Developmental Milestones in Early Childhood. Education Essay

CASE ANALYSIS
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November 19, 2019
Developmental Milestones in Early Childhood
From infancy to late childhood, people are expected to be able to perform specific skills depending on one’s age. This is referred to as developmental milestones. Developmental milestones include the evaluation of gross motor and fine motor skills, language acquisition, cognitive development, and social and emotional development (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2018).
Motor Developmental Milestones
Motor development requires multidisciplinary learning such as the ability to understand what the child has observed and the ability to follow instructions (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2018).
The normal gross developmental milestones of a three-year-old child, by this age, we expect the child to be able to run well, march, ride a tricycle, stand on one foot briefly, feed self well, put on shoes and socks on his or her own, button and unbutton a shirt, and build a tower of 10 cubes (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2018).
In Christopher’s case, we can grossly observe in the documentary that he still cannot ambulate. This is revealed when Christopher was in a wheelchair whenever he travels. Besides, he appears to have a poor trunk control as exemplified by being supported on his lower back area during sitting and by being assisted when lying on his back. This gives us the impression that Christopher might also be hypotonic as exemplified by his floppy extremities. Because of these, Christopher was not able to achieve the milestones of a 3-year-old concerning ambulation.
By the age of 3, we also expect a child to develop fine motor skills such as feeding oneself well, putting on shoes and socks, buttoning and unbuttoning, and building a tower of 10 cubes CITATION Lig18 \l 1033 (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2018). However, it is observed that Christopher was able to reach, grasp, throw, and release objects as seen when he was holding a crayon and tried to draw on a paper. However, Christopher’s type of grasping objects is not fully developed as manifested by holding the crayon on his palm and using all of his fingers with his lower arm slightly inverted. His drawing cannot also be easily recognized. These factors are important in the development of his fine motor skills which may be the cause why he was not able to achieve the milestones of building a tower of 10 cubes since it requires proper grasping of objects.
Language Developmental Milestones
Language acquisition is guided by two (2) proposed theories of nature and nurture. Language acquisition through nature suggests that children mature and their innate language capacity allows the acquisition to follow naturally while learning by association, classical and operant conditioning, and imitations are the mechanisms that are used to explain the nurture side. It also uses social and cultural contexts (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2018).
For ages 30 months and above, children are expected to be able to create indirect requests such as “You’re standing in my blocks!”, to modify speech to take the listener into account, and to be aware of grammatical categories (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2018). However, as said by Chris...