PHYSICAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

Psychology accepts that no man came into this world with a fully developed physique and set
of abilities. As man grows, he undergoes different stages of development whose outcome is
continuously changing environment.

Several reasons have been why the study of child and adolescent psychology flourished. First,
there is a belief that the key to the understanding of the adult personality will be found by studying
the growth and development of a child. Second, many kinds of adult skills and behavior are acquired
during childhood that if we are to study the acquisition of much of the adult behavior, we also have
to familiarize ourselves with the nature if child growth and development. Lastly, there is the
necessary to study the child and adolescent in his own right as an organism different from an adult.

NATURE OF GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Life as a constant change and growth is among he greatest and the most exciting. The body of
the human adult which has developed from a single fertilized egg produces fantastic increase in
number of individual cells.

Organic Growth consists of three:

1. Increase in size
2. Differentiation of structure
3. Alteration of form

These 3 elements while comprising development still undergo a series of orderly and
irreversible stages that every organism goes through from the beginning of its life to the end.

As a baby grows, it also develops. The progressive differential growths first the head, then the
trunk, then the legs – has been designated by the term cephalocaudal (from head to foot). While the
body is growing in length, it has also been growing in a proximodistal direction (from the central
part to the peripheral).

GROWTH OF BODY ORGANS

The various organs of man can be grouped into four different growth rates:
Positive Acceleration – a very slow growth during childhood and then extremely rapid
acceleration at puberty.
Negative Acceleration – with rapid growth during the first six years of life and then a sharp
slowing down such as the brain and its parts.
Reversal Growth – such as the lymphoid group which increases very rapidly at first, then
actually decrease in size. The lymphoid groups are consisting of the thymus, lymph nodes and
intestinal lymphoid masses.
S-shaped Curve – starts and ends with rapid growth periods separated by a long period of very
little gain. This is the “general” type of growth.
Measurements of all growth factors – from degree of bone ossification to overall body
proportions – provide something a more than a simple description of the child’s level of
development at any given time. The concept of developmental age and the discovery of ways to
determine it had added considerably to knowledge of the growth process.

SOME COMMON SKILLS IN THE EARLY CHILHOOD STAGE

*HAND SKILLS

Self-feeding
8 months – most babies can hold their bottles after the nipples have been placed in their
mouths.
9 months – they can put the bottle nipples in their mouths and take them out without help.
12 months – they can drink from a cup when they hold it with both hands, and several months
later they can drink from a cup using one hand.
13 months – babies begin to feed themselves with a spoon. A month or two later, they can
spear food with a fork and carry it to their mouths with much spilling.
2 years old – most babies can use spoons and forks without too much spilling.

Self-dressing
At the end of the first year, most babies can pull off their socks, shoes, caps and
mittens. By end of the second year they will attempt to put on caps and mittens, and by the
end of the babyhood they can pull off all clothes and put on a t-shirt or dress.

Self-grooming
Self-bathing is limited to mainly running a cloth or a sponge over the face and the body.

*PLAY SKILLS

Babies learn to jump from an elevated position usually by movements resembling

walking. They learn to climb stairs by crawling and creeping. After they can walk alone, they go up
and down steps in an upright position, placing one foot on a step and then drawing the other foot up
after it.

PATTERNS AND MOTOR CONTROL

*Head Region

Eye control
Twelve hours after birth – the optic nystagmus or the response of the eye to a
succession of moving objects.
Third or Fourth weeks – ocular pursuit movements.
Second or Third months – horizontal eye movements.
Third or Fourth months – vertical eye movements.
Several months later – circular eye movements.

Smiling
First week – reflex smiling, or smiling response to a tactual stimulus.
Third to Fourth Months – social smiling, or smiling in response to the smile of
another person.
 Head Holding
One Month – in a prone position, babies can hold their heads erect.
Five months – lying on their backs.
Four and Six Months – held in a sitting position.

Trunk Region
Rolling.
Two months – babies can roll from side to back.
Four months – from back to side.
Six months – they can roll over completely.

Sitting.
Four months – the baby can pull to a sitting position.
Five months – sit with support.
Seven months – sit without support momentarily.
Nine months – sit up without support for ten or more minutes.

