Infant Growth Stages

Infants go through a tremendous amount of growth from birth to time of their first birth year. Infants experience growth and changes in various aspects of their life and below I will be discussing three principal areas that changes and growth occur for most infants at 12 months old. These three areas are the cognitive, social or emotional and physical changes. Cognitive changes are associated with the development of the infant brain and their ability to process information/thinking. Most infants by the age of one develop sensory integration this meaning that they can understand their sense of smell, touch and motor skills. Many parents at this age can start noticing their infants trying to move on their own using crawling as a means of
i. Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky developed the scaffolding theory. Scaffolding is a temporary teaching process that involves providing guidance to a learner so they can understand a new concept. The parent/teacher can start reducing their level of support as the learner becomes more familiar with the concept. Its aim is that the parent/teacher's support at the beginning will end up helping the learner to complete a task without aid. (Chapter 9, p. 324) For example helping a child on their multiplication assignment, the parent/teacher will start helping or explaining to the child the simplest problem and start working their way up as the child improves, after several helps from the parent/teacher the child will begin to solve the questions themselves as they now understand the
Culturally an infants cry signifies many different reason e.g. hunger, danger, sickness etc. Based on this knowledge about infants I do not agree with Watson's approach. An infant could be hungry and the caregiver might have forgotten about feeding them the cry the infant will make will prompt the parent to remember to feed them as they cannot say they are hungry. Many parents rely on these cries infants make as its their language at that stage with codes that most caregivers can pick on. Upon hearing your infant cry a parents first instinct to go check up on them and this allows for these infants to feel loved and may later provide them with a certain comfort in knowing their caregivers will always come for them this can help infants form secure attachments. (chapter 7, p. 246-247) The drawbacks of Watson's approach are the fact that many infants form insecure bonds with their caregiver. Also, infants could be crying for a good reason and the caregiver will miss on it because they are trying not to comfort the child out of the cry. (chapter 7, p.249) The infant can stop crying after a while of getting used to the caregiver ignoring them and this on its own can make the infant withdrawn later in