Understanding Physical Development in the Early Years

Linking bodies and minds

Anne O'Connor, Anna Daly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317276098
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Understanding Physical Development in the Early Years provides an accessible introduction to the current research and thinking in this area alongside descriptions of everyday practice. It explores the kinds of activities and experiences that promote physical development and offers practical guidance on how these can be facilitated.

Physical development plays a crucial role in young children's learning, behaviour and emotional health and is now recognised as a prime area in the revised Early Years Foundation Stage. It is therefore essential that those working in the early years sector provide children with a wide range of opportunities for movement and sensory experiences.

Drawing on current legislation and the requirements of the EYFS, the book covers all aspects of physical development and includes:

• reflection tasks, summaries and impact on practice sections;

• guidance on issues that can cause concern such as health and safety, rough and tumble play, gender and the effective use of indoor and outdoor space;

• advice on the role of the practitioner and ideas for working with parents and families;

• information on the different stages of physical development.

Written by leading consultants, this book will be essential reading for early years students and practitioners that want to fully understand young children's physical development and provide opportunities that nourish children's overall learning and physical and emotional wellbeing.

1	What is physical development and why is it so important?

This chapter reflects on our understanding of physical development, considers why increased knowledge and understanding of this Prime area of the EYFS is so important and introduces some of the key issues.

What do we mean by physical development?

HAVE A THINK ABOUT… THE WORDS YOU ASSOCIATE WITH THE TERM ‘PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT’

Here are a few that usually come up when we ask people this question:

■ Bodies. Muscles. Limbs. Health. Growth. Running. Sport. PE. Heart and lungs. Babies and toddlers. Health checks. Maturation. Milestones. Gross motor skills. Fine motor skills. Locomotion. Movement. Hygiene. Using tools.

What kind of information about physical development did you have in your initial training? How important do you think it is in your work?

I’ve always been more interested in language and early literacy; I thought physical development was just about PE and stuff – but now I know what it is really all about I can’t wait to get back to my setting and do things differently!

This is the kind of comment we hear all the time from people who attend our courses on physical development. So much so that we would like to give this area a completely different name! As you will see throughout this book, physical development (PD) is clearly about the development of movement and all the relevant stages contributing to locomotion, but it also includes the development of the brain, which is inextricably linked with the development of the body and vice versa! Neurophysiological development is a term used by some specialists, to describe the interdependent nature of body and brain development, which also includes the integration of the senses and the development of a fully functioning nervous system, leading to the growth of a happy and healthy individual.

A child’s physical development includes:

■ Growth and control of limbs, muscles, joints, bladder, bowel etc.

■ Motor development leading to bipedal (upright on two legs) mobility

■ Inhibition of primitive reflexes

■ Sensory development including vestibular and proprioceptive senses

■ Fine and gross motor skills

■ Mastery of a range of physical skills, locomotion, dynamic balance, agility, physical literacy, manipulating tools etc.

The most common understanding of physical development is probably physical growth. It seems an obvious place to begin, because growth can be an indicator of healthy development even before birth.

Measuring growth

The measurement of children’s physical growth and development begins in the womb, with measurements being taken and the mother’s weight gain identifying the health of the pregnancy. After the announcement of the birth and enquiry about a new baby’s gender (if not already known) and general health, then the next piece of information offered is always about weight and sometimes length. We associate weights within a certain margin with healthiness, and babies are monitored to ensure steady weight gain. Height (length) too is regularly checked along with head size in the first year. We judge whether or not these measurements are increasing within typical margins by referring to centile charts. These plot the head circumference, weight and length of babies in order to compare the pattern of growth of an individual child against a larger number of children of the same age and gender. Centile charts can provide reassurance that, within a certain range, a child is developing at a ‘typical’ rate. Figures outside of this range would suggest that a child’s development is less typical and possibly requires monitoring. Using the word ‘typical’ is more useful here than ‘normal’, which has lots of value judgement attached to it and isn’t strictly accurate if we accept that babies are born unique and develop in uniquely individual ways! We will look more closely at the concept of ‘typical’ and ‘atypical’ development later in this chapter.

Look how you’ve grown!

It is easy, then, to focus on the external, very visible growth of a child from babyhood. Measurements are recorded regularly and parents and health professionals are reassured by a child’s steady growth. We emphasise growth as a sign of maturation and as adults we compliment children on how big they have grown (Maude 2001), and, rather ridiculously, we express surprise that they have grown when we haven’t seen them for a while! For some of us, adult interest in our growth as children (too much or not enough) might have been a cause of anxiety or even distress, much of which the adults might have been unaware.

HAVE A THINK ABOUT… YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES OF PHYSICALLY GROWING

What do you remember from your own childhood as a marker of your growth?

Your clothes? Wearing clothes that were too small or too short as you grew fast? Wearing clothes that were too big or too long so you could ‘grow into them’?

Did you have a regular marker on the wall or a doorpost?

Do you remember wanting to be tall enough to reach or see over something?

For one of the authors it was being able to see over the tall counter in the chip shop, for the other, finally being tall enough to go on the big rides at the fairground.

Were you aware of adult interest in your growth – height or weight?

How did this make you feel?

Has it made a difference to the way you comment on children’s growth?

