Understanding Child Development
Parent-Centred Parenting is based on a range of well respected psychological theories, including research by Vygotsky, Sameroff, Bruner, Skinner, Gardner, Piaget, Donaldson, Kholberg, Chess and Thomas, and fits well with the philosophical approaches of Plato and J.S. Mill.
Lev Vygotsky, a Russian-born psychologist provided a very powerful theory on cognitive and social development, the central idea behind which is that each person’s actual level of development is
buffered by a zone which represents the range of skills and tasks that the person could achieve with suitable guidance from people more developed in that area. This zone is called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).
The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Vygotsky’s ZPD is normally represented as follows:
The skills within the Proximal Zone are attainable by the individual with appropriate assistance or experiences but everything outside the proximal zone is impossible for that person to learn at that time.
This is a popular model within education, as it recognizes the social aspect of learning and that certain skills are best learnt in an order. The central tenet to this model is that with appropriate scaffolding (Bruner) children can learn quicker and more effectively than they are able to by trial-and-error problem solving alone.
Limitations of Vygotsky’s model
However, this model has limitations – age and developmental stages as formalized by Piaget are believed to determine the size of the proximal zone. This has been criticized as misleading: research has shown that children can learn about sophisticated, abstract concepts at early ages if they are motivated to do so. This is well illustrated by looking at children’s ability to give informed consent to surgery. In order to give informed consent, it is necessary to have an understanding of death and its irreversibility, as well as an understanding of risks involved in surgery and to offset them against the benefits of the operation.
In research with children who had terminal conditions, it was shown that children as young as 8 exhibited an understanding of death and of their situation and would therefore be deemed ‘competent’ to make decisions about their medical treatment. Children who had not experienced death and who had not been resident in hospital were normally well into their teens before they showed evidence of the same degree of understanding. This reinforces the importance of social and experiential learning but doesn’t discount Piaget’s view that biological development limits an individual’s capacity to learn and comprehend.
Vygotsky’s model does not take into account individual differences in areas of development (social, cognitive and physical). As children develop the different areas of development interact and can not be fully separated, but at different times, children may be more developed in one area than their peers, but less well developed in another. An example of this is the child who turns up at the first day of school being able to read and write, but who is unable to share and play with other children. Cognitively, he is advanced, but his social development is not as well developed as his peers.
It is important to understand how the different areas of development can facilitate progression in each other. For example, a child needs to develop the gross motor muscles in the arm (as used in big painting brush strokes) in order to enable them to develop the fine motor muscles required for holding and controlling a pen. Once a child can control a pen and learn to express themselves with it a world of new learning opportunities arise. Hence the physical development has extended the proximal zone for cognitive and possibly social development.
A good example of this ‘penny dropping’ is phonic learning. When a child realizes that each letter makes a sound and that those sounds combine to form words he or she is then able to learn to read a wide range of words. Until that point, children’s reading will be a function of memory rather than syntactic and semantic rules. When a child understands a new ‘rule’ they move quickly through their Zone of Proximal Development which also expands as new opportunities for learning present themselves.
A revised view of the Zone of Proximal Development
Compatible with Vygotsky’s work, Sameroff’s Transactional model recognises the reciprocity between a child and his environment. The child’s innate potential to learn is enhanced or restricted by external influences. Therefore the outer boundary of the proximal zone should be less fixed and the effect of the environment be acknowledged.
Sameroff stresses the importance of the individual in creating their own environment (consciously or unintentionally) which also impacts on their learning potential.
For example: a colicky or ‘difficult’ baby may, through no ‘fault’ on anyone’s part, have less attention and play-time than a more placid baby. The opportunities for that baby to learn through imitating the adults who interact with it will therefore be reduced. This may result in more attention seeking behaviour, which may be perceived as the baby being increasingly difficult. A good strategy for coping with undesirable behaviour in older children is to ignore it but a baby who is repeatedly ignored, may lose the motivation to seek the attention that will move him through his zone of proximal development, and so the cycle continues.
Development of Intelligence
The diagram above shows 3 developmental areas of cognition, physical development and social development. Traditionally, development was split up into these categories and ‘intelligence’ was associated solely with cognitive development. IQ tests are designed to test a narrow range of cognitive skills such as logic, spatial ability, memory and vocabulary. The limitations of these tests are widely recognised, as there are many other areas of development which, if impaired, cause difficulties for a person trying to live happily and healthily in society.
