The better the parental relationship the higher the level of education reached by children, on average (Nepal)

In a study in Nepal, children whose parents reported loving each other attained higher levels of education and married later, on average. In fact, the happier the parents were with their relationship, the later their children were likely to marry. The strong correlations were found for both boys and girls, for families of all ethnicities (including different castes), and for parents of different levels of education and wealth.

The data were taken from the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal. At the start of the study, in 1996, married mothers and fathers individually completed questionnaires that included two very simple questions about their marital relationship: “How much do you love your husband/wife?” and “Has your husband/wife ever beaten you?” Then, 12 years later, mothers were asked to recount their children’s progress. The mothers reported how long children who were 16 or younger in 1996 stayed in education. They also reported when their children who were 15-24 in 1996 got married. The study included 2,714 children in the educational measurement and 667 children in the marriage measurement.

Combining their findings with those from other studies – mostly in developed countries – the researchers propose three mechanisms by which a happy marital relationship might benefit children:

• Happier couples may be investing more resources in their children, which could be influencing their education positively.
• Children in happy families are likely to enjoy stronger socialization generally and may develop stronger commitment to family life. This could influence later marriage, something that is associated with more stability in marriage.
• Children are likely to want to stay longer in a happy home. In Nepal, young people rarely live alone or with housemates or in school/work accommodation, so marriage is the main route out of living at home.

Marriage is almost universal in Nepal, with arranged marriages still predominant. Unmarried cohabitation and divorce are rare. The situation, however, is changing. In the data used for this study, no spouses married in 1936-45 reported being involved in the choice of their spouse. About half who married in 1986-95 were involved. The median age of women marrying was 16.4 in 1996 and 17.9 in 2016. These trends are characteristic of the whole of South Asia.

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The study emphasises the importance of addressing the impact on children’s social skills when parents are mentally unwell or highly controlling.

Sustaining friendships at school is a key component in the development of children’s social skills and predicts later social and academic success. At the same time, low-quality parenting at home can inhibit children’s social skills at school. With these facts in mind, researchers in Finland followed 1,523 children through primary school (7-12 years), measuring the extent to which they sustained the friendships made in their first year. Friendships made in the first year typically dissolve at a high rate (in this study, 52% dissolved in the first year and 92% had dissolved by the sixth year). Yet the researchers found that first-year friendships were even less likely to be sustained when a mother or father reported either depression or psychologically controlling parenting.

The study of children’s social skills included only children who were living with two biological parents and had at least one reciprocated same-sex friendship. Friendships were measured once each year by asking children in a class to name three other children they most liked to spend time with, and three they least liked to spend time with. The researchers recorded dyads (two children naming each other as friends) in the first year and then observed whether these dyads persisted in later years. In Finland, children stay in the same class throughout primary school, creating a favourable environment to observe friendships and the development social skills.

Using standardised measures, the researchers also assessed parenting style in the first year, as well as parents’ symptoms of depression, and then analysed whether these influenced children’s social skills as measured by friendship stability.

A child’s social skills are known to be influenced by parental depression and parental psychological control. The average depression score for all the parents was 1.79 on a five-point scale. Children of parents who scored at least 4.28 (indicating clinical depression) were considerably more like to see their friendships dissolve from year to year. Similarly, though to a lesser extent, high scores for parental psychological control (4.61 or more on a five-point scale, compared to the average of 2.57).

The following table shows the risk of a first-year friendship dissolving in the second, third and sixth grades for children of these parents, compared to the average for all parents.

These findings confirm other research showing that children’s social skills can be harmed by low-quality parenting.

Depressed parents can inhibit children’s social skills by being disconnected, by not coaching or supervising peer play, and by restricting social engagement. A child with a depressed parent may carry some of the negative emotions at home into friendships at school. Depression in parents is known to undermine children’s emotional development and can lead to more anxiety and low moods.

Psychologically controlling parenting can also undermine children’s social skills. Parents who are psychologically controlling may fail to provide a hospitable environment at home for children’s friends. Controlling parents are linked to lower self-esteem in children, which is also important for friendships. Coercion at home can spill over into coercive behaviour by the child at school. Other research has shown that a child with controlling parents shows less empathy and is less likely to do good things for others. Such children are also more likely to experience anxiety and low mood.

The researchers also looked at positive parenting but found no correlations between parental warmth and good health and children’s social skills. They surmised that the measures of positive parenting may not have been exact enough to pick up particular aspects that influence children’s social skills.

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Research into the neuroscience and biology of fatherhood has concluded that the idea that women are “primary caregivers”, solely responsible for nurture and care, limits our understanding of human caregiving and child development.

Examining the biology and neurobiology of fatherhood, neuroscience researchers Eyal Abraham and Ruth Feldman have concluded that the idea of women as “primary caregivers”, solely responsible for nurture and care—a “matricentric” view that’s deeply rooted in cultures globally—limits our understanding of human caregiving and child development.

Scientific enquiry shows that caring fatherhood, and cooperative care between mothers and others, has played a key role in the survival of the human race, enabling the long and substantial investment required to raise newborns to adulthood, and also enabling shorter birth intervals. Humans would not have emerged as a dominant species if active fatherhood had not emerged.

Anthropologists have observed that human babies, beginning at birth, are typically surrounded with and carried by group members other than the biological mother. Another key observation from anthropology is that human parenting varies across cultures. Sometimes fatherhood is more about active caring, and sometimes it is less so. For example, when there are large family groups with many women present, the contribution that men make to caring tends to be more limited.

With a view to evolutionary history, Feldman and Abraham argue: “If males have played an essential, albeit flexible and variable role in human parenting across human evolution by reducing Homo females’ reproductive costs, their physiological systems have evolved by selective pressures to respond to committed fathering and to provide adequate and sensitive care to their infants.” They argue that neural circuits and hormonal biology have developed in all humans such that—with practice, attunement and social experiences—all humans can provide nurturing care, irrespective of gender. At the same time, these attributes have transformed humans into a uniquely collaborative hyper-social species.

Parent-child behavioural synchrony

Mother-infant and father-infant pairs show similar levels of “synchrony”, that is adaptation of the parent’s behaviour to the infant’s state and social signals. Abraham and Feldman call this a “dance” between parent and infant. Mother-infant synchrony tends to display slow oscillations between states of low and medium arousal. Father-infant synchrony tends to be faster, with quicker and more sudden peaks associated with play. Fathers who are more involved in household and childcare responsibilities are likely to be more sensitive to their infants.

Both mother-infant and father-infant synchrony predict greater parent-child interaction through childhood and adolescence. Mother-infant synchrony tends to predict children’s greater social competence in preschool. Father-infant synchrony tends to predict reduced aggression and better conflict negotiation in adolescence.

The hormones of fatherhood

Levels of oxytocin, prolactin, vasopressin and testosterone have been measured in fathers.

Oxytocin and fatherhood

Oxytocin increases in fathers as much as in mothers in the transition to fatherhood and during the first six months of fatherhood. Increased oxytocin is associated with greater engagement with the child; this was also observed when fathers were administered a nasal oxytocin spray. Oxytocin levels tend to synchronise between mothers and fathers who are coparenting. They also synchronise between father and child – when oxytocin is higher in the father, it increases in the child.

Prolactin and fatherhood

Prolactin increases in fathers during pregnancy. It is associated with greater engagement in play activities and greater responsiveness to a baby crying.

Vasopressin and fatherhood

Vasopressin levels go up in the transition to fatherhood. When vasopressin levels are higher, fathers are more likely to stimulate their child to activity. When a vasopressin spray is administered to expectant fathers, they become more interested in baby-related avatars. After the birth, administration of the spray is related to greater empathy with the child.

