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2023-01-08
Chapter 8
Early Childhood:
Biosocial Development
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth
Twelfth Edition
Edition
WHAT WILL YOU KNOW?
 Do young children eat too much, too little, or
the right amount?
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1
 If children never climb trees or splash in
water, do they suffer?
 Why is injury control more needed than
accident prevention?
 Which is worse, neglect or abuse?
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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2
Body Changes (part 1)
 Growth patterns
 Children become
slimmer (low BMI) with
noticeable changes in
belly, face, and limbs.
 Each year from age 2
through 6, wellnourished children add
almost 3 inches in height
and gain about 4-1Ú2
pounds in weight.
 Center of gravity moves
from the breast down to
the belly.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
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1
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Body Changes (part 2)
 Nutrition
 Childhood obesity
 World’s most serious food problem
 Linked to poverty, food-insecurity, depression, lack
of exercise, and excess screen time
 May worsen with parental recognition; lifelong
problems
 Rate of preschool obesity dropped and
then increased.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Body Changes (part 3)
 Nutritional deficiencies
 Most children in developed nations consume
more than enough calories, but may not get
adequate iron, zinc, and calcium.
 Gender, ethnicity, and income correlate with
body fat.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
Body Changes (part 4)
 Sugar
 Tied to many customs across cultures that entice
children to eat unhealthy sweets
 Found in sweetened cereals and drinks
 Problematic for children, families, and culture
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 Oral health
 Cavities and decaying teeth before age 6 linked
to sugar
 Poor oral health related to harm to permanent
teeth
 Infected teeth can impact rest of body
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2
Body Changes (part 5)
 Allergies
 6 to 8 percent of children have specific allergies:
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 Milk; eggs; peanuts or tree nuts; soy; wheat; fish and
shellfish
 Linked to a variety of medical conditions
 Diagnostic standards for allergies vary.
 Treatment varies
 Total avoidance
 Medically supervised small-increment exposure
 May be outgrown, increase, or decrease with age
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Brain Growth (part 1)
 Size
 By age 2, a child’s brain weighs 75 percent of
what it will in adulthood.
 Extensive sprouting and then pruning of
dendrites has already taken place.
 The brain reaches 90 percent of adult weight
by age 6.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Brain Growth (part 2)
 Survival of the smartest
 Social understanding
and emotional control
develops with prefrontal
cortex maturation.
 Primary reason for faster
thinking is new and
extensive myelination.
 Gradual increasing of
myelination makes 6year-olds much quicker
than 3-year-olds, who
are quicker than
toddlers.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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3
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Brain Growth (part 3)
 Connecting left and right
 Corpus callosum
 Long, thick band of nerve fibers connects the left
and right hemispheres of the brain and allows
communication between them.
 Abnormal growth is one symptom of autism
spectrum disorder and other disorders.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Brain Growth (part 4)
 Lateralization
 Specialization in certain functions by each
side of the brain, with one side dominant for
each activity
 Left side of the brain controls the right side of
the body, and vice versa.
 No healthy person is exclusively left-brained
or right-brained.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Brain Growth (part 5)
 Maturation of prefrontal cortex
 Prefrontal cortex is limited in infancy and
continues to develop at least until early
adulthood.
 Between ages 2 and 6, neurological increases
are especially notable in specific cortex areas.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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4
Brain Growth (part 6)
 Before Maturation
 Maturation of the
prefrontal cortex
gradually facilitates
focused attention and
curbs impulsiveness
and perseveration.
 This is accompanied
by increased
emotional regulation
(learned).
 Impulsiveness and
preservation
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 Many young children
jump from task to task
and cannot stay quiet.
 Others persevere in,
or stick to, one thought
or action, unable to
quit.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Brain Growth (part 7)
 Stress and the brain
 Relationship between stress and brain activity
depends on age and degree of stress.
 Balance between arousal and reassurance is
needed for optimal development.
 Excessive stress-hormone levels in early childhood
may permanently damage brain pathways.
 Direct malnutrition causes shrinkage of various
brain regions and decreases in white matter.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Brain Growth (part 8)
 Advancing motor skills
 Maturation and myelination allow children to
move with greater speed, agility, and grace.
 Brain growth, motivation, and guided practice
undergird all motor skills.
 Size of the child and skeletal maturation affect
the development of motor skills, more so in
girls than in boys.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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5
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Brain Growth (part 9)
 Gross motor skills
 Skills that use balanced coordination and both
brain hemispheres improve dramatically with
age.
 Opportunity to practice skills, locale, and
culture influence their development.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Brain Growth (part 10)
 Adults need to facilitate:




Safe play space
Time for play
Appropriate equipment
Playmates
 How might increased urbanization hinder
or help motor skill development?
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Brain Growth (part 11)
 Fine motor skills




