There are five main principles of development, * Neonate this is birth to one month * Infancy this is one month to one year * Early years this is one year to five years * Middle childhood this is five years to twelve years * Adolescence this is twelve years to sixteen years
Children’s development is holistic this means that each stage is interlinked and dependant on the other so that the child can develop properly and reach their full potential. For example, for a child to learn to walk he/she first needs to learn to hold their head up then learn to sit aided then unaided, crawl, stand holding onto things then walk, each of these stages are aided by social development with primary and secondary relationships with interaction from adults with praise and encouragement playing a big part, physical development with the child developing their gross and fine motor skills, intellectual development in early years involves cognitive development, recognising things and prediction. Communication and language development is also linked with emotional development the child has to listen to the parent/adult and copy what they see around them. The child can sometimes be seen as a collection of different pieces which can be helpful
When having to look closely at an individual area of development to check on progress of the child as it reaches particular milestones and to see if the child may need help or guidance reaching them and to define any underlying problems that may have otherwise been missed. The combined aspects of a child’s development along with feeling’s and relationships are all holistic. The social development for a child consists of primary (mother and father) and