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Read this article to learn about Physical Growth and Development of Child during First Year. After reading this article you will learn about: 1. Introduction to Physical Growth and Development of Child 2. Response Capabilities in Child during First Year 3. Motor Development 4. Manipulation 5. Development Trends 6. Speech Development 7. Observations 8. Environment and Language.
Contents:
- Introduction to Physical Growth and Development of Child
- Response Capabilities in Child during First Year
- Motor Development in Child during the First Year
- Manipulation in Child during the First Year
- Development Trends in Child during the First Year
- Speech Development in Child during the First Year
- Observations in Child during the First Year
- Environment and Language in Child during the First Year
1. Introduction to Physical Growth and Development of Child:
The baby’s leaving the womb of its mother, and its delivery into the wide open world, is a tremendous change into the environment of it. The neonate has to make some immediate adaptations; previously, food was readily got entered into its body, now it has to have oral feeding—a new learning which has to be made immediately after birth.
The neonate has to digest its food, eliminate and excrete—all this involves many systems of the body, and the same rapidly develop for a proper functioning of them. The physical growth of the child also happens to be very rapid during this period; for the development of physical functioning, the growth of the body is essential.
The child who at the time of birth was only 20 inches in length, and 6 to 8 pounds in weight, rapidly gains in both; in six months time, its weight becomes double, and in a year, three times.
Throughout the first year, the body growth remains very rapid. Physical development in all respects also happens to be rapid. Many new motor functions are initiated, and they develop, sometimes marvelously during this period (Fig. 4.1).
A number of biological needs arise after birth. So, the body grows and develops accordingly. After birth, the number of environmental stimuli impinging on the infant and affecting his status is multiplied several times.
Passing from a parasitic to a position of some independence, some of his needs to be met partially by himself….. Before we go into the details of physical growth and development, it seems to be proper, to look into the fact of general congenital differences among children, at birth.
2. Response Capabilities in Child during First Year:
We observe that even the newly born infant can make many complex sensory-motor responses to the various stimuli, and with the increase in size of the body and development of the central nervous system, and other biological changes, the capability of the child to respond more promptly, more strongly and skillfully, increases. The infant makes sucking movements when their lips or cheeks are stimulated.
The neonate contracts its pupils in response to bright lights or flashes though it had no such experience prenatally. The reflex actions are unlearned; but, actions like sucking a bottle are learned.
All the reflex actions have survival values—pupillary movements, swallowing, opening and closing of eyes, crying, rejecting food, coughing, vomiting, turning away the face in moments of irritation, and assuming resting and sleeping positions when the position is irritating— are such responses.
These unlearned movements help the child in making adjustments to his new environment; in keeping himself healthy and protecting from deleterious effects.
Some reflex actions are localised, in which only a part of some organ of the body is involved. The child flexes its hand when it is pricked or slapped. If there is a pressure on finger or palm, the child closes the hand tightly—this is grasp reflex. At birth, the grasp reflex is very strong but weakens after a few weeks.
The big toe extends and the other fingers of the foot fan out if the foot is stroked; technically this is called Babinski reflex. When the child changes the position of its body, he needs to balance his head accordingly—this is head balancing reflex.
The penis of the male child becomes erect testes are raised if there is stimulation in the interior of the thigh. These are a few examples of the localised reflex actions/ responses, which have immense biological significance for the survival of the organism.
3. Motor Development in Child during the First Year:
As the child continues to grow in age, a lot of new motor abilities are added. The child rapidly gains in size and weight; the muscles grow not only in size but in strength also, and so do the bones. The central nervous system grows marvelously, and, its abilities to perform actions goes on increasing till it can perform very complex actions demanding great skills and mental functioning, or fine physical-mental co-ordination.
Some motor skills seem to develop automatically as a result of maturity, but in their development, too, the role of practice happens to be quite significant, [see Tables 4.2 and 4.3]. Gesell, Amatruda and McGiow did classic work in this field; those who are interested in all the minute details regarding the development of the vast number of motor abilities, may consult the same; here, a few of them are being dealt with in brief.
4. Manipulation in Child during First Year:
Manipulative ability develops through a series of stages as does the locomotive skills. The infant first only looks at an object. If the object moves about, the infant follows it with his eyes but still cannot reach to it. Then, the infant stretches his arms in the general direction of the object, makes slow, awkward and angular reaching movements involving mainly shoulder and elbow action.
It is by 20 weeks of age that the child may reach to the object. The children, who are older, have more direct approach towards the object. Now, in the manipulation, that is, in taking hold of the object, the wrist and the hand participate.
With the development of neuromuscular-skeletal systems and with practice in successive steps, the number of superfluous steps decreases and the infant has a direct access to the object of its attraction. It is by 9 months of age that the infant can, thus, reach directly to the object and can have an effective grasp.