Testosterone and fatherhood

Lower testosterone levels in fathers are associated with more father-infant touch, gaze, interaction and vocalisation. When a baby cries, a father’s testosterone level tends to decrease if the father is able to provide care in response. If not, the baby’s cries do the opposite, tending to increase testosterone in fathers, probably linked to the father’s fears for the child’s safety.

Photo: p2-r2. Creative Commons.

The neuroscience of fatherhood

The adult brain becomes more plastic after the birth of a baby, triggered by hormonal changes. This happens in both mothers and fathers—and to a much greater extent than in other mammals. Because of this increased plasticity, humans have a much stronger capacity to change through the practice of direct care for the child. Interestingly, both biological and adoptive fathers who care for their infants have similar brain responses.

Abraham and Feldman identify three neural circuits relevant to motherhood and fatherhood:

Core limbic

The neural patterns observed in this ancient part of the brain during parenting are similar to those found in other mammals. This neural activity is related to vigilance for the child’s safety and well-being.

Empathy sub-network

This helps parents to resonate with the experience of the infant in the moment.

Mentalising sub-network

This helps parents recognise the infant’s cues, make predictions and plan responses.

Using fMRI, Abraham and Feldman studied different fathers – full-time working fathers, fathers who were coparenting 50/50 with mothers, and gay fathers parenting without women. Caring fatherhood was associated with more activation of the empathy network, to the point that, if fathers are caring for the child wholly by themselves (without a mother present), the patterns were similar to those observed in mothers’ brains.

Fatherhood brain changes and later child development: brain-to-brain synchrony

When mothers and fathers interact with their infants, the activity appears to tune the infant’s brain, probably resulting in epigenetic changes in the baby’s brain that alter the way the brain responds to hormonal stimuli later in life, affecting social behaviour. Abraham and Feldman call this parent-infant “brain-to-brain” synchrony.

Changes in parents’ brains through the experience of motherhood and fatherhood are associated with a child seeking safety with a parent and self-soothing when exposed to high emotions.

Changes in empathy networks during fatherhood or motherhood, and greater parent-infant synchrony early on, are associated with children using more advanced methods to control their emotions in pre-school and more expression of positive emotions. At the age of six, correlations were found between parents’ earlier neural activity, on the one hand, and children’s level of oxytocin and better physical health, on the other. When parents’ oxytocin levels are high during early interactions, children’s oxytocin levels tend to be higher in later years.

Changes in mentalising networks through fatherhood and motherhood are associated with improved socialisation in the child in later years.

When greater connectivity is observed in parents’ brains between the empathy and mentalising networks, the child is likely to have lower cortisol levels (associated with anxiety) in pre-school and lower anxiety-related problems at the age of six.

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Diverse beliefs, practices and purposes of children’s play in different cultures call for skepticism that Euro-American approaches to child development are best everywhere.

Our knowledge about play should sound a loud warning to policy makers, educators and parents: don’t presume that there are single pathways to optimal child development or that one culture’s practice – particularly the West’s – is best. There are many effective pathways and practices to achieve child development, some better suited to particular cultures than others.

Three factors underscore this call for cultural humility, policy diversity and academic scepticism. First, play has greatly varied significance for child development across cultures. In some, it’s considered a pivotal building block. In others, it’s viewed merely as an incidental activity.

“Be careful what you preach. Avoid universal theories for child development. Recognise the cultural limitations of existing evidence.”

Second, the childhood practice of play differs greatly. In some places, it’s a highly practical imitation of adult work. Elsewhere, it can be a distant abstraction of everyday life, often taking place in fictional worlds.

Third, given play’s varied forms, many contexts and diverse attendant belief systems, we are far from sure about causal links between certain types of play and child development. We’re even further from proving the primacy of any particular approach. So be careful what you preach. Avoid one-size-fits-all prescriptions and universal theories for child development, parenting and education. Be sure to recognise the cultural limitations of existing evidence.

Narrow cultural focus of play research

Contemporary thinking about play is largely based on research in European and European-American middle-class families. This research emphasises play’s role during the early years in developing cognitive, social and emotional skills, and in preparing children for school and for operating in technology-based societies. Given childhood play’s perceived role in laying the foundations for lifelong economic success, it’s highly valued in these societies.

Elsewhere, however, play has different forms, functions, prevalence and significance. Who plays with children also varies considerably – be it mothers, fathers, siblings or others – and so does the importance that play may have in building relationships, particularly in securing child-parent attachment.

Non-Western cultures have different attitudes

In our global review of evidence, we found that mothers in a Mayan community in Guatemala see play as perfunctory to childhood development. They are amused at the suggestion of playing with young children. Such attitudes, which are also found in other cultures, contrast sharply with the highly involved practices of ‘helicopter parents’ and ‘tiger moms’.

Mothers in Papua New Guinea say that children learn through work, not play. In many agrarian or foraging societies, children learn subsistence skills and domestic tasks though early participation in these activities via a combination of work and play. For example, a study of Baka foragers in the Republic of Cameroon recorded 85 different types of play by young children, including hunting (making a trap), gathering (insect collecting) fishing (with baskets), playing house (play cooking with inedible materials) and creating clothes (making eyeglasses out of vines).

These traditional approaches to learning-by-doing or imitating adults are important. They offer significant contributions to contemporary thinking about how children learn best. They speak, for example, to the debate that pits didactic, instructional children’s education against approaches that focus on active self-education.

Photo: provided by the author.

Roughhousing with dad is important for child development

Cultural variations in play practices – and their impact – are prominent around children’s interactions with their fathers. Research into European and European-American families ascribes an important role to the kind of roughhouse play that is prevalent between Western fathers and their young children. This type of play is considered to be a pathway both to child-father attachment and to helping children regulate their emotions and social relationships.

Fathers behave differently in some cultures

However, in many societies, fathers don’t do roughhouse play. Yet their children have close, well-attached relationships with them and also learn to control their feelings and manage social relationships. A good example is the Aka hunter-gatherer community in the Central African Republic. In this collectivist, egalitarian culture, fathers don’t roughhouse with their young children. Nevertheless, Aka fathers are reckoned to have the closest child-father relationships in the world – they are very gentle caregivers, holding their babies 22 per cent of the time, according to Barry Hewlett’s research. No need to teach Aka dads to roughhouse – they clearly have different pathways to successful child development.

Cross-cultural research also leads us to question the universality of another often-held view about child development – that parent-child play helps progress with cognitive development. We conducted a study, involving 50,000 children in 18 African countries, where we looked for links between parental engagement in play and children’s literacy skills. We also looked for connections between parents reading to their preschool children and later literacy skills. We found that parental reading did indeed predict literacy skills. But parental play was rarely linked to literacy skills in these contexts. Oral storytelling by parents was more predictive of literacy skills.

Too much faith in universal theories of child development

 When we presented this evidence to an audience of British academics, they didn’t believe us, reflecting a deep faith in the universality of child development pathways discovered in Western countries. Western academics have particular confidence in play as a route to cognitive development, a link not always found in other parts of the world. Yet, even in Western societies, questions have arisen about whether the links we have been observing between play and cognitive development and social skills represent correlational or causal relationships.

“Different cultural practices of child rearing should be considered in developing advice to parents as well as in making policy.”

I believe in play. Children obviously benefit from it. But we still don’t know the mechanism through which they do so. Is play itself the vital component, or is the display of parental sensitivity the active ingredient? Play does encourage children to acquire social skills. It helps them adjust their thinking and their social relationships. They probably also learn empathy through play. But there are clearly many more pathways for these forms of child development. So we should be skeptical about imposing what works in the West on others.

Cultural beliefs about play may influence impact

 Why is it that play seems to have big impacts in some places and, apparently, not in others? We can’t be sure. It may be that where parents believe play is frivolous, mom and dad don’t play much or in a really engaged way. So their children do not gain many benefits. Beliefs about play may be crucial in determining the impacts it has on childhood outcomes.

