It is said that the brain in early childhood children increases from 70 percent to 90 percent of its adult weight in just four years. Parts like the cerebellum, reticular formation, hippocampus, and many more are rapidly developing, improving a wide variety of skills. Their physical coordination, perception, attention, memory, language, logical thinking, and imagination are all affected by how much the brain is developing during this crucial time. To ensure that a child is optimizing their brain growth in early childhood, it is important they are getting an adequate amount of sleep, the proper nutrition, and are protected from infectious diseases through immunizations. It also helps to actively engage in conversations, allow them to problem solve independently, and give them time to process new ideas. To ensure a child is on the right track you should look for new self-help skills, further development of gross-motor skills, and a heightened sense of independence.
In the realm of cognitive development, children in their early childhood years, experience the rapid growth of their language development. Their vocabulary reaches about 10,000 words by the time they are six. On average, children from ages two to six learn about five new words a day. Parents and caregivers can assist children in growing their vocabulary by providing them with strategies and helping with new grammar rules. This includes actively engaging in conversation and recasting and expanding their speech. This engagement with a child helps with their repetition and eventual mastery of words. A child who is behind in their language and speech development might have a large vocabulary but may not be able to form full and complete thoughts or are unable to accurately voice what they are trying to say. Under these circumstances, it is helpful to seek out a speech language pathologist to help with these delays.
In the social-emotional realm, children in their early childhood years are actively learning the concept of emotional self-regulation. Emotional self-regulation can be defined as the “ability to manage the experience and expression of emotion” (Berk, 1996, p. 362). Children who are able to verbalize the emotion they are feeling or distract themselves from the ones they do not wish to feel, are often the most successful in classroom settings. Parents who are aware of their own emotions and strategies are the most helpful in a child’s development of their own emotional regulation in that parents can offer advice and suggestions when children are unsure how to handle a certain situation. Children who have higher temperaments often struggle in this developmental milestone. High temperaments make a child experiencing negative emotions act irrationally and suppress emotion rather than express it in a correct way.
Berk, Laura E. Infants and Children: Prenatal Through Middle Childhood. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996.