(ii) growth proceeds from the centre of body and moves towards the extremities or more distal regions — the proximodistal trend, i.e. children gain control over their torso before their extremities. Initially infants reach for objects by turning their entire body, gradually they extend their arms to reach for things. These changes are the result of a maturing nervous system and not because of any limitation since even visually impaired children show the same sequence.
As children grow older, they look slimmer as the trunk part of their bodies lengthens and body fat decreases. The brain and the head grow more rapidly than any other part of the body. The growth and development of the brain are important as they help in the maturation of children’s abilities, such as eye- hand coordination, holding a pencil, and attempts made at writing. During middle and late childhood years, children increase significantly in size and strength; increase in weight is mainly due to increase in the size of the skeletal and muscular systems, as well as size of some body organs.
Motor Development : Gross motor skills during the early childhood years involve the use of arms and legs, and moving around with confidence and more purposefully in the environment. Fine motor skills — finger dexterity and eye-hand coordination — improve substantially during early childhood. During these years the child’s preference for left or right hand also develops. The major accomplishments in gross and fine motor skills during early childhood years are given in Table .
. Cognitive Development : The child’s ability to acquire the concept of object permanence enables her/him to use mental symbols to represent objects. However, the child at this stage lacks the ability that allows her/him to do mentally what was done physically before. Cognitive development in early childhood focuses on Piaget’s stage of preoperational thought (see Table .
). The child gains the ability to mentally represent an object that is not physically present. You may have observed children draw designs/ figures to represent people, trees, dog, house, Age in Years Gross Motor Skills Fine Motor Skills years