Arm and Hand Region

Hands. Thumb opposition – the working of the thumb in opposition to the fingers –
appears in grasping between here and four months and in picking up objects
between eight and ten months.

Arms. The baby can reach objects by six or seven months and can pick up a small object
without random movements by one year.

Leg Region
Seven weeks – shifting of the body by kicking.
Six months – hitching or moving in a sitting position.
Eight and Ten months – crawling and creeping.
Eleven monhts – babies walk on “all fours”

Babies can can pull themselves to a standing position at about ten months, stand with
support at eleven months, stand without support at one year, walk with support at eleven months or
one year, and walk without support after fourteen months.

According to the Research

Studies have shown evidences that the development of sitting, standing, and walking is
determined by growth changes and maturational development of the neural and mascular systems
rather than by practice.

Late Childhood
 *Physical Development

Height – the annual increase in height is 2 to 3 inches. The average 11 year old girl is 58
inches tall and the average boy of the same age is 57.3 tall.
Weight – more variable than height increase, ranging from 3 to 5 more pounds annually.
The average 11 years old girl weighs 88.5 pounds, and the average boy of the same age
weighs 85.5 pounds.
Body Proportion – the trunk elongates and become slimmer, the becomes longer, the
chest abdomen flattens, the arms and legs lengthen and the hands and feet grow larger,
but at a slow rate.
Homeliness - the body disproportions, so pronounced during late childhood, are
primarily responsible for the increase in homeliness at this time.
Muscle-Fat-Ratio – during late childhood, fat tissues develop more rapidly than muscle
tissues which have a marked growth spurt beginning at puberty.
Teeth – by the onset of puberty, a child has 28 teeth of the 32 permanent teeth. The last
4, the wisdom teeth, erupt during adolescence.

*Late Childhood Skills (Hurlock, 1982)

Self-help skills – older children should be able to eat, dress, bathe, and groom
themselves with almost as much speed and adeptness as an adult.
Social-help skills – helping others, at home, they include making beds, dusting, and
sweeping; at school, they include emptying wastebaskets and washing chalkboards; and
in playing, they include in building tree house or lay out a baseball diamond.
School skills – the child develops the skills needed in writing, drawing, painting, clay
modeling, dancing crayoning, sewing, cooking and woodworking.
Play skill – the older child learn skills as throwing and catching balls, riding a bicycle,
skating and swimming in connection with play.
Handedness – by the time they reach late childhood, most children are so
predominantly right- or left-handed that changing handedness is far from easy.

Many left-handed children become ambidextrous during the late childhood in that they use
both hands, though there is a tendency to favor the left hand.

THE ADOLESCENCE
 *Physical Development

At puberty, a considerable alteration in growth rate occurs. It is at the beginning of the

adolescence, the years of greatest growth that developmental differences between girls and
boys become most evidence. Girls generally reach puberty ahead of boys.

Height and Weight the average boy grows approximately 8 inches taller and adds 45 pounds
to his weight; at its peak, about 14 years of age, he is growing at the rate of four inches a year.
Girls gain about 6 and a quarter inches in height and 35 pounds in weight during the spurt.

Muscular and Skeletal Dimensions the spurt of muscle width reach a peak velocity of growth
in boys greater than that reached by girls. Simultaneously with the spurt, there is a loss of fat.

Facial Contour the contours of the face which have been altering gradually throughout
childhood, show particularly marked changes.

Strength in both sexes increases, although the increase is proportionately much greater in boys
than girls.

DIFFERENCE IN GROWTH RATE

Growth may continue although slowly, for many years in adolescence though
imperceptibly.

BOYS GIRLS
98% Age of Age of
Of the final 17 3/4 16 1/2
height

These statistical and descriptive summaries of the adolescent spurt, oversimplify what is in fact
a rather a complicated process.

DISADVATAGE OF LATE GROWTH RATE

The child who has ahead in a physical development at an early age of his life is likely to
remain ahead of his contemporaries throughout the growing years despite temporary setbacks. But
not so with the child who develops slowly and late. Theough he may eventually grow taller than the
child who matures early, he may meanwhile be made miserable in a number of ways.