The Developing World of the Child

Wendy Rose, David P.H. Jones, Jane Aldgate

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9781843102441
• eBook ISBN: 9781846424687
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This important text shows how child development theory applies to professionals' working practice. Considering theories of development throughout the lifespan from the early years through to adolescence, and transitions to adulthood, this resource is essential reading for a range of professionals including social workers, teachers, and health and mental health professionals. The authors build up an integrated picture of the developing world of the child, looking at genetic and biological influences alongside individual psychological, interpersonal, familial, educational and wider community domains. The final part of the book looks specifically at issues for practice, including chapters on communicating with children exercising professional judgement, and planning, interventions and outcomes in children's services.

Part 1

Child Development: Frameworks, Theories and Influences

CHAPTER 1

Children, Development and Ecology

Jane Aldgate

We cannot begin to improve the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable children unless we identify their needs and understand what is happening to them in order to take appropriate action.

(Hutton 2000)

Introduction

Core professional activity increasingly demands from the children’s services workforce across different professions an evidence and research informed approach to practice, with an emphasis on helping vulnerable children achieve optimal developmental outcomes. The responsibility for improving the well-being of children is a duty within the Children Act 2004.

The legislative mandate for action enshrined in the Children Act 1989 also demands that professionals are able to define who are children in need of services. It is difficult to see how any professional can implement the primary legislation without knowing about, and understanding about, children’s development. Furthermore, knowledge of the developing child is not just confined to responding to an individual. It permeates and underpins all the parts of the child welfare system.

Child development is both a basic and an applied science. It is the study of how and why children develop perception, thought processes, emotional reactions, and patterns of social behaviour. It also provides knowledge that is important for advising parents, forming educational programmes, creating and defending Government programmes for children, making legal policies affecting children, and devising treatments for problem behaviour. (Mussen et al. 1990, p.2)

No one could question how that understanding of a child’s development is absolutely crucial in shaping assessments and professional judgements about appropriate services to meet children’s developmental needs. Yet often, as Gray has pointed out, that knowledge and understanding ‘has not always been easily available to practitioners and their managers’ (Department of Health 2000, p.xi).

In this book, the authors want to look at the developing child in a way that builds bridges between the knowledge of the how, why and what develops in children with the application of that knowledge in direct practice. It is important that professionals not only have an understanding of child development but also are ready to use the evidence from that knowledge to promote the optimal development of each individual child with whom they are working. Accurate application is just as important as the knowledge itself. Such application might be within the Government’s Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need and their Families (Department of Health, Department for Education and Employment and Home Office 2000b). Its use also informs policy and practice developments, such as early intervention programmes like Sure Start, family support programmes like Homestart and services for adolescents.

The fact that child development issues are germane to all child welfare practice is in itself justification for studying the developing child but what will be learned about children from studying their development? Mussen et al. (1990, p.5) believe there are three broad goals to be achieved from studying child development:

1.To understand changes that appear to be universal (those that occur in all children regardless of culture or personal experience).

2.To explain individual differences (why infants react in a particular way to their mother leaving the room while others play happily, or why some children learn mathematical concepts quicker than others, etc.).

3.To understand how children’s behaviour is influenced by the environmental context or situation (in this sense the context is not the immediate situation but also attributed to the larger settings within which people live – families, neighbourhoods, cultural groups. Such settings are sometimes called the ecology of the child’s behaviour).

This book on the developing child aims to provide a resource which is accessible to and relevant for practice. The first chapter introduces readers to what is meant by the term child development, and provides a theoretical framework for understanding the main influences on development. It also explores how special circumstances which cause concern to children’s services professionals, such as child maltreatment, or traumatic separation and loss, may be seen in the context of their impact on the developing child. It takes a stance on development which seeks to acknowledge and promote the individuality and potential of all children, including those who are disabled and those who are in need because of factors within themselves or because of the circumstances and relationships which are part of their world.

Defining child development

The first question in considering the developing child is to ask: what actually is child development? Mussen and colleagues have produced a standard textbook used frequently by different children’s services professionals (1990). They define child development as follows:

Development is defined as orderly and relatively enduring changes over time in physical and neurological structures, thought processes, and behaviour. In the first 20 years of life these changes usually result in new, improved ways of reacting – that is in behaviour that is healthier, better organised, more complex, more stable, more competent or more efficient. We speak of advances from creeping to walking, from babbling to talking, or from concrete to abstract thinking as instances of development. In each such instance we judge the later-appearing state to be a more adequate way of functioning than the earlier one. (Mussen et al. 1990, p.4)

This definition implies several things:

•there are defined dimensions of development

•development is orderly

•the results of different stages of development lead to a more efficient way of functioning

•there are interactions between children and the context in which they grow up which will influence their development.

There is for every child a sense of progression and increasing complexity. The child becomes increasingly organised, integrated yet more complex as an individual as he or she grows up. We call this the developmental perspective.