Concerns about obesity

With the current focus on childhood obesity, even more attention is being paid to young children’s size and weight than ever before. Concerns about the quality and quantity of a child’s diet and nutritional intake and the focus on ‘healthy eating’ in the current Early Learning Goals (ELGs) in England, place a shared responsibility on carers as well as parents to monitor children’s nutritional intake.

We must be careful that this emphasis on the external evidence of physical growth and maturation doesn’t overshadow the growth and development taking place internally, as children’s sensory and nervous systems develop. This kind of development is harder to measure, which perhaps explains why it features less in the public awareness – and also in any statutory requirements. But as many specialists in the subject have suggested, the less obvious physical developments of early childhood have an equal, if not more powerful, impact on future health, emotional wellbeing and learning potential (Goddard Blythe 2004, 2009; Ayres 1972, 2005; Hannaford 2005; Maude 2001; Nurse 2009).

From top to bottom and side to side

Two processes, both with rather complicated names, determine motor development, although the processes themselves are quite straightforward to understand.

Cephalocaudal development refers to development that is ‘top-down’. ‘Cephalo’ stems from the Greek word ‘kephale’ which means ‘head’. Other words that are similar are encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and hydrocephalus (fluid build up in the skull affecting the brain). ‘Cauda’ stems from the Latin word for ‘tail’ so cephalocaudal refers to motor and muscular development that spreads from ‘head to tail’ or in the case of humans ‘from head to toe’. Patricia Maude (2001:8) suggests this makes a lot of sense if you consider that in a human newborn it is the head that is most well developed, in order to house the brain that is already controlling all bodily functions, whilst the legs and feet are still relatively undeveloped and not yet able to provide mobility. Maude explains that

Muscular development follows the same top-down sequence: control of the head is achieved prior to musculature to gain control of the shoulders. Once the infant can hold up the head unaided, the spinal muscles develop to enable the sitting position to be achieved, aided and then unaided.

(2001:8)

The legs begin to gain strength only when creeping and crawling begin and they are needed to help propel the body along. As the legs grow in strength, they become able to bear weight and eventually are strong enough for standing and walking, growing stronger throughout childhood and into adulthood. This top-down growth and development continues as the musculature supporting the feet and ankles matures and strengthens, enabling increased efficiency in movement and propulsion (Maude 2001:8).

Proximo-distal development describes the process of movement control emerging and extending from the ‘proximal’ (close to the body) out to the ‘distal’ (furthest from the centre of the body). So, just like the cephalocaudal process, the first part of the word describes where the control is most developed at birth. The ‘proximal’ space is nearer to the centre of the body, but the functions of the ‘distal’ parts of the body (the arms, hands and fingers) are underdeveloped at first, as they are not needed for things like pushing and pulling or manipulating until later. So as Maude describes, ‘the musculature to the shoulder girdle gains strength before that to the elbows, wrists, hands and finally to the fingers’(Maude 2001:8). Because of this, we see small babies at first only able to swing their whole arm to swipe or ‘bat’ at a hanging mobile. Later, the shoulder muscles will allow them to bring both arms to the centre to ‘clap hands’ or take something in a two-handed grasp well before they have the coordination and muscle strength to use their hands for different purposes at the same time. It can be several years before there is enough differentiation in the joints and muscles of the wrists and hands to enable the fingers to be used efficiently. This has implications for our expectations of the age at which children should begin formal handwriting. Children are often interested in mark making at an early age. They enjoy drawing, painting and mimicking adults writing for a purpose, e.g. signing their name, making lists etc. But this scientific information does suggest that we need to allow adequate time for the proximo-distal process to fully develop at its own pace and not rush immature joints and muscles into positions and activities for which they are not yet ready.

If children are required to form legible letters and are given writing tasks before the developmental processes of bone differentiation and strengthening of the muscles to the wrist bones have adequately been achieved, the result can be frustration and inhibition in achievement.

(Maude 2001:10–11)

In the UK, children are often expected to begin practising their handwriting at age four and often younger. And yet there are lots of concerns about the quality of handwriting in older children and the range of inappropriate pencil holds. As a contrast, in France, although children play with crayons, pencils and paints from an early age, they don’t begin formal handwriting until they are of compulsory school age between six and seven years old, when they learn cursive writing from the start.

HAVE A THINK ABOUT… HANDWRITING AS A FINE MOTOR SKILL

Are you a good hand writer, or were you always berated for untidy or illegible writing? Do you remember struggling to stay on the line, or to form letters neatly in a row?

At what age do you think children should begin formal handwriting as opposed to free mark making? How do you think this affects their emerging compositional and imaginative skills?

What role do you think handwriting will play in the future as children develop keyboard and touch screen skills at an earlier age?

What difference do you think current and future technology, e.g. phone and computer keyboards, touch screens etc. will make to the development of fine motor skills?

Why is physical development so important?

Physical health

Obviously physical development is linked with children’s health and their ability to thrive and flourish. The pioneers of nursery education in the la...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 What is physical development and why is it so important?
• 2 Our own early experience of physical development and how it supports our role as practitioner
• 3 The stages of physical development
• 4 The role of reflexes in physical development
• 5 Sensory processing and integration
• 6 Looking more closely at vestibular and proprioceptive development
• 7 Physical development and the EYFS
• Conclusion
• More information
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index