From Childhood to Adolescence: A Guide on Childhood Development for Teachers and Parents

However we try to explain the importance of understanding the most fundamental milestones in early childhood development, it would still be an understatement of the actual implications and benefits that follow from it. The converging nature of the topic provides a strong framework when preparing the educational profile for children in their most proliferative years. 

Knowing what’s going on behind the curtains and how specific experiences shape biological development, to a point, enables teachers and parents to understand the impact of their practices. This last point is a prerequisite for optimizing the learning environment, choosing the right learning experiences, and building thriving interactions with the child. 

If you ever wanted to find out more about this topic, keep reading! In this article, we’ll describe the biological mechanisms underlying the psychological and behavioral stepping stones that turn a child into a bold and adventurous teenager, as well as the educational practices that support this process.

Brief Overview: From Childhood Development to Adolescence

Before we start, we thought it would be beneficial to briefly summarize all the different aspects of childhood developmental stages in a visual graph that gives clarity to the rest of the article. 

Without going into the details, here’s everything that we’ll talk about in this article:

(all the mentioned phenomena will be discussed in detail further in the article)

Period	Stage	Years	Cognitive Stage	Characteristics
Infancy	Infancy	0 – 1	Sensorimotor Trust vs. Mistrust	Intentional vocalization Object permanence
Early Childhood	Toddler	1 – 3	Autonomy vs. Shame	Holophrastic speech Language Motor Skills
Middle Childhood	Preschool	3 – 6	Preoperational Initiative vs. Guilt	Pretend play Egocentrism
Late Childhood	School Age	6 – 12	Concrete Operations Industry vs. Inferiority	Logical thinking Math skills Vocabulary
Early Adolescence	Puberty	11 – 14	Formal Operations Identity vs Confusion	Abstract Reasoning Independence

Disclaimer: First, bear in mind that there are many different ways of classifying the stages based on different theories, but the characteristics and milestones are consistent. Second, there are three stages to adolescence, but since our main topic is early childhood development to adolescence, we only included the onset of adolescence. And, finally, there’s great variability regarding the biological age when children enter puberty, which is why the overlap is not a mistake. 

Biological Considerations in Early Childhood Development

Even though there’s so much more to be learned, research advancements in developmental cognitive neuroscience provide us with many details on how the brain develops in interaction with the environment. We grouped the major insights into four main postulates: 

1. There’s a Critical Period for Specific Skills

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change under the influence of the environment. It’s the underlying mechanism that enables learning and memory. So, how does this fit into the whole idea of “critical periods?”

Well, a “critical period” is a phase during which the connections and cell-activity in the brain are most “plastic” or receptive to the influence of specific kinds of experiences. To put it in simpler terms, a “critical period” is the time period when the child has the best chances of learning something. 

There are two implications that follow from this. First, the child must be exposed to certain types of experiences to be able to acquire specific skills. A good example would be the ability to speak. If a child is not exposed to people’s voices, they’ll never learn to speak. Second, it implies that this ability is limited. While the research on humans is very limited when it comes to brain development, most researchers would agree that some skills can’t be learned after this “critical period” or “window” is closed. 

This might have something to do with the pruning process – a mechanism in the brain where neuronal cells that aren’t used are being destroyed. It’s still not clear how the nitty-gritty details work, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind when studying early childhood development.

2. There’s a Complex Interplay Between Genetics and Environment

The nature vs nurture issue is one of the most intense historical debates in the field of human development. In the past, people believed that behavior or character is determined by genetic factors, until John B. Watson in the 1920s popularized his theory that behavior is 100% determined by environmental factors. 

Ever since, researchers have been trying to find out what plays a more dominant role – genetics or environment. The fact that there hasn’t been any progress in resolving this dilemma, gave researchers another insight. The question was poorly framed as it doesn’t reflect the actual nature of human development. 

Today, the scientific consensus is that both genetics and the environment play a crucial role. In the most simplistic form, this would mean that genetics set the starting point, and they also might make it harder or easier for someone to learn something (how resilient or susceptible they are to something). On the other hand, environmental factors influence what’s going to be learned. This is crucial for parents and teachers because it gives an idea of how, when, and to what extent they should modulate their educational demands.

3. Traumatic Experience and Stress Alter Brain Development

As adults, the one thing we constantly hear is just how bad stress is. But, do you have an idea of what stress and traumatic experiences do on a biological level? 

Two authors, Carrion and Wong, wanted to find out, too. They wanted to understand the implications of early trauma on brain development and learning, so they made a study and published the results in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Their findings confirmed that children with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have higher levels of cortisol, which decreases the volume of the hippocampus – without which learning and memory are not possible. 

This is just one of many studies that have come to the same conclusion – stress and traumatic experiences have important short- and long-term effects on the brain’s development. Not only is stress related to cognitive development, but it can also make the child vulnerable to physical diseases.

With this in mind, teachers and parents should work together to make sure their children are not in a stressful situation for prolonged periods of time. 