Diversity in other fields of child development

Play isn’t the only area where we see widespread variations in child development practice. Breastfeeding is generally accepted as a good thing. It is considered important everywhere. But weaning varies hugely. In the United States, six months of exclusive breastfeeding is recommended. But some children are breastfed until three years old and weaned gradually. In some cultures, as another baby is born, the previous child is weaned abruptly. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), the newborn is passed around to be suckled by a number of women. We don’t know which practice, if any, is best for child development.

The takeaway message to policy makers is that they should consider diverse cultural practices of child rearing when developing advice to parents as well as in making policy. This is particularly important in countries with culturally diverse populations.

Parents in different cultures have different goals. For example, in technological societies, we socialize children to think in complex ways about technology. That might not be best in countries that lack the same technological resources.

We should also be willing to learn from other cultures. Capitalism, which drives so many Western attitudes to child development, is only a few hundred years old. It’s worth looking at other societies, less influenced by these values. We are beginning to recognize that they could teach us a lot about how to rear children.

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To take a modern approach to cognitive development theory it is important to emphasise relationships, and view social interaction as the crucible in which children’s cognitive development takes place. In other words, the mind forms through being part of and contributing to social interaction, a process charged by emotion. Growing up within families provides for a long period of intense social interaction.

(Other cognitive development theories include “nativist” approaches that regard the mind as having innate abilities, growing rather like a tree does from a seed, and “empiricist” approaches that focus only on the factors that act on the mind to form it, rather than also on how the mind influences those factors.)

A relational approach can be illustrated with Donald Winnicott’s memorable quotation from 1964: “there is no such thing as a baby”. What he meant was that a baby is embedded in a complex web of interactions with others, to the extent that the boundary between the baby and parent is no longer distinct.

This theory of cognitive development sees the baby and parent shaping each other’s neurological development. Babies don’t just engage with their surroundings; they influence and shape the environment in which they learn skills. Even basic gestures such as smiling emerge through a process of development.

The relational theory of cognitive development encompasses the wider societal level: the person and culture are co-created like parent and child. A person becomes a member of society by engaging in routines, traditions, rituals, and the use of objects and symbols, including language. The person both grows as part of the culture and forms the culture with others.

Nowadays, the dominant theory of cognitive development is termed “process-relational”.

Where does the biology stop and the social start? The nature/nurture argument does not apply in this worldview. For example, social experience has now been shown to influence the way genes are expressed, through epigenetic changes.

DNA is the source material and is fixed, but how it is expressed can be changed by experience. This has generated a whole new branch of research, social genomics: the study of how social experience shapes gene expression.

The father of cognitive development theory: Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) has had a monumental impact on cognitive development theory. Piaget proposed a developmental theory based on the view of development known as “constructivism.” That is, we come to know the world through acting on it. He wrote that, “In order to know objects, the subject must act upon them and, therefore, transform them.”

Piaget argued that babies and children learn about the world through their action on the world. In this process they develop patterns of interaction involving emotions, sensations, motor movements, and perception, known as “schemes”.

Once a scheme begins to develop through particular interactions, it will be extended in slightly different situations. That is, the child assimilates new experiences to what she has previously learned, but since the experience will be different, the scheme will be modified or accommodated. Repeated many times, this process results in cognitive development.

(Photo: Shutterstock.)

Piaget said children learn through interaction with the world, developing patterns called “schemes”.

Piaget was interested in the stage-by-stage sequence of development that all children go through, each stage providing the foundation for the next. Through extraordinarily detailed observations of children, including his own three, he proposed four stages:

• Sensorimotor stage (during the first two years): a stage in which babies develop action schemes like sucking, pushing, hitting and grasping.
• Pre-operational stage (between two and seven years): the child develops the ability to think, but has limited ability to apply logic to a situation to deduce something by thought alone.
• Concrete operational stage (between seven and 11 years): the child starts working things out through logical thought, rather than just action.
• Formal operational stage (12-15 years): the child engages in systematic experimentation, forming hypotheses, testing them out and trying alternatives.

Sociogenesis theory of cognitive development: Lev Vygotsky

Another 20th-century giant of child development theory, Lev Vygotsky, is commonly regarded as the originator of the idea that the mind forms through social processes.

In fact, the idea predates him considerably, but he articulated it and developed it into a major influence on the modern science of child development, a remarkable feat since he only spent 11 years working on it, moving from work on art and literature when he was 27 and tragically dying when he was only 38.

According to Vygotsky, all higher mental functions occur twice, first between people in social interaction, then within the person’s mind. In this way, he said, social interactions form the mind, they don’t just influence a process already in motion like watering a seed to grow into a plant.

A key tenet of cognitive development theory is Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development”. This follows from his idea that thinking is first social before becoming mastered by an individual.

In the process of developing a new way of thinking there is a gap between what children can achieve alone and what they can achieve with the assistance of others. Two children may appear to be at the same level of development, but with help, one may be capable of more than the other. They differ in their ability to master a new way of thinking.

The key to cognitive development, according to Vygotsky, is the help that the more experienced adult gives the child to grow within this zone.

(Photo: Shutterstock.)

Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” highlights how children learn best with guidance, bridging the gap between what they can do alone and with help.

Vygotsky introduced the idea of “elementary” and “higher” mental functions. Elementary functions are products of evolution and biologically explained. They include involuntary attention and the ability to make simple connections between events.

In contrast, higher mental functions emerge through social interactions and culture. These include language, systems of counting, memorising techniques, art, literature, maps, and so on.

Vygotsky paid much attention to how language develops and considered how children talk to themselves. According to his theory of cognitive development, children learn to talk through relationships and conversations and then use speech as a tool for their own thinking, by talking to themselves.

This applies equally to hearing children, and sign language used by children who cannot hear. Research has indeed shown that children who interact more with others talk to themselves more when they are alone, and that children who are not allowed to talk to themselves perform less well in cognitive tests.

Later, speech goes “underground” to become inner speech or verbal thought, though it sometimes comes back out during adulthood. For example, when we are working out particularly difficult problems. Vygotsky theorised that children (and adults) use speech when operating in their zone of proximal development, just beyond their level of competence.

How parents can support cognitive development: scaffolding

Cognitive development theory uses a metaphor from the construction industry: scaffolding, a temporary structure around the growing building to assist its construction.

In cognitive development theory, scaffolding gives children a structure to master a skill, after which it becomes redundant. In this context, scaffolding is about supporting children within their zone of proximal development: setting goals, regulating their actions and inhibiting unhelpful responses, organising their actions and selecting strategies. It can be as simple as a series of hints and prompts that are appropriate for the child’s developmental level.

Recently, many researchers have studied scaffolding and its impact on cognitive development when variously applied. Cognitive development advances when scaffolding is applied well and constantly adjusted to the child’s progress.

Piaget versus Vygotsky

Psychologists have long sought to discuss the theory of cognitive development by comparing the work of Piaget and Vygotsky, both of whom emphasised the role of social interaction, though in different ways.

In reality, both of them emphasised social interaction to such a degree that even leading experts often can’t read statements from one or the other and be certain of whether it was written by Piaget or Vygotsky.

One way to see a difference is through a thought experiment: What would happen to child development if there were no adults?

For Vygotsky, there would be no development, because children cannot move forward out of their zone of proximal development without more expert help.

For Piaget, there could be development, albeit not a type to be recommended. Two children interacting with each other could learn more than one child alone.

Executive function: a core concept in cognitive development theory

Put very simply, executive function is a set of mental skills that helps a person gain control over their actions and thoughts. Scientists have identified four components:

1. Working memory – the ability to hold information and recall it when carrying out a task.
2. Inhibitory control – suppressing initial impulses in favour of more rational action.
3. Attentional flexibility – changing from one way of solving a problem to another.
4. Planning – using all the skills above, creating a strategy to get a task done.

