Child Development Essay Research Paper The articles

Child Development Essay, Research Paper

The articles The Amazing Power of Baby Love and A Year to Cheer (written by Dr.

Stanley Greenspan and Emily Abedon, respectively) advocate intense coexistence

between the child and the caregiver. These articles (taken from parenting

magazine) are, in essence, guidelines to be used by the parents or caregiver to

ensure proper development of their child up to the second year. The article also

educates the reader that every child develops at their own pace, and there is no

exact time table that one can easily look at to see how well their child is

doing. Either way the two articles overly support deep mutual interaction

between both the child and the caregiver. Stanley Greenspan?s The Amazing

Power of Baby Love teaches that simple gestures and interactions help babies

develop intelligence, language and character. It states that at 2 to 4 months

(notice the allowance of time Greenspan gives) the child becomes more involved

with the caregiver. Notice the correlation between the authors statement and

Ainsworth?s Stages of Attachment (p463-465): Birth through 2 months-

indiscriminate social responsiveness- ?at first, babies do not focus their

attention exclusively on their mothers and will at times respond positively to

anyone.? 2 months through 7 months- discriminate social response- ?During

the second phase, infants become more interested in the caregiver and the other

familiar people and direct their social responses to them.? From birth to

approximately 2 months the infants is does not really who cares who handles

them. Afterwards, from 2 through seven months the child develops into the next

stage. Once the child is in the second stage of Ainsworth?s theory Greenspan

insinuates that the child is intelligent enough to distinguish differences

between people: ?your child seems to be more intensely involved with you. She

may look longingly into your eyes…or wiggle in anticipation when she hears you

approaching.? By 5 months the child the child should have their own ways of

expressing affection: -Responding to facial expressions -Initiating interactions

-Making sounds or moving in rhythm with motions of your own -Relaxing when being

held -Cooing when attention is given -Looking at face as if studying it -Looking

uneasy/ sad when you move away The last in the list above relate to stage three

of Ainsworth?s stage theory, focused attachment. The child suffers from

separation anxiety, or fear that the caregiver will leave and never return. This

action can relate to Piaget?s thoughts of object permanence, because the child

fears or believes that once an object is out of sight it is gone for good. By

definition: Object Permanence- The knowledge that objects have a permanent

existence that is independent of our perceptual contact with them. In Piaget?s

theory object permanence is a major achievement of the sensorimotor period.

Greenspan then begins to talk about the beginning of communication. He states

that children really do have a comprehension of language before they say their

first words. Gestures instead take place of verbal communication. At first

gestures are purposeful for requests and referential communication, later for

functioning as symbols to label objects, events and characteristics. When the

caregiver responds to the child the following interaction supposedly helps boost

the child?s self esteem. More importantly, the child learns about others

moods, and in turn learn the ability to react to them. By responding to a baby

they learn that their actions have an observable impact on their environment.

Two-way conversations also make the child more empathetic. Once they see that

they have an impact on the caregiver they see that person as an individual, some

one separate from themselves. In the end Greenspan emphasizes again that

children develop at their own pace. On top of that, they have their own response

to a stimulus. Just because the react a way that a caregiver was expecting does

not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong. When interacting with a child

one should study how the child reacts, and then do what the child seemed to

enjoy to ?bring the most pleasure,? that should not be too obvious. Finally