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Good Start, Grow Smart:
The Bush Administration's Early Childhood Initiative
The Importance of Early Childhood Cognitive Development
Early childhood generally refers to the period from birth through age 5. A child’s cognitive development during early childhood, which includes building skills such as pre-reading, language, vocabulary, and numeracy, begins from the moment a child is born. Developmental scientists have found that the brain acquires a tremendous amount of information about language in the first year of life even before infants can speak. By the time babies utter or understand their first words, they know which particular sounds their language uses, what sounds can be combined to create words, and the tempo and rhythm of words and phrases.
There is a strong connection between the development a child undergoes early in life and the level of success that the child will experience later in life. For example, infants who are better at distinguishing the building blocks of speech at 6 months are better at other more complex language skills at 2 and 3 years of age and better at acquiring the skills for learning to read at 4 and 5 years of age. Not surprisingly, a child’s knowledge of the alphabet in kindergarten is one of the most significant predictors of what that child’s tenth grade reading ability will be.
When young children are provided an environment rich in language and literacy interactions and full of opportunities to listen to and use language constantly, they can begin to acquire the essential building blocks for learning how to read. A child who enters school without these skills runs a significant risk of starting behind and staying behind.
Early Childhood Care and Education
Young children are cared for in a wide variety of settings. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, 38 percent of children age 5 or younger receive care on a regular basis from parents only. The remaining 62 percent of children are in one or more arrangements, including care by other relatives (24 percent), non-relatives (17 percent), or center-based programs (34 percent), including Head Start (6 percent). Children between the ages of 3 and 5 are more likely than children younger than 3 to be cared for in a center-based program, such as child care and Head Start. Children under the age of 3 are more likely to be in the care of a parent than are children older than 3.
Parents are a child’s first and most important teachers. It is significant that nearly 40 percent of young children are cared for primarily by a parent. The Bush Administration believes it is important to support parents and families in their most important task in life raising their children through several means, including providing them information about early childhood development.
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Early Development in Babies and Toddlers
We hear the term child development a lot, but you may be thinking, what exactly does that cover? Child development refers to an expansion of physical, cognitive, psychological, and socioemotional skills that lead to increased competence, autonomy, and independence for a child. From conception to birth and through early childhood, it is important to ensure children are protected and encouraged to grow across developmental domains.
5 Developmental Domains For Early Childhood
There are 5 developmental domains, or specified areas of knowledge and activity, in childhood development. They are:
Cognitive Development-
- Cognitive development is the ability to learn, think, and problem solve.
Social-Emotional Development–
- Social-Emotional Development is the ability to interact, self-soothe, associate and actively engage with others.
Speech/Language Development–
- Speech and language development is the ability to understand and use language.
Physical Development–
- Fine Motor Development is the ability to use smaller muscles, like hands and fingers.
- Gross Motor Development is the ability to use large muscles, including a wide range of leg and arm motions, sitting up, pulling up, etc.
All domains of child development and learning are connected! We will take a look at each domain up close, how they are naturally expressed through behaviors and how caretakers can encourage these behaviors with specific feedback. This series, created and written by Lauren Olivas, a CSUSB Masters in Child Development student, will look at stages within the first three years. Stay tuned as we cover skills to watch for and how to identify opportunities to engage.
We’ll begin with cognitive development in early childhood, which again is the ability to learn, think, and problem solve. How do these skills begin to present themselves in infants and toddlers and what activities and opportunities can we create to support them?
Cognitive Development for Infants and Babies
At 2-months-old, learning and problem-solving skills are being developed. There are a wide range of cognitive development milestones babies should be working on in the early years of their lives. These include:
- Paying attention to faces
- Following objects with their eyes
- Recognizing people at a distance
- Putting things in their mouth
- Passing toys from one hand to another
- Looking for things to hide and engaging in a peek-a-boo
- Responding to affection and recognizing familiar people from a distance
Cognitive Development Activities for Babies:
- Talk, read, sing and play together every day-feeding, dressing, and bath times are great for this.
- Look at pictures and picture books together.
- Hold a toy or rattle above their head and encourage them to reach for it.
- Pay attention to their differing cries to learn what your baby wants.
- Play peek-a-boo.
- Play hide and seek with toys and age appropriate objects.
- Allow your baby to safely reach for toys, kick their feet and explore their surroundings.
- Point to and talk about your surroundings.
- When your baby drops something on the floor, pick it up and give it back to them to explore cause and effect.
- Establish routines and maintain them consistently.
- Describe the behaviors you want instead of those you don’t. For example, tell baby, “feet on the floor” instead of “do not climb.”
Cognitive Development in Toddlers
Once your baby transitions to toddlerhood (after one year of age), they should be able to engage in more complex problem-solving and cognitive tasks such as:
- Scribbling on their own
- Participating in caregiving activities for a doll or a stuffed animal
- Engaging in simple pretend play
- Naming items in a picture book (“dog” or “baby”)
- Finding objects hidden under multiple layers
- Completing sentences or rhymes in familiar books
Cognitive Development Activities for Toddlers:
- Talk to your child about your daily routines and what you’re doing.
- Work on puzzles together.
- Encourage your child to help with simple household chores.
- Ask lots of simple questions.
- Praise and encourage behaviors you want more of rather than scolding or punishing for the behaviors that you do not.
- Play with blocks and sort shapes.
- Practice identification, ask your child to name parts of their body or what they see out the car window.
- Encourage pretend play.
- Play hide and seek with objects around your home.
(Content provided by Lauren Olivas, M.A Child Development Candidate, Higher Education Mentor for Quality Counts California)
Other Important Resources:
- Resources for building quality at home.
- What is Sesame Street in Communitiesand how does it support families and children’s growth?
- Watch the webinar, “Children’s Emotional Well-Being During Unpredictable Times” from Dr. Eugene Wong on childhood anxiety and how to effectively support a child who worries.
Finally, if you have questions of concerns about your child’s development or behavior, check out Help Me Grow Inland Empire for developmental screening information.