What is Mental Age?

This describes the age of a child based on his intelligence. The mental age (MA) can be above or below the biological age of a child, but usually, it is believed that intelligence increases as a child grows biologically. In other words, mental age is an individual’s level of mental ability. It’s based on the age taken by an average individual to reach that same level of mental attainment. Typically, standardized intelligence tests are used to measure mental age. Alfred Binet – a French psychologist, was the first to define mental age and launch the intelligence test in 1905. With …

What are Emergent Literacy Skills?

These are skills and actions exhibited by preschool kids and even infants that are purely based on their contact with words and letters early on in life. To understand emergent literacy skills, knowing about emergent literacy is crucial. Emergent literacy starts long before a kid’s official lessons in school and continues through the preschool year. From the day they’re born, kids are already in the process of learning a language and becoming literate. As they grow and develop, their language skills and speech become more and more complex. They become skilled at understanding and using language to express their feelings …

What is an Emergent Curriculum?

This is an approach to education used on kids early in life, whereby learning is uniquely directed towards the interests of a group of kids or a particular child. The interests, needs, and skills of the kid or group of kids also influence the plans for further learning. Emergent curriculum is based on the principle that kids are most successful at learning when courses and programs align with their interests, requirements, strengths, and lived realities. Teachers committed to this philosophy observe children throughout their day and use the resultant notes for constructing individualized and thoughtful curriculum content. This is followed …

Child Development Delays – Tips To Help Your Child Overcome Them

Being a witness to a child’s wonder and adventurousness when it comes to learning new things is one of the world’s best things. A lot of this growth happens in the first few years of their little lives. However, parents who have a child with a developmental delay may feel overwhelmed when impacting their child’s development.  There are things that a parent who is dealing with this situation can do to help their child with their progress. Here are some suggestions that you might want to incorporate into your daily routine.  Play There are numerous games and activities that you …

Talking To Your Child’s Coach About Learning and Thinking Differences

Children all over the world struggle with various learning and thinking differences. These differences can have a significant impact on their overall attitude regarding the sports they participate in.  As a parent, would it be a good idea to tell your child’s coach about these differences? There are various factors to consider when answering this question. In this article, we will be discussing these differences and whether or not telling a coach about them would benefit your child.  Are Other Children Likely To Notice These Differences? As we have already discussed, various learning and thinking differences could affect your child’s …

Concrete Operational Stage: Everything You Need to Know

This is a stage during which kids build the ability to think logically, as well as the ability to understand conversations. However, they only have the ability to work these skills efficiently in scenarios that they are used to. This is the third stage in the theory of cognitive development proposed by Piaget. Spanning the period of middle childhood, this stage lasts from around age 7 to age 11. Apart from being a crucial phase, the concrete operational stage is also a vital period of transition between earlier development stages and the impending stage where children will learn how to …

Centration: Everything You Need to Know

This is the predisposition to concentrate on a single or partial dimension of an event or an object. Jean Piaget coined this term to mention kids’ capability to be especially attentive by the one key feature of a situation, problem, thing, etc., while not paying attention to other features even if they’re relevant. Centration is an attitude that generally develops in the cognitive development’s second stage, the preoperational stage (encompassing the kids between ages two and seven). The idea of centration originates from another concept, namely egocentrism, which Piaget introduced in the same theory. The idea behind egocentrism is that …

Conservation: Everything You Need to Know

Conservation is one of Jean Piaget’s developmental accomplishments where the kid comprehends that changing the form of an object or substance doesn’t change its overall volume, mass, or amount. This accomplishment happens during the development’s operational stage between ages seven and eleven. One can observe the lack of conservation in kids when there’re, for instance, multiple different sizes of juice containers on a table. And kids select the tallest container because they consider it contains more juice. All the containers might contain the same amount of juice, but kids who haven’t accomplished conservation perceive the tallest container as the fullest. …

Preoperational Stage: Everything You Need to Know

This refers to a stage in a child’s development whereby the child forms images of things in their mind. This is the second stage in psychologist Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. This stage starts around age two, as kids start to talk, and continues until around age seven. During the preoperational stage, kids start to learn to manipulate symbols and engage in symbolic play. However, Piaget mentioned that they don’t yet comprehend concrete logic. Language development is a hallmark of the preoperational stage. During this stage, kids also become increasingly adept at utilizing symbols, as evidenced by increased pretending …

Childhood Trauma: Understanding, Recognizing, and Healing

Childhood Trauma: Handle With Care Childhood trauma, marked by instances of extreme stress, abuse, neglect, or loss, leaves a profound impact on the developing mind of a child. These painful experiences can lead to PTSD childhood trauma, a condition where a child continually relives the traumatic event, causing severe distress and interference with their daily lives. Like handling a delicate artifact, addressing childhood trauma requires care, compassion, and professional help, enabling healing and transformation. What is Childhood Trauma? Childhood trauma encompasses startling, upsetting, or dangerous incidents that occur in a child’s life before turning 18. The range of these incidents …