Sudden Infant Growth Essay

Newborns are helpless when brought to life. They depend on the mother for everything until they grow and become independent. Newborns weight an average on 7 pounds and are about 20 inches long and grow at a rapid speed over the first years of their lives. There are four principles of growth. The cephalocaudal principle, the proximodistal principle, the principle of hierarchical integration, and the principle of the independence of systems. The cephalocaudal principle states that growth follows a pattern that begins with the head and upper body parts and then proceeds down to the rest of the body. The proximodistal principle also describes the direction of development. This principle states that development proceeds from the center of the body outward. The principle of hierarchical integration states that simple skills develop separately and independently and later integrate into complex skills. finally,
the principle of the independence of systems suggests that different body systems grow at different rates. The nervous system is composed of the brain and nerves that extend the body. Neurons are the basic cells of the nervous system. Babies are born with more neurons than needed and the unnecessary neurons are removed by synaptic pruning. Some nerves travel to the Cerebral cortex, the upper layer of the brain responsible for higher order thought processes. New born infants sleep 16 – 20 hours a day.
But rather than sleeping those 16 hours in a row infants wake up every 2-3 hours, causing the parents to be awake most of the night if not all. Sleep helps infants adapt to the new environment since they are used to being in an environment filled with fluids and darkness. A small percentage of infants die in their sleep for no apparent reason, simply ceasing to breathe. This is known as sudden infant death syndrome. At first, infants are either given bottle formula or being breast feed. Both ways they are getting the necessary nutrients in their bodies. Solid foods are introduced to the infants’ diet gradually. Infants understand the world around them through sensation and perception. They can only see with accuracy up to 20 feet until 20/20 vision is developed. Infants have very good auditory perception since that has been developing from before they are born. They also develop sense of smell and taste, as well as sensitivity to pain and touch. Touch is one of the most highly developed systems in a
newborn. Psychologist Jean Piaget developed an approach to cognitive learning. Piaget believed that the basic building blocks of the way we understand the world are mental structured called schemes, organized patterns of functioning that adapt and change with mental development. After scheme, there is assimilation, the process by which people understand an experience in terms of their way of thinking. Finally, accommodation takes place when we change our existing way of thinking or understand in response to encounters with new information and events. Infants have a lot of anxiety. This anxiety is caused by a variety of reasons. One of these reason is object permanence. Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed, seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way. By the end of the first year, infants develop both stranger and separation anxiety. Stranger anxiety is a form of distress that children experience when exposed to people unfamiliar to them. Separation anxiety occurs when you leave and the child thinks you will never come back or they will never see you again. This occurs since infants have not fully developed the understanding that you will back, which leaves them to think they will never see you again.