Theories of Child Development

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Near the beginning of 1800’s, child development became a topic of scientific research. Previously the religion and philosophy were the two primary influences of the way and styles of raising a child.

Philosophers

An English philosopher John Locke, says that all knowledge is acquired from experience. A child is like a blank sheet of paper in which all experiences could be written on it. If this were true, controlling the environments and setting which the child was raised would lead to an expected outcome.

This viewpoint gave little influence to the child’s inborn predisposition to become or do certain things. They properly acknowledged the role of cause and effect in the child’s development.

A German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that there are different categories of thinking and it does not arrive from experiences. With that view, the child is believed to have an innate ability to arrange experience and information.

Observational technique

In 1800’s, philosophical schools examine the ways in which children develop. Theorists focused on the child as a separate entity rather than as a small adult. One motion for this research was the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin. Psychologists became fascinated in the probable parallels between the progress of children and that of animals. Psychologists compared different stages of behavior and certain behaviors that encouraged survival.

Darwin’s theories of evolution center on change bringing scientific study out the laboratory into the natural surroundings of its subjects. If other animals could be studied in their natural surroundings by careful observation, it make sense that children could also be studied with the same method. As a result, the naturalistic or observational approach of studying children was created.

Mental testing

About the same time during the start of the 1800’s, there was an increase fascination toward children education throughout the Western world. It was a time for larger educational opportunities for many children in which brought an increased interest in the different types of education that would be suitable for different children. The strategies of picking children for continued education were random and subjective. The need to expand the scientific criteria for evaluating students and mental testing children, a practice still use in today modern education.

A psychologist in France, Alfred Binet along with Theodore Simon developed a test that claimed to measure the capacity of learning rather than current knowledge. The test was the first IQ (intelligence quotient) or mental-age test, it was revolutionary for the attempt to predict future performance.

In Germany Wilhelm Wundt was researching the senses that measures of human intelligence. Even though this technique was very controversial, it aims to predict development or behavior by establishing norms and measuring each person performance. This normative method was one of the leading themes of developmental psychology today. It is still in-use in informal evaluation, as when we would expect a baby to start walking sometime around his/her first birthday.

Psychoanalytical theory

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Freudian perspective was formulated in Austria has provoked more obsessive dispute than any other theory of behavior to this date.

Freud concluded that human is face by inner conflicts that must be resolved. These conflicts are between such primitive forces as life and death, love and hate, and creativity and destructiveness. Freud related all development to the resolution (or lack of resolution) of such early internal conflicts.

Freudian theory was most controversial for its perseverance on the existence of the conflicts, including sexual, in childhood. Also, Freud saw the child as a passive receiver of adult behaviors. This theory gave a incredible weight on parents, who now evaluate every action base on the emotional effect it might have on the growing child. Numerous parents with some knowledge of Freudian theory have come to believe that the only way to evade future emotional disorder is to avoid imposing too many restrictions on the child.

Interactive approach

Perhaps the most useful method for parents to adopt is the interactive approach. In this theory, we see the infant as having some innate ability to organize experience. This ability, however, must be stimulated by experience. In this view, parents or caretakers play a vital role in the development of the child, for they provide the experiences that activate the child’s physical, social, intellectual, and emotional development. Within this framework, one would also recognize the potential damage that might be caused by neglect.

In the end, a parent can never be guided completely by the experts. What is best for baby is probably what instinctively feels best and most suitable to the parents. When parents are comfortable, the infant will most likely respond to that comfort.