(Photo: Shutterstock.)

Executive function emerges through social interactions, particularly parental scaffolding that helps children operate in their zone of proximal development.

These skills develop in a sequence. Working memory typically develops in early childhood and improves during preschool and beyond. Inhibitory control and attentional flexibility develop in preschool. Planning skills develop during childhood and adolescence.

Like other cognitive development skills, executive function emerges through social interactions, particularly parental scaffolding that helps children operate effectively in their zone of proximal development. If children are specifically taught executive function skills at an appropriate level relative to their development, their skills improve.

Poverty is a key inhibitor of developing executive function skills. But its negative impacts can be mitigated if the parent-child attachment is secure and if the child has more social interaction, for example, at a daycare facility. Sadly, poverty reduces parental resources and is frequently associated with poorer relationships and more chaos.

Cognitive development theory: the importance of social interaction in language development

Unsurprisingly, language ability is critical to the cognitive development that takes place within relationships. The importance of social interaction in language development is one of the most consistent findings across cognitive development research.

Language develops in a critical early period of a child’s life. Research on feral children and on deaf children raised without sign language shows that they cannot learn normal syntax and morphology.

The first language abilities emerge shortly after birth. Babies will respond more to familiar voices, the language of their families, and books that were read aloud while they were in the womb. One-year-olds can distinguish among speech sounds that adults who have learned particular languages can no longer distinguish.

Babies understand words before speaking them. When they learn to speak in their second year, there is an explosion of understanding and speaking words.

So great is the richness and complexity of what children learn so quickly that some have proposed particular innate skills, beyond just the ability to use language that humans have, but other animals don’t.

Noam Chomsky has proposed an innate propensity to grasp syntax and proposed a “universal grammar” for human beings. As children develop, he argues, pre-existing on/off switches are triggered, leading the child from the universal grammar to the actual languages they learn.

Proponents of a social cognitive development theory find many problems with this version of nativism. The developmental view, based on Piaget and Vygotsky, is that children learn language through interaction with their parents and others and through learning social routines on which communication is based.

Parents typically modify language for babies and toddlers – a high intonation often called child-directed speech. This is often called motherese, though fathers do it too. Parents speak more slowly and more simply (though perhaps not in all cultures). Interestingly, in some contexts, fathers tend to use more complex speech, stretching children more within their zone of proximal development. This might be why a father talking with his child correlates better with later language skills than a mother talking with her child.

Researchers have also found that simply hearing words in their environment makes no difference to their language ability. Instead, children learn words in interactions with parents and carers. Time and again, the importance of social interaction in language development is reinforced, lying at the heart of cognitive development.

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What is social emotional development?

When social emotional development has proceeded well, children develop five key social and relationship skills. These include:

Self-awareness

They recognize their emotions, describe their interests and values, and accurately assess their strengths. They have a well-grounded sense of self-confidence and hope for the future.

Self-management

They manage stress, control impulses, and persevere in overcoming obstacles. They can set and monitor progress toward personal and academic goals and express their emotions appropriately in a wide range of situations.

Social awareness

Their social learning enables them to take the perspective of and empathize with others and recognize and appreciate individual and group similarities and differences. They seek out and appropriately use family, school, and community resources.

Relationship skills

They establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships based on cooperation. They resist inappropriate social pressure; constructively prevent, manage, and resolve interpersonal conflict; and seek and provide help when needed.

Responsible decision-making at school, at home, and in the community

In making decisions, they consider ethical standards, safety concerns, appropriate social norms, respect for others, and the likely consequences of various courses of action. They apply these decision-making skills in academic and social situations and are motivated to contribute to the well-being of their schools and communities.

Adapted from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

The social emotional development journey: baby steps

The first steps of social emotional development are gaze, attachment, attention and gestures.

1. Gaze

Even before birth, babies react to projections of faces through the abdomen into the womb. They will gaze into the eyes of their mother and father within days of being born. At 4-5 months, babies will stop smiling and frown if their carer stops smiling or smiles at the wrong time relative to the activity they are both engaged in. The foundations of relationship skills are being laid.

Photo: Shutterstock.

2. Attachment

Attachment is a cornerstone of early social emotional development. The strong emotional bonds that form between infants and caregivers over the first year of life are referred to as attachments, which are based on children’s experience with their caregivers. The originator of the idea of attachment, John Bowlby (1958), observed in the 1950s that infants go through a period between about 6 and 30 months when they require the care and proximity of one or two key people, known as “attachment figures”. Emotional learning starts within these intensely emotional relationships. Patterns of everyday love and care set up the infant’s expectations of how particular caregivers will respond to them. Bowlby called these “internal working models”.

3. Joint attention

This is the ability to home in on another person’s point of view while they are describing or pointing at something, such as a toy or book. It starts around the age of one. The baby learns gradually to switch attention between the carer and the object. Babies will also start to look to the carer when they don’t understand a situation, possibly as a bid to get information or just comfort. Joint attention is a foundation for relationship skills.

4. Intentional gestures

At this stage of social emotional development, around the first year, infants start to point at things. Some months later, they start to use head movements, for example, to indicate yes and no. Gestures can be learned through imitation, such as waving and nodding; others are not necessarily what carers are doing, such as lifting the arms.

Social emotional development: preschoolers’ social learning of others’ perspectives

The next key stage in the social emotional development journey is the emergence of an understanding of others’ perspectives.

The “false belief” test is one measure of this understanding. The child is presented with the story of Maxi, who returns home from shopping with his mother, and, before going out to play, puts his chocolate away. While he is outside, his mother moves the chocolate. When Maxi gets hungry and returns for his chocolate, where will he look for it and/or were will he think it is? A five-year-old will know immediately that Maxi will look for it where he left it, but a three-year-old will incorrectly claim that Maxi will look for it where Maxi’s mother put it.

Another test that a three-year-old is unlikely to pass involves showing something to them that looks like a stone and which they identify as a stone. But once they touch it, they discover it is a sponge. Three-year-olds will then claim they knew it was a sponge all along and that another child would think it is a sponge too.

As children develop, they reach higher levels of social learning.

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For example, the “faux pas” test is a measure of a child’s reaction to a situation in which a child says he does not like a picture and then realises he is standing next to the child who drew it. Social learning involves recognising the embarrassment and the feelings of the budding artist.

Six stages of social learning in childhood

Two researchers, Henry Wellman and David Liu (2004), developed a five-stage test of social understanding up to five to six years of age.

1. Grasping that people may want different things (diverse desires).
2. Understanding that different people may have and act on different beliefs about the same thing when it is not known whether these beliefs are true or false (diverse beliefs).
3. Appreciating that a lack of visual access results in not knowing something (knowledge access).
4. False belief understanding, as described above.
5. Grasping that the emotions that someone experiences may be different from what they display (hidden emotion).

More recently, a sixth stage has been added: understanding sarcasm, which is reported to emerge when a child is six to nine years old.

Emotional learning: the development of empathy

Empathy is the emotional reaction to another’s feelings. Reacting emotionally to another’s distress starts very early, before babies are one year old.

Researchers have observed four stages in the emotional learning of empathy:

1. Global empathic distress. A baby cries when another baby cries.
2. Egocentric empathic distress (11-12 months). As in the first stage, but the babies do something to soothe themselves, like seek refuge with their father.
3. Quasi-egocentric empathic distress (12-14 months). The toddler will attempt to soothe the distress of the other child.
4. Veridical empathy (two years). Toddlers will bring distressed children something to comfort them, like their own teddy bear.

Other research has shown that babies as young as 8-10 months show facial and vocal responses to the distress of another.

