Chapter 2

Physical and Motor Development of Children and Adolescents

Psychology accepts that no man came into this world with a fully developed physique and set of abilities. As man grows, he undergoes different stages of development whose outcome is continuously changing environment.

Several reasons have been why the study of child and adolescent psychology flourished. First, there is a belief that the key to the understanding of the adult personality will be found by studying the growth and development of a child.

 Second, many kinds of adult skills and behavior are acquired during childhood that if we are to study the acquisition of much of the adult behavior, we also have to familiarize ourselves with the nature if child growth and development.

 Lastly, there is the necessary to study the child and adolescent in his own right as an organism different from an adult.

NATURE OF GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Life as a constant change and growth is among he greatest and the most exciting. The body of the human adult which has developed from a single fertilized egg produces fantastic increase in number of individual cells.

Organic Growth consists of three: 1. Increase in size 2. Differentiation of structure 3. Alteration of form These 3 elements while comprising development still undergo a series of orderly and irreversible stages that every organism goes through from the beginning of its life to the end.

 As a baby grows, it also develops. The progressive differential growths first the head, then the trunk, then the legs has been designated by the term cephalocaudal (from head to foot). While the body is growing in length, it has also been growing in a proximodistal direction (from the central part to the peripheral).

GROWTH OF BODY ORGANS

The various organs of man can be grouped into four different growth rates: Positive Acceleration a very slow growth during childhood and then extremely rapid acceleration at puberty. Negative Acceleration with rapid growth during the first six years of life and then a sharp slowing down such as the brain and its parts

 Reversal Growth such as the lymphoid group which increases very rapidly at first, then actually decrease in size. The lymphoid groups are consisting of the thymus, lymph nodes and intestinal lymphoid masses. S-shaped Curve starts and ends with rapid growth periods separated by a long period of very little gain. This is the general type of growth.

 Measurements of all growth factors from degree of bone ossification to overall body proportions provide something a more than a simple description of the childs level of development at any given time. The concept of developmental age and the discovery of ways to determine it had added considerably to knowledge of the growth process.

SOME COMMON SKILLS IN THE EARLY CHILHOOD STAGE

*HAND SKILLS Self-feeding 8 months most babies can hold their bottles after the nipples have been placed in their mouths. 9 months they can put the bottle nipples in their mouths and take them out without help.

 12 months they can drink from a cup when they hold it with both hands, and several months later they can drink from a cup using one hand. 13 months babies begin to feed themselves with a spoon. A month or two later, they can spear food with a fork and carry it to their mouths with much spilling. 2 years old most babies can use spoons and forks without too much spilling.

 Self-dressing At the end of the first year, most babies can pull off their socks, shoes, caps and mittens. By end of the second year they will attempt to put on caps and mittens, and by the end of the babyhood they can pull off all clothes and put on a t-shirt or dress.

 Self-grooming Self-bathing is limited to mainly running a cloth or a sponge over the face and the body.

*PLAY SKILLS
Babies learn to jump from an elevated position usually by movements resembling walking. They learn to climb stairs by crawling and creeping. After they can walk alone, they go up and down steps in an upright position, placing one foot on a step and then drawing the other foot up after it.

PATTERNS AND MOTOR CONTROL

*Head Region Eye control Twelve hours after birth the optic nystagmus or the response of the eye to a succession of moving objects. Third or Fourth weeks ocular pursuit movements. Second or Third months horizontal eye movements. Third or Fourth months vertical eye movements. Several months later circular eye movements.

 Smiling First week reflex smiling, or smiling response to a tactual stimulus. Third to Fourth Months social smiling, or smiling in response to the smile of another person.

 Head Holding One Month in a prone position, babies can hold their heads erect. Five months lying on their backs. Four and Six Months held in a sitting position.

Trunk Region
Rolling. Two months babies can roll from side to back. Four months from back to side. Six months they can roll over completely.

 Sitting. Four months the baby can pull to a sitting position. Five months sit with support. Seven months sit without support momentarily. Nine months sit up without support for ten or more minutes.

