So far, this series has examined emotions and relationships, together with information about the brain and the links between them. Here, I will share some thoughts about bodily development.
This topic embraces the four principles of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Understanding children's strengths and also their areas of difficulty reinforces the uniqueness of each child.
Our attitudes towards their physical well-being will support the principle of Positive Relationships. Considering how best to support their growth and development will enhance our thinking about an Enabling Environment, and all these will influence their learning.
When we consider physical development, we often tend to think about it in terms of a child's gross and fine motor development, although we may also notice how their bodies are growing.
Current concerns about an 'epidemic' of obesity will have caused us to also stop and think about a child's general weight. Growth and weight will also influence a child's capacity for movement, and we cannot separate our understanding of physical development and its relationship with our ability to move. This is especially true if we remember that movement combined with information from the senses are the baby's first ways of communicating with the world.
Appreciating physical development, therefore, requires us to think about:
- the growth of the whole body - head, neck, trunk, arms, legs, hands, feet, and height and weight
- the 'body' senses
- the growth, strength and co-ordination of muscles and joints
- the body and sensory 'maps' in the brain.
PHYSICAL GROWTH
Simply getting bigger as an infant, child and adolescent can mean several things. For example, we can do more as we can reach and move further. This means that our range of experiences gets literally bigger.
In addition, a person's height can influence how others react to them. A tall child may be treated as older than they are, or a very small child may be perceived as younger. Even as adults, height can influence how we think and feel about ourselves and others.
By the age of one year, an infant has usually tripled their birthweight and has grown another 50 per cent. In middle and late childhood, until adolescence, both height and weight gain is much slower, with about a 1-1.3kg weight gain per year and 5-7.5cm gain in height per year. Adolescence brings a huge spurt; teenagers can grow up to 25cm and gain about 18kg in weight.
During infancy and childhood, the head, chest and trunk grow fastest, with arms and legs, and then hands and feet following behind. In adolescence it is the other way round, with boys' growth spurt usually beginning at the end of puberty.
The way infants grow also follows a pattern, in that they gain head and neck control before having control over the trunk, and it is not until they are sitting steadily that they begin to have enough stability to be able to walk.
As children enter their second year, they look more 'in proportion', and as they become more 'streamlined', activities such as walking, running or hopping become more skilled as the body's centre of gravity becomes literally more 'centralised'.
OUR BONES
We all know the 'soft spot' on a baby's skull that gradually closes as the bones grow over it. All our bones have a 'soft spot' at the ends, and this is where growth takes place. The bones themselves don't grow; it is these soft 'ends' that lengthen over time.
It is important that we don't make children do specific tasks that they may find uncomfortable while they are growing, such as detailed 'writing' before their wrist bones are developed (at around five years), or have them sit in positions that they may find awkward, such as cross-legged or kneeling for long periods.
OUR SENSES
When we think about the senses, we may tend to concentrate on what are sometimes termed the 'primary' senses - vision, smell, taste and hearing.
While these primary senses are crucial, there are equally important senses termed 'somatic' or 'body' senses. These are touch, balance, awareness of pain, heat and cold, and proprioception - the awareness of where parts of our body are at any one time.
Proprioception
If this awareness of your body parts seems rather obvious, just think about when you have learned to dance or skate. You notice what you are doing with your legs and arms and where you have to place them. You couldn't do this if you hadn't already learned in infancy and early childhood about the general position of all your body parts. An infant can usually identify their own body parts at around 16-18 months. This understanding links with the ability to recognise themselves in a mirror at about the same time.
It is interesting that the connections between the lower body and the brain are also more established during a similar phase (learning to walk probably supports this process), and so children become more aware of the sensations they have when they need to go to the toilet.
Proprioception is assessed by the brain from multi-sensory information. Any delay or difficulty in one or more of the senses can result in the child being awkward in skills of throwing and catching and having poor awareness of the physical 'space' of themselves or others.
Position
While it is vital to learn where your body parts are, it is equally important to know where your body is. Special cells in the part of the brain that deals with memory, called the hippocampus, help with this.
One set of cells constantly 'maps' the surrounding area, so that you can find your way around the supermarket, negotiate a route from the water tray to the book corner, or find your way around the house in the dark. The fact that these 'maps' work on the familiar explains why it is so disorientating when the supermarket moves products around, and why children can become so upset if you change the room in your setting. The children are having to 'remap' their space. If a child is already anxious, this can really unsettle them. So, change surroundings with care, and try to leave one or two areas in the same space.
Another set of cells maps space independently of where you are - in other words, something a foot away from you will always be a foot away from you. This helps the brain keep 'track' of your body, no matter what your environment.