Parents who actively encourage emotional learning in their children, helping them see the perspectives of others, have children with more empathic skills. Children who are not just told the rules, but who are made aware of the consequences for others of their own actions, tend to have greater empathy and a feeling of responsibility for the feelings of others.

Relationship skills: prosociality or being nice to others

A key area of current research is the emergence of prosocial behaviour in children: that is, when one person acts for the benefit of another.

Toddlers around the age of 14 and 18 months typically love to help their parents with housework and picking up dropped objects, often so enthusiastically that it becomes very difficult to get any housework done at all. This may, however, not be prosocial, but just a desire to be involved in the activity.

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Two-year-olds will stop playing to help someone, even if that person does not realise they need help – for example, if they have dropped something unknowingly.

Parents’ encouragement of helping in the home is associated with greater social understanding in children later. Giving a 20-month-old a reward for prosocial behaviour actually decreases the helping behaviour, whereas praise strongly encourages it. These things happen irrespective of a child’s temperament.

Nine influences on social emotional development in children

Social emotional development in childhood is a gradual process of social learning and emotional learning through activity and talking about the activity.

Culture

Children’s rate of social learning varies significantly, as does the age at which they are able to pass the false belief test. Australian and Canadian children understand false belief, on average, a little before British or American children. Austrian and Japanese children lag further behind. In some communities, children will pass the test only at the aged of eight, for example, Samoan children, Junin Quechaun children in Peru, Mofu children in Cameroon, or the Tola and Tainae children of Papua New Guinea.

Interestingly, authoritarian parenting reduces performance in the false belief test in European Americans, but not in Korean-American families where they a positively related.

Siblings

Interaction with siblings helps social learning and relationship skills. Children with siblings progress some months ahead of children without siblings, though the varied results from research suggests that more than just the fact of having siblings is involved. The quality of the interaction may be important. For example, a child with older siblings may be more exposed to discussions about what others know and don’t know. Also, the impact of siblings is less on a child with already advanced language abilities. One theory is that siblings help generate greater self-awareness through more frequent references to “me” and “mine”.

Play

Pretend play involves making plans and assigning roles, and this may develop social learning and relationship skills. It may also be a factor in the sibling effect.

Peers

Popular children tend to be better at the false belief test and children who have been rejected by peers tend to do worse on the faux pas test. It is unclear which way cause and effect are working here. Lack of friendship and a low level of social learning could contribute to each other.

Child characteristics

A shy and socially fearful temperament is associated with more advanced social understanding in preschool, though the evidence is not entirely consistent.

Blindness and deafness

An inability to see or hear delays social learning, though this is not the case for deaf children with deaf parents who communicate well with them, suggesting that language is important for social learning.

Parent-child interaction

The way that parents interact with their children and use language influences the children’s social development. Responsive conversations, with organised give and take, contribute to social understanding. So do conversations about thinking, desires, emotions and intentions.

Parents with more advanced social understanding have children with better social learning. Parents who talk to their children more about others’ feelings have children who do better on the false belief test. Authoritarian parenting, characterised by shouting and physical punishment, is associated with less social learning.

Earlier attachment

Children who have enjoyed secure attachment in their first year will tend to do better in the false belief test when they are five.

Mind mindedness

If a parent describes their child as someone with a mind, rather than just a physical being – so-called “mind mindedness” – and use psychological terms to describe their children, the children are likely to pass the false belief test at an earlier age. Hearing psychological terms used to explain and elaborate social events improves children’s social understanding. A mediating factor here is the higher language skills of these children.

Social emotional development: the role of language

Language has been shown to play a very important role in the whole process of social emotional development in the early years. Advanced language skills are linked to better performance on the false belief test, for example.

Purposefully teaching children the meaning of mental-state words, such as know, think, wonder, and figure out, has a positive impact on understanding of emotion at age three and performance in the false belief test at age four.

The benefits of strong social emotional development: good relationship skills

Does a child who does better in the false belief test or the faux pas test have better relationship skills and a better social life with friends? The answer is yes. Such a child is likely to have better relationship skills, engage less in conflict, use more sophisticated arguments in response to others’ perspectives and interests, have better close friendships, and be less likely either to bully or be bullied. Greater social understanding and relationship skills are not linked to premeditated proactive use of aggression, but they are linked to the more unthinking reactive form.

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Some of these associations are small – for example, only 4% of the variance in peer popularity could be linked to difference in performance on the faux pas test.

Advanced social emotional learning: morality

Jean Piaget

In The Moral Judgement of the Child (1932/1965), Jean Piaget discussed children’s understanding of the rules of the game and their judgement of bad behaviours. He proposed that morality emerges as children develop relationship skills with peers.

Piaget observed how children play with marbles:

• At three years, children tend to be unaware of any rules.
• Between three and six years, children are inconsistent about rules and their application.
• From the age of seven, children understand the rules.
• From the age of nine, children start to understand that rules are not simply handed down from on high, but are agreed by mutual consent.
• From the age of 11, children master the rules completely and police them.

These are only approximate ages for the children Piaget interviewed. He thought that what is important in moral development are relationships of cooperation among equals. These are best suited for understanding others and working out a solution that is good for all. In contrast, within relationships of constraint, children have difficulty understanding others’ perspectives, so these relationships are not well suited for moral development.

Lawrence Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg took another approach. He maintained that the key to morality is not behaviour itself but the reasons that a person has for behaving that way. For example, not paying taxes could be a selfish means of cheating the state, or an unselfish stand against the way the state uses the money.

Kohlberg posed painful moral dilemmas, often choices about who should be allowed to die in a situation with two possibilities. He then observed how people respond to them.

He described six stages or world views.

1. Might is right. Rules must be followed, and disobedience should be punished.
2. Do to others what you would want them to do to you.
3. Do to others as if they were yourself, with the perspective extending to family and friends only.
4. Communities need accepted rules to prevent breakdown, and these should be broken only in the most extreme cases.
5. Rules should be defined by fundamental human rights. The question should always be asked: are current rules and laws moral?
6. Everyone affected by a rule should have a say in how that rule is put in place and implemented.

Kohlberg observed that most adults reach stage 3 or 4, and few reach 5 or beyond. He believed that moral development occurs as people encounter situations where the current rules break down and they are faced with new moral dilemmas.

Objections raised to Kohlberg’s theory include:

• People are not always consistently in one stage at a time.
• Some cultures place more emphasis than others on social solidarity, harmony relationships and deep affection for others. This affects how rules are applied.
• The stages are not necessarily hierarchical. There are very good people who help others in their communities and yet are at stages 3 and 4.

Morality versus social conventions

Not all rules are the same, and children learn this early. Some rules are social conventions – calling a teacher “Mr” or “Mrs”, wearing a school uniform, how to hold a knife and fork. But other rules are moral, including those relating to protecting others from harm, such as not stealing or not fighting. Children as young as three years understand the difference between these types of rules.

Some have criticised both Piaget and Kohlberg for mixing up the learning of social conventions and morality. “Domain theory” holds that they are separate processes from the outset, though this idea creates the problem of rules that are somewhere in between, such as lining up and dressing in a way that may offend others.

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Sustained, moderate-to-severe play deprivation during the first 10 years of life appears to be linked to poor early child development, later leading to depression, difficulty adapting to change, poorer self-control, and a greater tendency to addiction as well as fragile and shallower interpersonal relationships. Play deprivation in childhood has come up in numerous interviews that I have conducted with some of America’s most violent criminals.

This emerging evidence is set against childhood environments where outdoor play has decreased by 71 per cent in one generation in the US and UK. Intergenerational play and ‘family’ games are also in decline. Poverty and fewer opportunities to play are endemic, particularly in inner cities.

Joe Frost, the leading American scholar of play, contends that the diminution, modification and/or disappearance of play during the past 50 years is causing a public health crisis and a threat to societal welfare that may last generations. 

