeling of others. They understand people share different feelings, opinions, beliefs, and thoughts. The fourth is the formal operational stage from age eleven. At this stage, children start to plan for their future, use logic to solve problems, and view the world around them.
Sensory Awareness
Children can use sensory information from vision, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste. Sensory development forms the foundation of children’s learning and perceptions. Children begin to react to sensory stimulation at birth. For example, they discover their legs and hand by touching them, following objects using their eyes, and turning heads towards heads (YAZICI and KANDIR 298). Some children are under-respond to sensory stimuli, while others are susceptible to some. Children’s sensory awareness improves and matures as they age, and their sensory needs change with time. Children can engage in sensory play to stimulate their senses. For example, by engaging them in water and sand play through playing, children learn what their parents cannot teach them.
Emotional Regulation and Social Interaction
This is where children learn to interact with others and engage in self-control. Emotional regulation is the ability of the child to monitor and modulate their emotions, what triggers them, and how they express and experience them (Morris et al. 233). The critical milestone is learning how to self-regulate. Social interaction as children develop and perceive their own identity within the community, they learn to communicate with others and process their actions (Gibson et al. 297). For infants and toddlers, a considerable amount of development occurs rapidly. For example, they react positively and smile at their caregivers, show anxiety around other children. Preschool children start to explore independently, express affections openly, and perfect the temper tantrum. School children at age five and older thrive on friendship, recognize the power in a relationship, and reject the opinions of friends and parents.
Speech and Language
Children understand and use language, read, and communicate. Language and speech milestone helps to indicate whether a child is developing per expectations. From cooing, speaking in gibberish, putting words together, having a burst when talking, to forming complete sentences. A child in a speech and language environment learns how to talk faster ...