Balance
Our sense of balance is provided by extremely ancient, tiny structures in our inner ears. It is vital for our well-being. We need to know if we are up or upside down!
This system is fully operational at 16 weeks in the womb and is already myelinated at birth (see Part 2: Brain development). Considering how babies are moved around, the fact that their balance system is fully functional makes sense - otherwise they would be sick and distressed all the time!
Of course, like every other sense, balance does not work independently, but links with vision and whole body awareness. Try shaking your head while still reading this page - your balance system works with your eyes so you can still track the words.
Balance is closely allied to touch - think about how you walk across a slippery floor or a pebble beach and how your balance links with what you feel with your feet. You also need balance to be able to walk and use your hands independently. Think about a time when you have felt dizzy and how you needed to reach out to balance yourself.
We must also recognise how much these physical senses tie in with our emotions. We can feel 'balanced' emotionally as well as physically. When we snuggle up to someone, or to a pet or to an object such as a teddy or a pillow, we feel warmth both physically and psychologically. When we feel alone, it can hurt physically. Those touch, pain and temperature receptors in our bodies as well as balance are not simply functions of our bodies; the sensations experienced become part of our whole view of the world.
GROWTH, STRENGTH AND CO-ORDINATION
Movement of the muscles and joints is supported from birth by the presence of early reflex actions. As Goddard (2002) writes, 'the nervous system learns by doing', and so these reflexes provide the baby's first experiences of moving and connecting with carers supporting their development.
In fact, the reflexes, coupled with an active balance system, allow physical development to be literally 'set in motion'. The integrated nature of development is identified by how the child's levels of nutrition, activity, sleep and provision of opportunity for play will influence how their muscles will grow.
BODY MAPS IN THE BRAIN
Blakeslee & Blakeslee (2007) define a map as 'any scheme that spells out one-to-one correspondences between two different things'. The body maps in the brain do this. For example, the foot map is next to the shin, fingers are next to hands, hands next to arms and so on.
What is different is the amount of space that is allotted to our body parts and this is highly dependent on use - both as humans and what we as individuals may actually do. As it happens, we have two body maps - one based on touch and the other on movement. The way in which they are 'laid out' corresponds to each area, so that the tongue area for sensation is close to the tongue area for movement, and so on.
The sensory map is situated at the back of the frontal cortex and the 'motor map' is situated right next to it at the front of the parietal cortex. The right and left sides of the brain each contain virtually identical pairs of the same maps. The way these maps are laid out corresponds strongly with the way the foetus lies in the womb, so, interestingly, the map for our genitals appears to lie next to our toes!
IN CONCLUSION
The opportunity for play is vital in supporting physical development, especially active outdoor play that allows children to run freely, climb, do handstands, swing, tumble and roll around. All these actions help support all of the senses as well as encouraging strength, poise and confidence in a whole range of activities. Such confidence and poise supports learning in all its forms, and so physical development becomes another part of the jigsaw that makes up the well-being, or otherwise, of the growing human child.
- Maria Robinson can be contacted at mariar1947@hotmail.co.uk. See also www.mariarobinson.co.uk
FURTHER READING
Blakeslee, S, Blakeslee, M (2007) The Body Has a Mind of Its Own. New York, Random House Publishing
Goddard, S (2005) Reflexes, Learning and Behaviour (second edition). Oregon, Fern Ridge Press
Grandin, T (2005) Animals in Translation: London, Bloomsbury
Robinson, M (2007) Child Development from Birth to Eight: A journey through the early years. Open University Press (Chapter 3, 'A world of one's own', provides an overview of vision, hearing, smell and taste as well as a brief resume on movement and early reflexes)
BBC Science and Nature website: www.bbc.co.uk/sn/
DID YOU KNOW ...
We have 206 bones in our body, of which 54 comprise our hands, wrists and fingers. Babies have around 300 bones, some of which are entirely or partly made of cartilage, which is soft and flexible.
During childhood this cartilage is gradually replaced by bone and some fuses together - a process that finishes completely when we are about 25 years old. This growth is influenced by a number of hormones, especially (and unsurprisingly) the growth hormone produced by the pituitary gland. Growth hormone itself can be influenced by high levels of stress.
DID YOU KNOW ...
We have two touch pathways - an 'old' pathway that deals with pain (which also has two further pathways), temperature, itch, tickle, sexual sensation, the 'bump and bang' type of touch and sensual or soothing touch. The other, newer pathway deals with the finer points of touch, so that you can thread a needle or feel for your keys.
- Maria Robinson is an early years consultant and author of From Birth to One and Child Development from Birth to Eight: A Journey Through the Early Years (Open University Press).