4. Understanding Resilience Is Crucial for Optimal Development

However, stressful events are part of life, which means the only way to fully protect children is to understand the concept of resilience and see whether or how it can be developed. 

Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or stressful events. In psychology, a resilient person is also one who is able to mentally or emotionally cope with a stressful situation. According to the American Psychological Association, teachers and parents can teach children to be more resilient by providing emotional support, modeling positive behaviors, and encouraging a positive mindset. 

What To Expect: Important Milestones From Childhood To Adolescence

In the table above, we briefly summarized the main events that shape different stages of childhood development. In this paragraph, we’ll try to explain these developmental phenomena and give you an idea of what educational practices should focus on for optimizing growth and realizing the child’s potential. 

Early Childhood: Infants and Toddlers

The first year of the child’s life is developmentally a distinct stage for a number of reasons. However, when it comes to learning and education, it is not a very active stage, which is why we’re going to discuss it as part of early childhood development. So, what happens in the first three to four years of life? 

Intentional Vocalization

In the first couple of months of life, the child is going to start vocalizing intentionally and in response to the people around them. This is different from reflectional crying when the baby is hungry or uncomfortable. They’ll try to repeat sounds that are interesting to them, turning their attention toward different sounds or movements.

Educational Focus

It’s important for parents to engage the children in this gurgling, musical vocalization as this is going to stimulate their curiosity and interest in the environment. Also, this intentional vocalization is the very first rudimentary form of communication between the parents and the child. 

Object Permanence

Object permanence is a developmental phenomenon that develops somewhere before infants turn one year. It’s a fundamental concept that explains the ability to understand that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, heard, or otherwise sensed.

Object permanence is incredibly important as it represents the foundation of all future social and mental abilities. In fact, researchers use object permanence as one of the earliest methods to assess the functionality and capacity of working memory.

As a parent, you can easily observe the child’s behavior to find out whether they have object permanence or test it with a very simple task. While the child is playing, cover their favorite toy with a blanket so they can’t see it anymore. If the child researches to grab the toy or removes the blanket to get it, it means they have started to develop object permanence. If they seem confused, like “where did my toy disappear?” it might indicate that they still haven’t developed this ability. 

Keep in mind that researchers still debate when exactly object permanence develops, so don’t take it as a bad sign if your child still hasn’t reached this stage. 

Holophrastic speech

As the child becomes a curious toddler that constantly inspects its environment, they’ll also begin using their first words or sounds. This is expected somewhere around 12 to 14 months of age, although there are great individual differences. Motor development can also play a role and sometimes delay the onset of speaking, but we’ll elaborate on this when talking about motor development.

The concept of holophrastic speech describes the nature of language development at the very beginning. It’s a phenomenon where they use one word to communicate a bigger message or convey their thoughts. For example, if they’re hungry, they won’t say “I’m hungry” but they might say “food.” In this stage of their development, the word “food” is a mental representation of more complex thought. 

Educational Focus

This is the first step to language acquisition and parents or kindergarten teachers should always try to encourage the child to make connections with more words for specific situations. A good example of this would be to place your child’s toy somewhere where they can’t reach it. When they ask for it, encourage them to say “Give me the toy” or “Toy, give!” instead of simply saying “toy”. Always narrate your every movement and action, so they can make the connection between an action and the meaning of the specific words.  

Language Development

From the one-word stage, children quickly progress, first toward a telegraphic stage, and finally a multi-word stage. The telegraphic stage usually appears in the third year and it’s characterized by specific sentence-structures that have lexical rather than functional or grammatical morphemes. Vocabulary development also flourishes in this stage. According to Frensons’ study (which became a standard in developmental studies) in 1993, children achieve a vocabulary milestone of around 50 words at around 17 months old. After this, vocabulary suddenly proliferates and children acquire around 310 words at 24 months old. 

Educational focus

At around two years of age, children acquire many new words, which means this is a great time to read books, explore different environmental settings, narrate every action so the child can listen to different words. The range of how many words can children acquire during this period is somewhere between 41 and 668 words. This is a striking example of the environmental influence on children’s abilities. 

In the third year of life and beyond, it’s also estimated that children can acquire on average 10 words per day before they formally start school. 

Motor Development

Every baby reaches the walking milestone at a different time, but developmental guidelines usually set the expectations between 9 and 15 months old.  As you can see, more or less this coincides with language development. This is because the sensory and motor cortices in the brain are the first ones to fully develop. However, sometimes a faster or more dominant motor development can overshadow the language development and another way around. This is why some children first start speaking and then walking, and vice versa. It’s good to keep this in mind and manage the expectation because children can’t do everything all at once. 

Motor development in early childhood is classified as “gross” vs “fine” motor development later in life. This means that it follows a specific pattern. Children first learn to use large body movements and slowly progress toward finer movement actions. Young children grab the spoon with the whole hand, hold a color-pencil stiffly in the palm without using their wrists or fingers to make finger movements, etc. 