Such a definition assumes that there are different interwoven areas of development, each of which contributes to the development of the whole child. In order to unpack the complex processes and interactions of development, writers often deconstruct development into different areas, such as physical, cognitive, emotional and psychosocial development. Later in this book, we will also use this device to look at children at different ages and stages of development. In spite of this artificial device, most writers on development agree that there are interactions between different aspects of development, as they also agree that all children have to progress systematically through different stages to become more competent, integrated and complex. These stages are broadly age related, although there can be considerable variation in the progression of individual children. These variations may have many causes, often resulting from a complex fusion of a child’s inner world and external influences. As Mussen et al. (1990) suggest, ‘Children may go through stages at different ages, but they all go through them in the same order’ (p.10). This is a fundamental principle and one which can be applied to all children no matter whether they have the special circumstance of illness or disability or have been affected by abuse or neglect. Later in the chapter there will be discussion of child development relevant to the perspective of some of these special children, including those who have been abused or who are disabled but, initially, the focus will be on general principles.

How do children develop?

The next question to ask is: how do children develop? Writers on child development generally agree that there are developmental changes which can be termed continuous and quantitative. These continuing changes in development can be measured quite easily, for example, a child’s gradual changes in height and weight. But children sometimes make leaps to a different level of development. When it comes to discussing how children develop between each stage, there is no universal agreement between developmentalists on all aspects of how changes take place. Some writers describe these as ‘stages of development’, believing any changes to be discontinuous or qualitative, for example, the leap that occurs when a child changes from a nonverbal baby to an individual who can talk or the child who develops abstract thinking. These changes represent a break with development that has already occurred to a new level which is of a different qualitative order. Others would say that all changes are cumulative, building on what went before.

Professionals cannot escape from confronting these different approaches because they are constantly asked to assess children against a normative level of attainment.

This is a good place to pause and think about the concept of milestones, in terms of physical and cognitive development.

Milestones

Milestones help identify two universal factors:

•As children grow, and assuming they have been given appropriate parenting and support from others, their competencies and, consequently, confidence in different areas of development will change.

•For all children, development will be sequential – all children will gain competence in certain developmental tasks, in the same order but not necessarily at the same rate.

The authors have strong views about the imperative to avoid stigmatising or ‘pathologising’ children and believe such an approach is unethical. We also believe that to do nothing where a child may be impaired on the grounds this will place the child apart from others is equally unethical. Accordingly, this book takes the stance that, in order to apply our vast fund of knowledge in a non-stigmatising way, we need to know what are, for want of a better phrase, the normative expectations. Using milestones, for example, to identify expected stages of development, is a useful tool in identifying impairments as early as possible, so that each child who has a developmental problem may be given the best possible opportunity to address that problem and reach his or her optimal potential as an individual. A good example is the importance of recognising language delay early on. There may be many causes, hearing impairment being the most obvious, but deprivation of social interaction could be another cause.

The authors are, however, fundamentally opposed to the use of such identification of difference as abnormal or defective, and believe that any assessment in relation to a normative level of attainment has to be set in a wider societal context that recognises difference and values individuals intrinsically. Any intervention should be seen in the context of acceptance of each child as an individual. Coleridge, for example, writing about disability, liberation and development, suggests this starts from the point ‘that integration is ultimately about removing barriers, not normalisation, cure, or care. Rehabilitation conducted within a comprehensive social framework is about the removal of barriers and attitudinal barriers in society at large’ (Coleridge 1993, p.73).

Milestones and disability

Within this book, we look to apply the concept of milestones for disabled children along the lines spelt out by Marchant (2001). If a disability is identified, then the milestones for that individual child would have to be carefully redefined as Marchant suggests. She says that ‘professionals should assess whether a child is developing in line with what would be expected of a child with similar impairments at a similar level of development (not necessarily age)’ (Marchant 2001, p.212). Taking such an approach maximises the possibilities of reaching optimal outcomes for individual children with impairments, recognising that some may reach different levels of development along different dimensions. For example, children who have cerebral palsy may have difficulty with mobility but achieve well academically.

There is a special group of children who are profoundly ill. Children with profound health problems, such as terminal cancer, will need special attention. For them, the achievement of ‘optimal developmental outcomes’ will place an emphasis on the best possible clinical treatment but equally on the quality of living in each day. In this way children’s development is being addressed in terms of their current well-being as well as their future well-becoming (Ben-Arieh 2002). Adopting this approach to milestones is important....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Of Related Interest
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Part 1: Child Development: Frameworks, Theories and Influences
• Part 2: Children Developing: Early Childhood to Adolescence
• Part 3: Promoting Positive Developmental Outcomes for Children
• Afterword
• Appendix A: Steering Group
• Appendix B: Advisory Group
• References
• List Of Contributors
• Subject Index
• Author Index