5 areas of child psychology ... and what parents should know for their child's uniform development.
Study of children's psychological processes, and specifically, how these processes differ from adults, how they develop from birth to the end of adolescence, and how and why they different. Psychology is called child psychology.
Child psychologists work with children and adolescents to diagnose and help solve problems that cause emotional or behavioral problems, such as learning disabilities or attention deficit disorders. , hyperactivity, anxiety and depression.
They also evaluated children with developmental delays, signs of autism spectrum disorders, and other problems affecting development.
Read more Child psychology: Child's psychological development stages
1. Development
Child psychology
Child development research is often divided into three broad areas: physical, cognitive and socio-emotional.
Physical development, which often takes place in a relatively stable, predictable sequence, refers to changes in the physical body and includes the development of certain skills, such as gross development. combination of muscles and harmonious coordination of muscles.
Cognitive or intellectual development, meanwhile, refers to the processes children use to gain knowledge and includes language, thinking, reasoning, and imagination. Because social and emotional development is so interrelated, these two regions are often grouped together.
Learning to relate to others is part of a child's social development, while emotional development includes emotional and emotional expression. Trust, fear, confidence, pride, friendship and humor are part of a person's social emotional development.
Although they can be broken down into more easily understood categories, the physical domains and perceptions of a child's social development are all closely linked. Developing in one part can drastically affect the development of the other.
For example, writing letters requires fine motor skills of hands, fingers, and language perception skills.
And, just as studies have created different areas of development, it also shows that development follows key patterns or principles. Understanding these principles will have a huge impact on the way we care for, treat and educate children today.
Vietnamese parents often attach importance to cognitive (knowledge) development, even seeing only this development as the most important and often forgetting or disregarding, ignoring physical development, child's motor skills and social development.
Therefore, creating an unbalanced position for the majority of Vietnamese children - lack of access to play, exercise, and participation in outdoor activities to develop socially and practice in when possible, very good theory!
2. Important development milestones
Developmental milestones are important for psychologists to measure a child's progress in a number of key developmental areas.
Basically, they act as checkpoints in child development to determine what the average child can do at a particular age.
Knowing the milestones for different ages helps the psychologist understand normal child's development and will provide supportive advice in identifying potential problems with delayed development. of children.
For example, a 12-month-old baby can usually stand and support his weight by holding something. Some children at this age can even walk. If a child reaches 18 months of age but is still unable to walk, it may indicate a problem that requires further investigation.
Young psychologists look at four types of milestones:
First, there are physical milestones, regarding the development of both gross and fine motor skills.
Second, there are cognitive or mental milestones, referring to the child's developmental ability to think, learn and solve problems.
Third, there are social and emotional milestones, relative to a child's ability to express emotions and react to social interactions.
And finally, there are communication and linguistic milestones, covering the child's verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
3. Behavior
All children can be mischievous, challenging and impulsive from time to time. Conflict between parents and children is also unavoidable in the parenting process.
The words "crisis" according to the ages from infancy to adolescence, to affirm the independence and develop of a child's own identity. These behaviors are a normal part of development.
5 areas of child psychology
However, some children have extremely challenging and challenging behaviors that exceed the standards for their age. In fact, behavioral disorders are the most common reason parents seek the help of child psychologists.
In some cases, these behavioral problems are temporary problems caused by most stressful situations, such as birth of a sibling, divorce, or death in the home.
Other cases involve a pattern of persistent hostile, aggressive, or disruptive behavior that is not appropriate for the child's age.
The most typical disruptive behavioral disorders include opposing challenge disorder (ODD), movement disorder (CD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These three behavioral disorders share some common symptoms, and can be exacerbated by emotional problems and mood disorders.
Child psychology involves finding all possible sources for these behavioral problems, including brain disorders, genetics, diet, family motivation and stress, and later treat it accordingly.
This is the part that Vietnamese parents often ignore and do not focus on guiding and teaching their children thoroughly in the problem of developing their children's behavior, so that when forming bad behavior habits, parents will run for help. Or find the cause again.
4. Emotions
Child psychology
Emotional development is about understanding what emotions are and expressing emotions, understanding how and why they happen, recognizing our own feelings and that of others, developing effective ways to manage reason them.
This complex process begins in its infancy and continues to mature. The first emotions that can be noticed in an infant include joy, anger, sadness, and fear.
Learning how to regulate emotions can be difficult for most children. This may be due to their special emotional temperament - some children simply find their emotions stronger and it is harder to calm down while others show them more easily. than.
Children with strong emotional responses tend to worry more quickly. It is the job of the young psychologist , then, to identify why the child is having difficulty expressing or adjusting his feelings and developing strategies to help him learn to accept his feelings. and understand the relationships between emotions and behavior.
5. Child's social development
Child psychology
Closely related to emotional development is social development. Simply put, social development is about the acquisition of values, knowledge and skills that enable children to relate to others effectively and contribute positively to family, school and community.
Although this process begins shortly after birth and continues to mature, childhood is an important stage for children's perception of the world around them and social development.
One of the first and foremost relationships a child experiences is with a parent or primary caregiver and the quality of this relationship has a significant effect on later social development.
In peer relationships, children learn to initiate and maintain social interactions with other children, acquire skills for conflict management, such as participation, compromise, and negotiation.
Play also involves coordination, sometimes more complicated than coordinating goals, action, and understanding. Through these experiences, children develop their friendships, which help them gain more security and support outside of the family's relationship, the love of their parents.
Factors that can contribute to the development of age-appropriate social skills include everything from quantity to quality of all the love and affection a child receives to his socioeconomic status. family.
Children who do not communicate properly have difficulty creating and maintaining satisfying relationships with others - a limitation many suffer into adulthood.
Areas that a psychologist will try to address when working with such children include restraining hostile or aggressive conflicts and, instead, learning to express themselves in likes socially compatible; engage in social constructive actions (such as helping, caring for, and sharing with others) and developing a healthy sense of self.
The compilation for the Asian parents Vietnam
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