The most important thing about this rule is that there’s no skipping a step. Without first learning to control their body, their trunk, their legs, and arms, kids can’t learn to make fine movements. 

Educational focus 

During early motor development, allow children to inspect the environment on their own. Provide a large space where they can move. Leave the toys further away, so they need to move to get to them. Don’t hand children things as soon as they ask for them, but leave them to try and get these things on their own. It might seem like they’re struggling, but it’s a sweet struggle, as the brain is learning what movement is effective, what movement is not, and how to fix it so they can be better next time. 

Middle Childhood

Middle childhood is commonly known as the “preschool” period from around 3 to 6 years old. This is the time where children’s cognitive development is in the so-called “concrete operational” stage. They turn their attention toward other people and children, and engage in true social interactions and social rules. There are two major phenomena that shape middle childhood.

Pretend play

During this time, children spend most of their time playing, through which they actually learn. Just like the name suggests, this is a type of play where children pretend they’re someone else they’ve seen on TV or someone from their environment. The fact that they have a specific mental representation of a social role (what it means or looks like to be a “mother,” “teacher,” or “doctor”) speaks volumes of their mental capacity and cognitive development. 

For these reasons, pretend play, also known as dramatic play, is one of the most studied phenomena in early childhood development and we have a whole article dedicated to it. Check out our “How Dramatic Play Supports Children’s Development” article to get the full details, as there’s no way we do justice to it in this small paragraph. 

Egocentrism

Another very characteristic feature of preschool children’s behavior is egocentrism. This means that children can’t view the situation from another person’s point of view. This is why they project their own feelings to other people, and they judge the situation based on how they feel. 

Examples of egocentrism are when a child says that you don’t like a particular food just because they for themselves don’t like it, or when they don’t feel guilty for doing something just because it felt good. In our article “How to Promote Moral Development in Children + 3 Activities”, we talk about this in length where we also give specific educational activities for outgrowing egocentrism, so check it out. 

Late Childhood

Late childhood is the period where children begin formal education and there are several reasons why that is. First, children’s cognitive development reaches a stage where it allows them to grasp more complex operations based on logic. Also, they learn to read fluently and use language to absorb knowledge. A very important characteristic is that children stop being so dependent on their care-givers and start learning on their own. It’s cognitive independence, which precedes the emotional or more profound independence that characterizes adolescence.  

Logical Thinking

Logical reasoning is a prerequisite for all problem-solving skills that largely determine academic and professional success. This is why in this stage, it is important for teachers and parents to focus the educational practices on teaching skills rather than content. Kids should learn how to read, study, deduce, make conclusions, plan, organize, and many other executive-function operations. This approach will improve the children’s level of cognitive activity and capacity to solve intellectual problems.

Mathematical Operations

Another vital aspect for acquiring problem-solving skills is learning basic mathematical operations. During this period, kids should feel comfortable and confident to perform fundamental mathematical operations, like arithmetics, and apply them in real-life. 

Early Adolescence 

Finally, the last developmental stage that we’re going to explore today is the first stage of adolescence, beginning with puberty and ending with high-school (around 14 years old). However, some children begin puberty a lot younger than others, which is why this stage is hard to be classified based on biological age, although it’s also highly dependent on the social experiences that kids go through together as a generation. This is why puberty is subjectively experienced very differently in all kids. 

Puberty

Puberty is the biological change that characterizes the onset of adolescence. It’s the time of life when the child’s body undergoes dramatic changes, which can be very stressful and intimidating. It’s important for parents and teachers to maintain a supportive relationship with kids and be open regarding these sensitive topics. Not knowing, or not fully understanding what’s going on with them, can have a very negative effect on the child’s cognitive, emotional, and physical development. 

Abstract Reasoning

When it comes to education, this is a stage where kids begin to understand the more abstract meaning of words and appreciate literature styles and figures of speech that lets them express themselves in a richer way. Our article “How to Teach Kids Figurative Language” and our worksheets pack might be of great use when trying to motivate early adolescents into reading more, so they can develop their abstract reasoning. 

Before You Leave

The purpose of this article is to promote emotional maturity and excellence in early childhood education. By providing research-backed knowledge and practices about the different milestones and developmental pathways of young children, teachers and parents can design the curriculum and make refinements to better suit the needs of the child. As we’ve seen, biological age is not a good indicator of cognitive and emotional development without taking into consideration the other factors. However, looking at everything together, you’ll be able to make smarter decisions that benefit the child. 

While designing the curriculum or lesson plans, don’t forget to hop on our website and browse through our massive collection of worksheets and study plans. They’re easily adjustable to fit different grade-levels, which will be a nice support for your lecture. Plus, they’ll save you a lot of time. 
Finally, if you liked this article, don’t forget to support us by signing up for our newsletter and regularly visiting our blog, where we’ll continue to share insightful and meaningful consent for both teachers and parents.