Findings on play and early child development

Mounting evidence regarding the impact of play deprivation on early child development and social and emotional learning comes from three sources: behavioral studies of mammals; neuroimaging and chemical analysis of animal brains during and after play; and exploring the childhood play histories of thousands of human adults.

The evidence remains incomplete because it would be unethical to deprive human infants or young children of play intentionally. But findings are sufficiently compelling to demand that we rethink early child development policy and practice around play in homes and in early years’ institutions and schools, and that we reconsider how adults lead their lives.

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Researchers have detailed behavioral evidence in rats showing both the deleterious effects of play deprivation and the positive effects of adequate play. Rats do not function well if they don’t play. Play-deprived rats can’t distinguish friend from foe. They don’t mate well, and they are less resilient than normal rats in response to stress. All rats react with fear and flee if they are subject to a cat odour-laden stimulus. However, rats that play get over it and return to normal. Play-deprived rats don’t get over the stress well. 

Play primes the brain for social and emotional learning 

There are parallels with severe play-deprivation in individual humans – particularly young children who find themselves unable to play because, for example, they are caught up in wars, severe poverty, or abusive home settings. When these children do not play normally, they may have real difficulty joining in with the human tribe and recovering from their experiences. That’s because belonging to your own social group is a complex social and emotional learning experience, catalyzed by play.

When they reach elementary school, severely play-deprived children may not have learned the complicated languages of play which harmoniously bring together the cognitive, emotional, physical and social elements that are all necessary for personal competence in playing.

The social and emotional learning that allows safe play between kids occurs slowly. A child who has not had early experience of healthy play may overdo the play process or may simply not understand what is going on. These children can become isolated or bullied, or they may become bullies. The lingering effects of childhood play deficits echo in later adult attitudes about becoming a viable part of a community.

Behavioral evidence around play-deprived children is reinforced by studies of rats. These experiments show the anatomical benefits of healthy play, which activates a wide array of genes in the prefrontal cortex. This is the executive area of the brain, governing decision-making for rats as well as other social mammals, including humans.

Jeffrey Burgdorf at Northwestern University created an experiment in which rats, aged between four and 15 weeks, engaged in rough-and-tumble play. After they had experienced intense play, he found that between 300 and 1,200 genes had been activated in the prefrontal cortex. The late Jaak Panksepp, a play neuroscientist and co-author, with Lucy Biven, of ‘The Archaeology of the Mind,’ suggested that as many as 3,000 genes in the cortex may be activated by play. In short, play seems to be vital in crafting social brains.

“Rats do not function well if they don’t play. They can’t distinguish friend from foe. They don’t mate well and they are less resilient than normal rats in their responses to stress.”

This work needs finer analysis. We do not yet fully understand the processes by which chemicals such as dopamine, endocannabinoids, opiates and IGF-1 are released in the brain. We need to know more about how neurotransmitters and neuro-hormones operate in response to play experiences and how they can influence brain development, functioning and lifetime plasticity. 

Early child development of young male murderers 

Another piece helps to build a fuller picture. My own research, conducted since 1968, has involved around 6,000 individually conducted play histories. It correlates play deprivation during early child development with the predilection of felons for violent, antisocial criminal activities. We found the play experience of homicidal individuals to be vastly different from that of other human beings. Their childhoods were typically characterized by isolation, abuse or bullying. 

As a clinician reviewing incarcerated young male murderers, I noted that none of them, in their self-reporting or in family recollections, remembered ‘normal’ playground rough-and-tumble play. They were unable to remember the names of playground friends. Bullying and inappropriately acted out aggression were their ‘play’ patterns. There is an intriguing parallel here between rats and antisocial humans: behavioral research shows that rats deprived of rough-and-tumble play don’t possess the social skills to distinguish appropriate from inappropriate aggression. 

Early child development underpins play ‘drive’ 

The skills and capacities to play seem to begin to develop in humans very early on, from the first communications between mother and child. Normally, joyfulness naturally erupts between mother and infant as they perform baby talk spontaneously and instinctively.

This attunement and bonding between parent and infant underpin a sense of safety, and they are accompanied by mutual joy that provides grounding for the play drive to respond to opportunities that arise. In contrast, when that attunement process between parent and child is interrupted or does not occur, early child development is disrupted. Then infants tend to see the world as threatening and unsafe, and they are less ready for play.

Allan N. Schore, a leading neuropsychologist, has shown how fine attunement and trust between mothers and infants produce mutual electrical rhythms that shape the baby’s brain and, likely, set the foundations for a child being able to play and establish trust with other people. 

Risks of ‘helicopter’ parenting for social and emotional learning 

For parents in general, an issue that is more relevant than severe play deprivation is the need for children to be able to respond to play within their own instinctive capability. Parents or caretakers should allow that natural gleeful pleasure in play to emerge in its own way. However, ‘helicopter’ parents sometimes orchestrate how they think infants should play rather than leave them free to respond.

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When children are highly sensitized to what the adults want to see, or their parents have a fixed plan for what their children should become, they may learn to suppress their intrinsic play experience to fit the adult who is trying to mold them. So authentic play is set aside to gain their parents’ approval.

Among my early interviewees was Charles Whitman, whose childhood play history featured consistent play deprivation due to an overbearing and disturbed father. In August 1966, in Austin, Texas, Whitman killed his mother and his wife. Then, by sniper fire from the University of Texas clock tower, he killed more than a dozen people and wounded more than 30. His preschool teachers, recalling Whitman’s childhood, said that, rather than spontaneously engage in activities of his choice, he would look carefully to see what pleased the teacher. He mimicked what he thought would be appropriate rather than picking behavior that was true to himself. He became a gifted mimic, hiding his inner feelings from others.

Such compensatory behavior occurs among many play-deprived children – they can become skilled in pleasing adults and in conforming behavior. In doing so, they are not expressing their own motivations. That intrinsic motivation is found in childhood through play. If children don’t play, they do not find the authentic exuberance that is so obvious in the playground when they play freely from within themselves. 

Play-deprived early child development 

In contrast, severely play-deprived children will tend to engage in automatic and repetitive activities, failing to engage socially. In later childhood, the play-deprived child may have more explosive reactions to circumstances rather than a sense of belonging.

As adults, they are often unoptimistic and subject to smoldering depression due to a lack of joy in their lives. They tend to be more ideologically fixed and certain with little ambiguity in their social worlds. That’s because play fosters the social and emotional learning and acceptance that ambiguity is a part of complex and human interactions.

Play-saturated children tend to have more resilience. They feel comfortable with, and are curious to know, other children who are different. Tolerance and developing empathy are natural outgrowths of more complex play processes.

Rough-and-tumble play provides nuanced social learning that inclusion and exclusion is part of the politics of human beings getting along. It is not a life or death thing – you can roll with the punches and still belong to social groups. A child who does not gain this social and emotional learning may become hyper-reactive to criticism, interpreting it as exclusion. 

“Reviewing incarcerated young male murderers, I noted that none of them remembered “normal” playground rough and tumble play … Bullying and inappropriately acted out aggression were their “play” patterns.”

The late Brian Sutton-Smith, a pioneering play researcher, contended that among adults who continuously disrupted a group process in, say, a church or civic organization, one could normally find that play deficits had occurred in their childhoods which appeared to keep them from ‘belonging.’ This disrupted early child development created a lack of social skills and made it difficult for them to participate in tribal sharing and cooperative activity in an adult unit. 

Play implications for social and emotional learning 

Is there a play crisis? We should certainly be alert to the possibility. Numerous influences are currently diminishing access to self-organized childhood play. We do not know the outcome of these many influences.

All parents should identify their own play nature, recognize the spontaneous play natures of their children, and allow environments to nourish those natures. The anarchy of normal play at preschool should be given space. Within it lies a complicated learning process, as complicated as learning to read.