Halversion, HM through a systematic study of prehension in infants, made some important conclusions he used cinema records for the purpose.
Illingworth traced the development of the manipulative skill of the hand as follows:
i. 40 weeks: Finger-Thumb apposition; can pick-up pellet between finger and thumb.
ii. 44 weeks: Places one block after another into a box.
iii. 48 weeks: Gives blocks to the mother.
iv. 52 weeks: Mouthing nearly stopped. Begins throwing objects on the floor.
v. 1 year: Mature grasp of cube; feeding oneself with spoon and a cup.
My own granddaughter Shivangi left mouthing when she was about 10 months old, and also, started pointing with her fingers, catching them by moving the thumb opposite to fingers.
5. Development Trends in Child during First Year:
It is in the nature of the organism to develop. Development is essential for its survival, for enabling it to perform functions which are beneficial for a wholesome life. In spite of there being individual differences in the degree and timings of developments, the trends of development are common.
(i) Cephalocaudal:
Developments starts, first from head, and then develop the organs, which are below the head, towards feet; the trend is from head to foot. It is called Cephalocaudal. The foetus first starts moving its head; after birth also, it is head which the neonate first starts manipulating.
Then develops visual fixation. Eye-hand coordination follows it. And, it is only lastly that the child can manipulate its feet in standing and walking. Thus, the whole trend of development of locomotion and manipulation moves from head to foot.
(ii) Proximodistal:
The development of motor responses also has the trend of “from the entire to periphery”; this trend is called Proximodistal. It is the heart and lungs which become functional first in case of an embryo; the organ which are outside or lying on the periphery of the body, develop their operational capacity later on.
When the child develops the capacity to take hold of an object, the shoulders and the elbows first develop the manipulative skill, and the wrists and the hands do this later on. The upper arm and the upper leg, come under control first, and the lower arm and the lower leg later on.
(iii) From mass to specific:
In the beginning, when the infant is attracted towards an object, and is inclined to take hold of it, his entire body becomes locomotive. Gradually, the child develops the capacity to take hold of the object, reducing the involvement of the number of limbs and their parts; and lastly, only that part of his arm is involved which is directly related to the function.
Thus, the reduction of involvement of parts of the body, has the trend of—from larger to smaller muscles.
“The gross awkward movements of early grasping are replaced by more precise, refined movements of the thumb and forefinger. Locomotion is initially accompanied by excess bodily movements, but these decrease gradually until the appropriate muscles and limbs are involved.”
6. Speech Development in Child during First Year:
Phonemes are the fundamental elements of a language. They include the basic vowels and consonants; the sounds (p) and (b) are the examples of phonemes. In the beginning, the child automatically produces many phonemes in his babblings.
Refining in their articulation occurs as learning takes place. “The infant’s earliest sounds are primarily reflex ones, associated with automatic responses, such as, breathing, swallowing and hiccoughing”—still the child cannot express any particular need. A one- month-old infant automatically makes primitive sounds which are the consequences of the reflex functioning of his respiratory and visual systems.
The average baby under 2 months of age has 7 phonemes in its sound repertoire; at 6 months, 12; at a year, 18. (An adult American has 35 phonemes in his speech). This shows that the expansion of the infant’s speech catalogue happens to be very rapid.
The infant produces most of the vowel elements during the second quarter of the first year. He produces half of the consonants also during this period. Throughout the first year, the number of vowels produced, exceeds the number of consonants that the child uses, during this period the ratio being 5:1 at the beginning. This discrepancy goes on reducing until after first year.
About 90 per cent of the earliest consonant sounds are glottals. By the end of the first year, these sounds constitute only about 30 per cent of the total consonants that the child produces. The development of sound patterns, has relationship with maturity, with changes in neuromuscular systems, and, with other anatomical changes, which together constitute the physical development of the child.
There are sounds, in the production of which, oral cavity has to assume a particular shape; if the child is in a sitting posture, the production of the same is facilitated. The pattern of speech development is the same in all races and nationalities.
“A child cannot learn verbal responses until he is old enough and mature enough to learn them. Maturation sets the pace. With a normal environment, the child’s speech awaits a step-by-step unfolding of the growing process. Consequently, we find a succession of developmental stages that are quite similar in all children.
By manipulating the environment of the child, we can modify or delay his language development………….” (Miller, GA: Language and Communication).
Speech is a complex function as it involves lungs, wind pipe, larynx, roof of the mouth, tongue, jaws and lips. These are the physical parts involved in the process; besides these, it is very much related to sensation and perception, later, to conception. Here, we are to see how much of speech development occurs during the first year.
Initially, the child has no language; he receives a lot of speech sounds at the auditory threshold. The same being without any past references, convey no meaning whatsoever. In due course of time, some of the speech sounds become sensible because of contextual/past references. The child catches language word-by-word through the context that the word is used in.
