Child and Human Development I: Principles of Growth and Development, Pregnancy and Prenatal and Neonatal Development, Theories of Development, Early Childhood Care and Education, Influences on Personality, and Special Needs
2. Theories of human development and behaviour
| Theorist | Theory | Core ideas |
|---|---|---|
| Sigmund Freud | Psychosexual | Oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stages; id, ego and superego; early experience shapes personality |
| Erik Erikson | Psychosocial | Eight stages, each a crisis: trust versus mistrust, autonomy versus shame and doubt, initiative versus guilt, industry versus inferiority, identity versus role confusion, intimacy versus isolation, generativity versus stagnation, integrity versus despair |
| Jean Piaget | Cognitive-developmental | Sensorimotor (0 to 2, object permanence), preoperational (2 to 7, symbolic thought, egocentrism, no conservation), concrete operational (7 to 11, conservation, reversibility), formal operational (11 onwards, abstract reasoning); assimilation, accommodation and equilibration |
| Lev Vygotsky | Sociocultural | Learning through social interaction; the zone of proximal development; scaffolding by a more knowledgeable other; language as a tool of thought |
| Urie Bronfenbrenner | Ecological systems | Microsystem (family, school), mesosystem (links between them), exosystem (parents' workplace), macrosystem (culture), chronosystem (time) |
| Lawrence Kohlberg | Moral development | Preconventional, conventional and postconventional levels, two stages each |
| Albert Bandura | Social learning (social cognitive) | Observational learning and modelling (the Bobo doll studies); self-efficacy; reciprocal determinism |
| John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth | Attachment | An infant's bond to caregivers; the Strange Situation identifies secure, avoidant and resistant patterns, with a disorganised pattern added later |
| Arnold Gesell and Robert Havighurst | Maturational; developmental tasks | Norms of development unfolding with maturation; tasks each life stage sets, whose achievement leads to success with later tasks |
3. Early childhood care and education and holistic development
Early childhood care and education joins care, health, nutrition, play and early learning in the years when the brain develops fastest. India's National Early Childhood Care and Education Policy (2013) commits the state to universal access to quality ECCE for young children up to six years, with play-based, child-centred, developmentally appropriate programmes delivered largely through anganwadis, and to quality standards and a curriculum framework. The National Education Policy 2020 made the years from 3 to 8 a single foundational stage within its 5+3+3+4 structure: three years of anganwadi, pre-school or Balvatika followed by grades 1 and 2, with a National Curriculum Framework for the Foundational Stage (2022) and the NIPUN Bharat mission (2021) for foundational literacy and numeracy by grade 3.
| Domain | Activities that promote it |
|---|---|
| Physical and motor | Running, climbing, ball games (gross motor); threading beads, cutting, drawing, clay (fine motor) |
| Cognitive | Sorting and matching, puzzles, sand and water play, nature walks, simple experiments, counting games |
| Language | Storytelling, rhymes and songs, picture reading, conversation, puppets |
| Social and emotional | Group games, dramatic play, sharing and turn-taking, talking about feelings |
| Creative and aesthetic | Painting, music and movement, dance, free construction with blocks |
- Mildred Parten (1932) described the development of social play: unoccupied, solitary, onlooker, parallel (side by side, without interaction), associative (sharing materials loosely) and cooperative (organised, with shared goals).
- Approaches that shaped ECCE: Froebel's kindergarten with its gifts and occupations; Montessori's prepared environment and self-correcting sensorial materials; Gijubhai Badheka's Bal Mandir in Bhavnagar and Tarabai Modak's rural pre-schools, which fed into the anganwadi idea; Reggio Emilia's project work; and HighScope's plan-do-review.
4. Influence of family, peers, school, community and culture on personality
Personality develops within Bronfenbrenner's nested systems. The family is the first and most lasting influence: Diana Baumrind described authoritative parenting (warm, with clear limits and reasons), authoritarian (cold and controlling), and permissive (warm but with few demands), and Maccoby and Martin added the neglectful or uninvolved style; authoritative parenting is most consistently linked with competence, self-esteem and social responsibility. Siblings, birth order, family size and structure (joint or nuclear) and family stress also shape development. Peers grow in influence through middle childhood and adolescence, offering belonging, social skills and identity, and also pressure; sociometric studies classify children as popular, rejected, neglected or controversial. School shapes self-concept through teachers' expectations (the Pygmalion effect described by Rosenthal and Jacobson), achievement and the classroom climate. The community provides models, safety or danger, and services; culture sets the values, gender roles and goals of socialisation, as between individualist and collectivist societies; and media and digital life are now a pervasive influence.