The social and emotional learning that is fundamental in play behavior is vital for human survival. Play might seem trivial in industrial societies, but we should understand that it exists because it helps us adapt to each other. It is a basic aspect of human socialization that lets us have more fun with each other and, yes, helps to keep us from killing each other and allows a cooperative ethic to develop in each of us.

Play also equals learning. Children engaged playfully will have memorable learning experiences. If math is joyful with a playful teacher, children learn better. Play should be infused into the education system because it makes learning joyful and school into a source of reward, not a punishment.

In the West, we have distorted life by separating work and play, forgetting our pasts as hunter-gatherers, in which sharing and joyfulness were integrated into the task of finding food. Honoring a human need to be in a state of play and seeing this as a public health necessity is as important as hand washing, good nutrition or careful driving.

Educators, pediatricians and families should advocate for and protect unstructured play and playful learning in preschools and schools.

Teachers should focus on playful rather than didactic learning by letting children take the lead and follow their own curiosity.

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The brain changes that shape baby development stages

Babies’ brains change in many ways as a product of biological maturation and external stimuli. These changes are critical for explaining important baby development stages during the first years.

Though the number of neurons remains constant, brain size triples. Neurons grow to connect distant parts of the brain. They form synapses to allow ‘associative learning’, connecting different experiences with one another. They become myelinated (electrically isolated) to speed up information flow.

Sleeping and digestion rely on the brain stem. The stem is the oldest part of the brain, and it regulates all our vital functions. In the early stages, new connections form between the brain stem and the frontal lobe—the youngest part of the brain, which controls higher order processes, including attention and body perception. These new connections help infants develop a stable biological rhythm and control their bowels and bladders.

Shortly after birth, a huge production of synapses takes place in different areas of the brain. This is followed by a pruning, with critical periods for each brain area. Which neural connections are kept depends on a baby’s learning experiences and follows the use it or lose it principle. This is why six-month-olds can discriminate between facial expressions or oral sounds from different cultures really well, but then show perceptual narrowing to adjust to their own environment towards their first birthday.

To function more efficiently, each neuron also needs to become electrically isolated through myelinisation. At this stage, gross motor actions such as crawling, sitting or standing and walking, as well as fine motor actions such as exploring a toy, all require communication between different parts of the brain. This communication speeds up with increasing neural myelinisation, resulting in improved motor coordination.

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Eight Baby Development Stages

Baby development in the early years includes rapid changes in different areas. Each area has its own milestones and develops according to its own rules.

To know and to understand how baby development stages in each area build on one another, and how development in different domains is coordinated, is key to helping infants achieve their potential.

The motor development stages include (1) gross motor functions such as head or torso movements, and (2) fine motor functions such as hand and finger movements. Age-related changes in motor skills largely depend on maturation of the brain but also require muscle training and coordination. In general, moving around and manipulating objects allows a baby to explore the environment, indirectly supporting mental development.

The mental development stages start with (3) perception (especially seeing and hearing), followed by (4) cognition. Cognition includes basic processes (attention, categorization, memory) and higher-order abilities (reasoning and problem solving).  Brain maturation and external experiences jointly determine mental development. Mental development induces changes in many other domains.

Later stages of development involve behaviors directed at others, including (5) verbal communication (i.e., language comprehension and production) and (6) building social relations (i.e., forming and maintaining contact, showing prosocial behavior, following rules, cooperating, playing). Adequate stimulation by caregivers largely determines the baby’s development in these domains, but self-directed behaviors seem relevant, too.

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Self-directed developments lie behind infants’ (7) self-regulation (e.g., sleeping behavior, bladder and bowel or impulse control) and (8) emotions (experience and expression). Even though progress in these areas has a strong biological basis, co-regulation—-when caregivers help the child regulate his or her internal states—seems equally important. Other- and self-directed abilities are closely intertwined at this stage of development because language skills and social relations both help the child gain an awareness of inner states and control expressive behavior.

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Baby milestones: gross motor development

Throughout the first three years, babies progress from more or less stationary beings with little body control to explorers who can roll, sit, crawl, stand, and walk. They learn how to keep their balance and to throw or catch objects. Once this happens, the main milestones of gross motor development have been achieved.

Newborns have motor reflexes to interact with their physical environment. Voluntary movements are also possible but not yet well adjusted.

During the first weeks of life, infants learn to keep their heads in a stable position without support, before they learn to lift their upper bodies while lying on their tummies. A few months later, another milestone is reached: they can roll from tummy to back and vice versa.

Most infants start to move forward and backwards on the floor by four to six months. When lying on their tummy and lifting up their bottom, bending their knees, and then pushing backwards, they find themselves in a perfect position to start crawling. By seven months of age they reach another milestone: they can sit without support and freely move around on the floor.

Their legs and arms now become stronger, and soon they learn to pull themselves up the furniture. Once they can reach a standing position, they practice keeping balance without support, and around their first birthday, most infants start to walk.

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In their second year, they seek new challenges, such as climbing staircases, walking backwards, bending down and straightening up again and standing on just one leg. But it is usually not until their third birthday that children reach another key milestone: daring to hop or jump.

Regarding arm movements, throwing and catching a ball can now be mastered, but only if these skills are practised regularly.

Baby milestones: fine motor development

The fine-tuning of finger movements, and the coordination of finger, wrist, and arm movements, allows infants to manipulate objects effectively, providing the basis for many other milestones, such as cultural skills – drawing, dressing up or using eating tools effectively.

Infants need to use hand and finger control to explore objects or surfaces, and to use tools. How do they reach this particular milestone?

Newborns come equipped with a grabbing reflex: all fingers immediately close around objects touching the palm of the hand. By grabbing different objects this way, the infant quickly learns that finger positions need to adjust to the size and shape of an object.

As they start gaining control over their hand movements at two to three months of age, infants bring the thumb and the other four fingers in an opposing position to prevent objects from slipping. Some time later, towards the end of the first year of life, they also acquire the “scissor-grip”, using just the thumb and the index finger, to hold very fine objects like pearls or a hair.

Another important milestone attained early is rotating the wrist of the hand under visual control. That way, infants can not only grab objects, but also look at them from different angles. This skill develops around six months. Around the same time, they acquire the ability to transfer an object from one hand to the other. This helps the baby learn how to move both hands independently.

Many fine motor milestones of the first three years also require good coordination with arm, hand, and wrist movements. Among the easier tasks to master are drinking from an open cup without spilling liquid. A more demanding task is to use a pencil for drawing or to open and close zippers or studs.

Baby milestones: perceptual development

Perception in all but the visual domain is already well developed at birth. Babies feel pain, are sensitive to touch, and respond to changes in body posture. They can smell and taste even subtle differences in odors and liquids. They can also hear well. They quickly learn how to combine information from different senses.

One way to detect achievement of these milestones is to look for behavioral responses. Young infants respond positively to the soft touch of their skin but negatively to painful stimulation or sudden changes in posture. They show more movements when feeling cold, and they turn away from heat sources when feeling hot. They show disgust in facial expression when confronted with things they don’t like to smell or taste (e.g., rotten food) but respond positively when smelling or tasting things they like (e.g., breast milk). With regard to hearing, clear preferences for complex sounds and human voices can be observed, especially when a familiar person talks in a soft melodic way.

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Unlike other senses, visual perception is quite limited at birth. But even then, infants prefer to look at facial features and objects with sharp contrasts. Their color vision and contrast sensitivity are still poor, but they can detect moving objects easily. As the visual pathway matures, they learn to fix on objects with both eyes, and their vision gradually improves over the first year of life. This is also true of depth perception.

Some intersensory pathways are linked from early on. Newborns automatically turn their heads in the direction of a sound source. They also gradually learn to associate different sensual experiences, thereby forming stable representations for objects and events long before they can be labeled verbally. This marks the boundary to the next major milestone: cognitive development.