In agreement with Vygotsky’s social constructivist approach, researchers now recognise that development in one area can facilitate development across a wide range of areas (e.g. learning
to talk helps the development of self image, confidence, vocabulary acquisition, attachment etc).
Pioneering work by Howard Gardner (1975, 1983) identified seven different intelligences and there have been revisions of his theory which include additional ‘intelligences’. In order to really appreciate the individual differences in development it is important consider these as areas of development within the broader heading above.
Many researchers in this field agree on the following distinct intelligences:
Linguistic intelligence involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability
to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. This intelligence includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself rhetorically
or poetically; and language as a means to remember information. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are among those that Gardner sees as having high linguistic intelligence.Logical-mathematical intelligence consists of the capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically. In Gardner's words, in entails the ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically.
This intelligence is most often associated with scientific and mathematical thinking.- Musical intelligence involves skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. It encompasses the capacity to recognize and compose musical pitches, tones, and rhythms. According to Gardner musical intelligence runs in an almost structural parallel to linguistic intelligence.
- Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence entails the potential of using one's whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. It is the ability to use mental abilities to coordinate bodily movements. Gardner sees mental and physical activity as related.
- Spatial intelligence involves the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas.
Interpersonal intelligence is concerned with the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people. It allows people to work effectively with others. Educators, salespeople, religious and political leaders and counselors all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence.
Intrapersonal intelligence entails the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears and motivations. In Gardner's view it involves having an effective working model of ourselves, and to be able to use such information to regulate our lives.
Naturalist intelligence enables human beings to recognize, categorize and draw upon certain features of the environment. It 'combines a description of the core ability with a characterization of the role that many cultures value'.
- Moral Intelligence
Gardner did not recognise moral intelligence as
a discrete development but Kohlberg’s work has shown how children develop morally through stages and so whilst it may comprise parts of the different intelligences, it is felt here that it is an important part of development in its own right. - Spiritual/Existential Intelligence
A controversial inclusion for obvious reasons. The possibility of there being a range of ability levels with regards spiritual and existential skills is sufficient reason to include it here, but until there is widely accepted proof that spirits exist or don’t exist, it will not form a large part of the current discussion.
By combining research on intelligence with the revised Zone of Proximal Development model, it becomes apparent how complex development is and how futile it is for parents to try to force their children through the developmental process too formally. It is much better for parents to provide the children with a successful model and allow their amazing brains to interpret all the signals and signs they receive to enable them to copy behaviour and a positive way of life. Having identified that everyone is has different levels of ability in different areas at different times, it is now useful to see how Thomas and Chess’s (1970) theory of ‘goodness of fit’ helps parents understand their child’s development. Thomas and Chess believed that for children to develop and fulfil their potential, they need to ‘fit’ with the environment in which they are developing. A child, who is ready and eager to learn to read, will
not develop that skill in an environment where little value is placed on reading and there are limited opportunities to look at printed text. A naturally artistic child in a family which values logic and mathematical intelligence may be frustrated and de-motivated. It can be seen therefore, that tolerance and acceptance are very important in order to support the individual child’s natural developmental paths.
Research (e.g. Thomas and Chess, 1977) has shown that children thrive most when there is ‘goodness of fit’ between themselves and their environments. Therefore, parents can help their child fit into the family by being consistent in their approach and letting the child know who they are, what they stand for, what makes them happy, what makes them sad etc. The effect of this is that the child will feel secure and ‘fit’ into the family, share many of the parents’ values and together parents and children can enjoy similar activities, share pleasures, enjoy making each other happy and create a loving, healthy, nurturing relationship.
The ‘Goodness of Fit’ model is particularly helpful in the context of Parent-Centred Parenting as it demonstrates that children have their own personalities which will not necessarily be as the parents originally expected. Both parents and children benefit from being allowed to be themselves as this fosters tolerance and acceptance and helps children develop skills such as empathy from an early age. Working within basic family values and rules, everyone’s preferences and personalities should be taken into account and respected, with children being given clear, age-appropriate explanations as to why it is acceptable for people to disagree or like different things.
to be themselves, and also to give their children the same freedom.