4.02: Childhood and Adolescence

• Introduction
• Learn
• Try It
• Task

Introduction

If you have a younger brother or sister, you may remember times when your parents forced you to let him or her play with you and your friends. You would try playing hide and seek to your 4-year old little sister, but no matter how many times you explained the game, she always spoiled it by calling out. Why couldn’t she understand that she had to be quiet?

Now take a look at childhood development and see if you can understand why that task was difficult for a 4-year old.

Child development that occurs from birth to adulthood was largely ignored throughout much of history. Children were often viewed simply as small versions of adults and little attention was paid to the many advances in cognitive abilities, language usage, and physical growth that occur during childhood and adolescence.
Interest in the field of child development finally began to emerge early in the 20th-century, but it tended to focus on abnormal behavior. Eventually, researchers became increasingly interested in other topics including typical child development as well as the influences on development