Baby milestones: cognitive development

Cognitive development refers to basic skills (e.g., attention, categorization and memory), and to higher-order skills (e.g., symbolic thinking needed for language acquisition, means-end analysis relevant for forming multiple-step goals, causal reasoning necessary for finding explanations, and problem solving allowing for adaptive behavior).

Infants learn how to control their attention, categorize things they perceive, and memorize objects and events. At the next milestone, they understand goal-directed behavior, and they extend their causal and functional knowledge about objects. This allows them to solve problems.

Whereas newborns still respond automatically to external stimulation, voluntary attention gradually improves from two to six months. Infants first learn to fix on something, then to disengage attention again, and finally to show focused attention, resisting distractions. With age, attention becomes more focused and can be kept high for longer.

When two-month-olds pay attention to different stimuli, they can already recognize similarities common to all exemplars, for example, recognizing different objects as “dogs” because they all have a similar shape and all bark. By seven months, they have been found to identify animate beings based on perceptual cues such as facial features and the ability to show self-initiated movement and to interact with others.  This marks a major milestone: the start of conceptual thinking and causal reasoning. Now, infants learn more about causal and functional relations every day.

Towards their first birthday, infants start to search for hidden toys and become able to consciously memorize individual objects. Furthermore, they can now imitate action sequences involving multiple steps and memorize events. However, until about three years, they fail to show “elaborated episodic memory”, that is, knowing when and where a given event took place.

Around their second birthday, infants pass another milestone, coming to understand that to achieve a certain goal they might need to do something else first, for example, get a cup to be able to drink water from it. Around the same time, they learn to interpret the meaning of gestures, words or other symbols. Such higher-order skills allow them to start combining different memories and to understand more causal or functional relations, thus providing the ground for problem solving.

Baby milestones: language development

Language comprehension precedes language production. In general, infants understand and produce very short verbal expressions, then gradually learn to put syllables, words and sentences together.

From birth on, infants show language recognition of their mother tongue. Until eight months, they remain sensitive to phonemes of all other languages as well. Later, perceptual narrowing leads to a loss of sensitivity for languages that they don’t hear on a regular basis.

Nine-month-olds identify individual words when listening to a continuous word flow and show the first signs of true language comprehension. They understand nouns and end-state oriented prepositions (e.g., out, off, gone) earlier than verbs, and adjectives. By 12 months, infants can comprehend simple sentences.

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Interestingly, two- to three-year-olds still have a hard time interpreting sentences that include negations. They may follow the instruction “Stop that!” but fail to understand the command: “Don’t do that!” They also have trouble understanding long sentences that include side phrases or passive forms.

Language production begins at two months when infants start ‘cooing’. Soon after, they enter the ‘babbling phase’, first producing simple syllables (such as “ma”) and then doubling them (“ma-ma”) before they learn to combine different syllables (e.g., “au-to”) at about eight to 10 months.

The next milestone is producing longer utterances that sound like their mother tongue but have no meaning yet. This is called ‘jargoning’. They also start using a given sound-combination repeatedly to label a specific entity, thus producing their first meaningful word at 12 months.

During the second and third year, infants reach another milestone: they learn to combine nouns with end-state propositions or other words, thus producing simple sentences like “pants off”. These sentences become longer with age as the child begins to speak in multiple sentences.

Baby milestones: social development

Infants are social beings from the very beginning. They communicate and imitate, share attention and knowledge about objects with others, show prosocial behavior, and play cooperatively. The quality and complexity of these interactions increases at each milestone.

Newborns are specifically interested in other humans and soon become engaged in nonverbal social interactions. This helps infants discriminate between their primary caregiver(s) and other people, eventually leading to stranger anxiety at about seven months and to clear attachment behavior by one year. Now infants treat their primary caregivers as a safe base for exploration and respond with protest if they leave the room.

By three to four months, infants can follow the gaze of other people. At about nine to 12 months, this behavior may lead to a state called joint attention, when both individuals focus on the same object and are aware the other’s state of mind.

Another form of social learning is imitation, which plays a central role in early childhood. Toddlers learn a great deal about our culture by observing and imitating others.

Children’s high interest in social interactions also shows in their prosocial behavior. At two years, they achieve another milestone, showing helping behavior. Via observational learning and verbal instruction, toddlers rapidly start to recognize norms – they learn rules of behavior and complain if others don’t follow these rules.

Regarding play behavior, infants first show parallel play with others, but soon start to show associative play, exchanging toys or tools and commenting on playmates’ actions.

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Past their second birthday, they start constructive games like building something in cooperative play. More advanced forms of social play like pretend or role play emerge in the third year. Towards the end of toddlerhood, children reach another milestone—they can play simple rule games like hide-and-seek or catch-and-run.

Baby milestones: self-regulation development

Self-regulation refers to the ability to regulate mental states and behavior, including attention, thoughts, emotions and needs. Early childhood is a critical time for this milestone, as caregivers gradually reduce their help and support children’s emerging self-regulation skills.

Self-regulation has a physical, mental and behavioral dimension, including the regulation of sleep and attention, emotions and basic needs, and impulse control. These different skills start emerging in infancy but make greater progress in later toddlerhood.

Even newborns can sometimes soothe themselves and regulate their attention without external help, thus revealing a basic capacity for cognitive and emotional self-regulation.

During the first months of life, they are primarily developing a stable sleeping rhythm. But when infants are healthy, have regular digestion, eat enough in the evening, go to sleep at a regular time each day, and are not disturbed at night, they can learn to sleep through by three to four months of age. During the day, they may reduce sleeping to one longer nap in the afternoon from their second year on.

Another important milestone of self-regulation is to stop wearing nappies/diapers. Again, children’s competences depend on biological maturation and caregiver help, but most toddlers can indicate when they need to go to the toilet, and they typically manage to stay clean overnight by age three.

Emotion and impulse regulation are still very difficult for young children, but first attempts can be perceived when toddlers wait until it’s their turn, and when they can deal with frustration and accept prohibitions. It is important to recognize these early milestones of self-regulation and to reinforce them, because self-regulation becomes more relevant soon. In preschool, children are expected to act cooperatively, to consider the perspective of other people, to become patient, and to avoid expressing anger and aggression without restraint.

Baby milestones: emotional development

In emotional development, we first observe body-related emotions, then basic emotions and finally complex emotions like guilt, pride or shame, which require self-awareness and knowledge about social norms. Emotions become more differentiated and conscious with age. Cognitive and language development, including mental talk, play a critical role in emotion experience and expression.

Newborns can express basic emotions like hunger, tiredness, pain, or disgust, but also psychological states like negative or positive arousal, curiosity, pleasure and excitement.

Basic emotions become differentiated somewhat later. Infants can now experience various degrees of discomfort, anger or fear, pleasure or surprise, and they develop affectionate attitudes towards certain persons or objects.

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More complex emotions are closely tied to cognitive and social development. This is true of experiencing guilt, pride, shame or anxiety. These emotions first emerge during toddlerhood. The same is true of emotions like sympathy or pity that involve taking someone else’s perspective, but this is a later milestone and can be observed only in older toddlers.

Consciously hiding a given emotion or pretending to have it requires self-control and can thus typically not be observed before the age of three, whereas the unconscious control of emotional expressions (e.g., stopping crying after being picked up by a caregiver) can be found much earlier.

Young children find it hard to talk about emotions. They start by naming body states like feeling hungry, tired, or cold. Next they learn to talk about basic emotions like fear or anger. Some older toddlers can start to describe more complex emotions like anxiety.

In general, it seems easier for children to name emotions they observe in others than to reflect on their own feelings. Caregivers can support verbal emotion expression by using mental talk, that is, frequently describing their own feelings and needs or those of other people.

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