5. Children and persons with special needs
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 replaced the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995 and widened the recognised disabilities from seven to 21: blindness, low vision, leprosy-cured persons, hearing impairment, locomotor disability, dwarfism, intellectual disability, mental illness, autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, chronic neurological conditions, specific learning disabilities, multiple sclerosis, speech and language disability, thalassaemia, haemophilia, sickle cell disease, multiple disabilities including deaf-blindness, acid attack victims and Parkinson's disease. A person with at least 40 per cent of a specified disability has a benchmark disability, which carries entitlements including free education for children aged 6 to 18, reservation of at least 5 per cent of seats in government higher education institutions and 4 per cent of government posts, and accessibility in buildings, transport and information. The Act is administered alongside the Rehabilitation Council of India Act 1992 and the National Trust Act 1999, and the Unique Disability ID card gives a single national identity for entitlements.
| Level of prevention | Aim | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | Prevent the impairment from occurring | Immunisation (rubella, polio, measles), iodised salt, folic acid, safe delivery, genetic counselling, accident prevention |
| Secondary | Detect early and intervene to limit the impairment | Newborn screening for hearing loss and congenital hypothyroidism; the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (2013), which screens children for defects at birth, diseases, deficiencies and developmental delays, with District Early Intervention Centres |
| Tertiary | Prevent impairment from becoming handicap; rehabilitate | Therapy, assistive devices, special and inclusive education, vocational training |
Care and support begin with early identification and a family that is informed and supported. Special education adapts curriculum, methods and materials to a child's needs; integrated education places children with disabilities in regular schools with support; inclusive education, the goal of the RPwD Act and NEP 2020, restructures the regular school itself so that all children learn together. Rehabilitation is medical (therapy, surgery, assistive devices), educational, vocational and social, and community-based rehabilitation, promoted by the WHO, works through local resources across health, education, livelihood, social life and empowerment.
Key takeaways
- Development is orderly and predictable, cephalocaudal and proximodistal, general to specific, interrelated, and the product of heredity and environment.
- Prenatal development runs germinal, embryonic (weeks 3 to 8, most vulnerable) and foetal; the Apgar score rates five signs 0 to 2 at 1 and 5 minutes; the neonatal period is 28 days.
- Freud, Erikson, Piaget, Vygotsky, Bronfenbrenner, Kohlberg, Bandura and Bowlby-Ainsworth frame development; Erikson's preschool crisis is initiative versus guilt.
- The National ECCE Policy (2013) and NEP 2020's foundational stage (ages 3 to 8) frame play-based ECCE; Parten's play runs from solitary and parallel to associative and cooperative.
- The RPwD Act 2016 recognises 21 disabilities, defines benchmark disability at 40 per cent, and reserves 4 per cent of government posts and 5 per cent of higher education seats; prevention is primary, secondary and tertiary.
Practice questions (10)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
At one minute a newborn has a heart rate above 100 (2), a slow, irregular breathing effort (1), some flexion of the limbs (1), a grimace on stimulation (1), and a pink body with blue extremities (1). What is the Apgar score? Type the number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 6
Adding the five signs gives 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 6. A score of 7 to 10 is normal, so this baby needs attention and is re-scored at five minutes.A baby gains control of the head and neck before the trunk, and of the trunk before the legs. This illustrates:
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Answer: A — The cephalocaudal principle
Head-to-foot development is the cephalocaudal principle. Proximodistal development runs from the centre of the body outwards, as when arm control precedes finger control.During which prenatal period is the developing child most vulnerable to teratogens?
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Answer: A — The embryonic period, about weeks 3 to 8
The major organs form in the embryonic period, so a teratogen acting then can cause structural malformations. In the germinal period damage tends to be all-or-none, and later exposures more often affect growth and function than structure.Match correctly: which theorist-concept pairs are right? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — Bandura — observational learning; C — Bronfenbrenner — exosystem; D — Vygotsky — zone of proximal development
The zone of proximal development is Vygotsky's, the exosystem Bronfenbrenner's and observational learning Bandura's. Generativity versus stagnation is Erikson's middle-adulthood stage, not a Piagetian concept.Two four-year-olds play side by side in the sand, each with a bucket, without interacting. In Parten's classification this is:
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Answer: D — Parallel play
Playing alongside others with similar materials but without interaction is parallel play. Associative play involves loose sharing and interaction, cooperative play organised shared goals, and onlooker behaviour watching without joining in.Assertion (A): NEP 2020 treats the years from 3 to 8 as a single foundational stage. Reason (R): Children learn best at this age through play and activity, and pre-school and the first two grades form a developmental continuum. Choose the correct option.
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Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
Both are true and R explains A. The 5+3+3+4 structure groups three years of anganwadi, pre-school or Balvatika with grades 1 and 2 precisely because children of 3 to 8 share a play-based, activity-based way of learning, which the National Curriculum Framework for the Foundational Stage (2022) builds on.How many disabilities does the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 recognise? Type the number.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 21
The 2016 Act recognises 21 disabilities, up from seven under the 1995 Act, adding conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, specific learning disabilities, thalassaemia, acid attack survivors and Parkinson's disease.Which of the following are examples of secondary prevention of disability? Select all that apply.
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Answer: A — Newborn hearing screening; C — Screening for congenital hypothyroidism at birth
Early detection so that intervention can limit an impairment is secondary prevention, which is what newborn hearing and thyroid screening do. Rubella immunisation prevents the impairment from occurring (primary), and vocational training rehabilitates an established impairment (tertiary).Parents who are warm and responsive, set clear limits and explain their reasons are, in Baumrind's terms:
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Answer: C — Authoritative
High warmth with high, reasoned control is authoritative parenting, the style most consistently linked with competent, self-reliant children. Authoritarian parents control without warmth, permissive parents are warm without control, and neglectful parents offer neither.Under the RPwD Act 2016, a person has a "benchmark disability" when the specified disability is at least:
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Answer: B — 40 per cent
A benchmark disability is at least 40 per cent of a specified disability, and it is the threshold for entitlements such as reservation in education and employment and free education from 6 to 18.