In the world of Child Development, the greatest uniting truth is that PLAY truly is the work of childhood. Its well-established that the skills and talents that our children need to develop in order to start on the road to becoming fully functioning adults are literally developed through play. Early developmental testing is a proxy for later IQ testing, and is divided into the categories of language, fine motor, and gross motor skills. A young child’s developmental level in these areas is best proxy that we have for later IQ score. IQ can only START be tested after 6 years of age, and of course, later cognitive skills involve reading and higher-level thinking. But for 6-and-under crowd, its literally just as simple as LANGUAGE SKILLS, GROSS MOTOR SKILLS, AND FINE MOTOR SKILLS. The developmental level of play that your child achieves is the greatest predictor of their future cognitive abilities! It sounds simple enough to work on just these skills, but the truth is, the distractions in our world can serve as a barrier to allowing our children to maximize their developmental potential. The BIGGEST deterrent to our children’s brain development is the SCREEN and SCREEN- based “play” or “learning” (which it is not!). The screen jeopardizes gross motor development, by having them mesmerized motionless. It jeopardizes fine motor development with its two-dimensional images, which the child manipulates with the swipe of a single finger, all instead of exploring three dimensional shapes and their relationships using the whole hand. It hijacks language development… tricks the parents into thinking that language learning is taking place, but the sounds from the screen are processed through the visual cortex, not the auditory cortex, because they lack the social component. Screens also, with their rapidly changing images, serial flashes, etc hijack the development of the young brain’s attention and self-regulation pathways, by essentially curating the development of brain pathways that expect, and can only respond, to anything that moves at the incessantly rapid pace as on the screen (which of course is not real life).
Language learning is tied to learning social interaction and emotional regulation, and this triad cannot be separated. It depends on a back-back-and-forth interaction, as well as the associated nuances, like turn-taking and reading facial expressions. It requires a dyad, which is a pair interacting: the child and another individual. This CANNOT be acquired through screens. Nearly all screen time, with the exception of family video chat and certain slow-moving-old-fashioned-type shows, will pull the growth of new brain connections into a totally different direction, at the expense of language and social development. Especially where this is concerned, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Meaning, that if you can keep your kids away from this in the early years, you can spend much less time backtracking later.
Fine motor skills start with manipulation of the fingers, then understanding how 3-dimensional shapes fit together and how they interact with each other and the world.
Cognitive development at the higher level, like formal reasoning, depends in large part on social interaction to process the world. According to Vygotsky, our children learn to process their world by watching others process the world. We show them the bb
The interactions with more knowledgeable others significantly increase not only the quantity of information and the number of skills a child develops, but also affects the development of higher-order mental functions such as formal reasoning. Vygotsky argued that higher mental abilities could only develop through interaction with more advanced others.
According to Vygotsky, adults in society foster children’s cognitive development by engaging them in challenging and meaningful activities. Adults convey to children how their culture interprets and responds to the world.
They show the meaning they attach to objects, events, and experiences. They provide the child with what to think (the knowledge) and how to think (the processes, the tools to think with). Vygotsky’s theory encourages collaborative and cooperative learning between children and teachers or peers. Scaffolding and reciprocal teaching are effective educational strategies based on Vygotsky’s ideas.
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