Are more difficult to master
Involve small hand and finger movements
Often involve both sides of the brain
Are influenced by gender, practice,
maturation, and cultural-specific expectations
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
18
6
Harm to Children (part 1)
 More children are harmed by deliberate or
accidental violence, by acts of commission or
omission (action or neglect), than from
disease.
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 In the United States
 Almost four times as many 1- to 4-year-olds die of
accidents than of cancer, which is the leading
cause of disease death during these years.
 Numbers in one recent year were 1,267 and 325,
respectively ( National Center for Health
Statistics, 2019).
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
Harm to Children (part 2)
 Age-related dangers





Falls
Motor-vehicle deaths
Poison
Fire
Drowning
 Injury control (harm
reduction)
 Safety surfaces
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 Car seats
 Bike helmets
 Safety containers for
medications
 Pool monitoring
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
Harm to Children (part 3)
 Three levels of prevention apply to every health
and safety issue.
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 Primary prevention
 Actions that change overall background conditions to prevent
some unwanted event or circumstance, such as injury,
disease, or abuse
 Secondary prevention
 Actions that avert harm in a high-risk situation, such as
stopping a car before it hits a pedestrian or installing traffic
lights at dangerous intersections
 Tertiary prevention
 Actions, such as immediate and effective medical treatment,
that are taken after an adverse event (such as illness, injury,
or abuse) occurs and that are aimed at reducing the harm or
preventing disability
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 4)
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 5)
 Lead was identified as
a poison a century ago.
 U.S. finally banned lead
in paint in 1978 and in
automobile fuel in
(1996).
 Children who are young,
low SES, and/or living in
old housing tend to have
higher levels of lead.
 Teenage involvement in
impulsive, violent crimes
is often linked to lead
poisoning of the brain.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 6)
 Plumbism (lead
poisoning)
 Composite of 157
brains of adults, who
as children had high
lead levels in their
blood, shows reduced
brain volume.
 The red and yellow hot
spots are all areas that
are smaller than areas
in a normal brain.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 7)
 Prevention matters.
 Household cleaning, avoiding construction
dust exposure, testing drinking water,
discarding lead-based medicines and
crockery
 Encouraging milk consumption that eliminates
lead form body
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
Harm to Children (part 8)
 Tragedy
 In 2014 in Flint, Michigan, city officials changed
municipal drinking water to Flint River.
 This contaminated the water supply with
chemicals that increased lead leaching from old
pipes.
 Child blood-lead levels increased dramatically,
especially in low income neighborhoods.
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 What were the immediate and long-term
consequences?
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 9)
 Child maltreatment
 U.S. maltreatment
death rates of children
have not decreased.
 Maltreatment
perpetrators are most
often one or both
parents.
 Why haven’t scientist
learned how to stop
homicides?
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
27
9
Harm to Children (part 10)
 Maltreatment perpetrators are most often one
or both parents.
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 Child maltreatment
 Intentional harm to or avoidable endangerment of
anyone under 18 years of age
 Child abuse
 Deliberate action that is harmful to a child’s physical,
emotional, or sexual well-being
 Child neglect
 Failure to meet a child’s basic physical, educational, or
emotional needs
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 11)
 Substantiated maltreatment
 Harm or endangerment that has been
reported, investigated, and verified
 Reported maltreatment
 Harm or endangerment about which someone
has notified the authorities
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Why is there a difference between
reported versus substantiated cases of
maltreatment?
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Harm to Children (part 12)
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 13)
 Frequency of maltreatment
 Reports have increased since 1950, but
substantiated rates have decreased every
year from 1990 to 2010.
 Not all instances are noted, reported, or
substantiated.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 14)
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 15)
 Warning signs
 In general: Delayed development (slow
growth, immature communication, lack of
curiosity, unusual social interactions)
 By early childhood: Fearful, startled by noise,
defensive, quick to attack, confused between
fantasy and reality
 These are the symptoms of post-traumatic stress
disorder.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
Harm to Children (part 16)
 Consequences of maltreatment
 Effects of maltreatment are devastating and longlasting. The child and the community are affected.
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 Mistreated and neglected children
 Tend to hate themselves and distrust everyone else
 Are less friendly, more aggressive, and more isolated
than other children
 Experience greater social deficits and relationship
struggles
 May experience large and enduring economic
consequences.
The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence
Berger | Twelfth Edition
Copyright © 2021 by Macmillan Learning. All rights reserved
35
Harm to Children (part 17)
 Three levels of prevention
 Primary prevention: Focus on macrosystem
and exosystem; stable neighborhood, family
cohesion, decreasing financial instability,
family isolation, and teenage parenthood
 Secondary prevention: Focus on identifying
and intervening; insecure attachment
 Tertiary prevention: Focus on limiting harm
after maltreatment
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Berger | Twelfth Edition
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Harm to Children (part 18)
 Tertiary prevention and placement




Permanency planning
Foster care
Kinship care
Adoption
 Do you know the difference?
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Berger | Twelfth Edition
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