Children and Young Person Development

TDA 2.1: Child and young person development

From birth through adulthood children continually grow, develop, and learn.

A child's development can be measured through social, emotional, intellectual, physical and language developmental milestone.

All children and young people follow a similar pattern of development so the order in which each child advances from one milestone to the next will be roughly the same. However, each child will develop at a different rate and their development may no progress evenly across all areas.

Communication and intellectual

-   Developing creative and imaginative skills
-   Using skills in different ways
-   Using language to explain reasoning
-   Problem solving
-   Decision making


Social, emotional and behavioural

-   Taking turns
-   Co-operating with others
-   Developing social skills
-   Developing self-esteem and self-expression
-   Learning about the feelings of others


Areas of development


Physical
-   Fine motor skills (writing, threading, painting and drawing)
-   Gross motor skills (running, jumping, hopping, skipping, balance
-   General coordination
-   Hand-eye coordination

The pattern of physical development

A child's physical development follows a pattern:

  simple   complex

  standing before walking
  walking before skipping or hopping


from head   toe

  physical control and coordination begins with the child's head and works down the   body

from inner   outer

  gross motor skills to fine motor skills

from general   specific

  general responses to specific ones.


Physical development

This is an important area of children's overall development and one which can often be assumed will take place automatically as they grow and mature. Although children do develop many skills naturally as they get older, it is imperative that they have the opportunity to develop them in a variety of ways, and they will need support in order to do this. They...