Arm and Hand Region

Hands. Thumb opposition the working of the thumb in opposition to the fingers appears in grasping between here and four months and in picking up objects between eight and ten months.

 Arms. The baby can reach objects by six or seven months and can pick up a small object without random movements by one year.

 Leg Region Seven weeks shifting of the body by kicking. Six months hitching or moving in a sitting position. Eight and Ten months crawling and creeping. Eleven months babies walk on all fours

 Babies can can pull themselves to a standing position at about ten months, stand with support at eleven months, stand without support at one year, walk with support at eleven months or one year, and walk without support after fourteen months.

According to the Research

Studies have shown evidences that the development of sitting, standing, and walking is determined by growth changes and maturational development of the neural and muscular systems rather than by practice.

Late Childhood
*Physical Development Height the annual increase in height is 2 to 3 inches. The average 11 year old girl is 58 inches tall and the average boy of the same age is 57.3 tall. Weight more variable than height increase, ranging from 3 to 5 more pounds annually. The average 11 years old girl weighs 88.5 pounds, and the average boy of the same age weighs 85.5 pounds.

 Body Proportion the trunk elongates and become slimmer, the becomes longer, the chest abdomen flattens, the arms and legs lengthen and the hands and feet grow larger, but at a slow rate. Homeliness - the body disproportions, so pronounced during late childhood, are primarily responsible for the increase in homeliness at this time.

 Muscle-Fat-Ratio during late childhood, fat tissues develop more rapidly than muscle tissues which have a marked growth spurt beginning at puberty. Teeth by the onset of puberty, a child has 28 teeth of the 32 permanent teeth. The last 4, the wisdom teeth, erupt during adolescence.

*Late Childhood Skills (Hurlock, 1982)

Self-help skills older children should be able to eat, dress, bathe, and groom themselves with almost as much speed and adeptness as an adult. Social- help skills helping others, at home, they include making beds, dusting, and sweeping; at school, they include emptying wastebaskets and washing chalkboards; and in playing, they include in building tree house or lay out a baseball diamond.

 School skills the child develops the skills needed in writing, drawing, painting, clay modeling, dancing crayoning, sewing, cooking and woodworking. Play skill the older child learn skills as throwing and catching balls, riding a bicycle, skating and swimming in connection with play. Handedness by the time they reach late childhood, most children are so predominantly right- or left-handed that changing handedness is far from easy.

 Many left-handed children become ambidextrous during the late childhood in that they use both hands, though there is a tendency to favor the left hand.

THE ADOLESCENCE
*Physical Development At puberty, a considerable alteration in growth rate occurs. It is at the beginning of the adolescence, the years of greatest growth that developmental differences between girls and boys become most evidence. Girls generally reach puberty ahead of boys.

 Height and Weight The average boy grows approximately 8 inches taller and adds 45 pounds to his weight; at its peak, about 14 years of age, he is growing at the rate of four inches a year. Girls gain about 6 and a quarter inches in height and 35 pounds in weight during the spurt.

 Muscular and Skeletal Dimensions The spurt of muscle width reach a peak velocity of growth in boys greater than that reached by girls. Simultaneously with the spurt, there is a loss of fat.

 Facial Contour The contours of the face which have been altering gradually throughout childhood, show particularly marked changes. Strength in both sexes increases, although the increase is proportionately much greater in boys than girls.

DIFFERENCE IN GROWTH RATE

Growth may continue although slowly, for many years in adolescence though imperceptibly. BOYS 98% of Final height Age of 17 3/4 GIRLS Age of 16 1/2

 These statistical and descriptive summaries of the adolescent spurt, oversimplify what is in fact a rather a complicated process.

 The child who has ahead in a physical development at an early age of his life is likely to remain ahead of his contemporaries throughout the growing years despite temporary setbacks. But not so with the child who develops slowly and late. Though he may eventually grow taller than the child who matures early, he may meanwhile be made miserable in a number of ways.

DISADVATAGE OF LATE GROWTH RATE

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