Repeated use of the same word, in the same context, enables the child to know what it conveys. In this way, the speech sounds which were only experiences at the auditory threshold in the beginning, start having some meaning for the child.
The second stage in the development begins when the child attempts using the perceived vocabulary in his own way through babbling. The elders improve his expression even when they imitate and repeat his expression. The process goes on through listening and imitating the elders.
7. Observations in Child during First Year:
We had been observing the development of the vocalization of my 10 months old granddaughter, Shivangi. First, she produced monosyllabic sounds with reduplication “Ma-Ma” (Mother); and, then bi-syllabic ones. So far as we could mark, the first sounds produced were glottal—”Ga”; “Ka”; followed by bi-libial—”Pa-Pa”; “Ba-Ba” (Father) and dental sounds, such as “Da-Da” (Grandfather).
Shivangi started with bi-syllabic nouns—”Pa-Pa”; “Da-Da” etc. I heard her utter the verb “De-De” (give-give) for the first time when she was to be 11 months old after 14 days. About that same time, she also uttered the word—'”Aa-ja” (come on); a verb, a word of two syllables.
It was the same age when she started walking—going forward two or three steps. By the time she was only a little less than one year, she gave the impression of uttering the word “Neha”—the name of her aunt who she was very much fond of. Earlier, she had started calling her uncle, “Cha-Cha”.
In response to my question “Will you eat Pauha (an eatable made of rice)”?, she, for the first time nodded along with uttering the sound “Hmu”—she was about 14 months old then.
She was rapidly improving the inventory of her vocabulary. What I could mark was that, first adjective she added to her vocabulary, was “Gande” (bad). I felt that impact of elder siblings in the development of language, was very important. Shivangi’s elder sister, Ishita would often use the word “Gande” when she was displeased with someone.
I heard Shivangi utter this for the first time when she was about 14 months old.
A lot of research is still required to say with certainty as to what is the exact order of development in language. So, as far as the use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and others is concerned, the impression that I have got is, that the child first starts uttering nouns or interjections, then verbs and after that adjectives and others.
8. Environment and Language Development in Child during First Year:
Observations led the researches to conclude that the more motivating an environment is, more vocally expressive the child will grow.
In a family, where the parents and elder siblings spend adequate time fondling the infant, talking and smiling to him, and encouraging him with a smile or a kiss or a pat when the child attempts at his own vocalization—both the frequency of vocalization and the number and variety of sounds, happen to be greater than in case of a child where the parents are too busy to spare adequate time to their child and, the environment is not motivating enough.
A family of working class illiterate parents, generally, can provide less motivating environment for the child to develop his language than does a family of middle or upper class parents who are well educated too.
“It has also been found that rewarding the 7 months old child’s utterances by smiling and touching his abdomen after each sound leads to an increase in the amount of infant vocalization.” (Reingold, Harriet, Gewirtz, J and Ross H. Social Conditioning of Vocalizations in the Infant).
Individual differences are found here, too, some children start vocalization earlier than others; in some cases development of language happens to be more rapid than in others.
As has been mentioned above, the environment of the child and the behaviour of the parents and elder siblings of the family, are two important factors bearing upon the development of language of the children. It is through the earliest vocalizations or the absence of the same that the fact whether a child is dumb or deaf, is revealed.
Shirley recorded that the first distinct phoneme was uttered at the median age of 8 weeks. He also found that the median age, by which a child appeared to be attempting something like talking, was 25 weeks; singing tones appeared at the mean age of 32 weeks, and expressive sounds at 38 weeks.
If a child is not congenitally retarded, he improves his expression through experience or imitation. Imitation generally begins by the time the child is about 9 months old. Earlier he has, in general, only such reflex expressions which are results of the automatic functions of the respiratory system and the vocal apparatus.
At the beginning stage, the child imitates only those sounds, for refinement and proper articulation, which have been constituting his babblings so far. As a result of maturation, new combinations of sounds develop.
From our general impression, we can say that a child, generally, utters his first meaningful word during the last quarter of his first year. During this period, the child, generally, utters monosyllabic words which he would, usually reduplicate—”bye-bye”; “ma-ma”; “da-da”; and so on.
The first words that the child speaks would be nouns or interjections, but they would do the function of a whole sentence. When the child says “mamma”, he means, “where is the mother?” This single word can convey other meanings also, depending upon the situation that the word is used in, or upon the accompanying behaviour of the child.
Some investigations have reported that if a child, first, engages himself in mastering the skill of walking, it would slow down the pace of his linguistic development…………….. speech development is held in abeyance at the time when motor progress is most rapid.
Till the end of the first year, the child’s volume of comprehension happens to be bigger by far, than the volume of his expression. The number of words that the child has potentiality to say, far exceeds the number of words that he actually utters. The frequency and the quality of a young child’s language products, much depend upon the desire of the child to speak, and, the reward that he receives for his language products.