Overview of Children’s Development

Good health does not happen automatically. On the contrary, ongoing positive investments are needed for an infant to grow and develop into a competent, participating adult member of society. When such investments are not made (for whatever reason), many children will carry into adulthood physical and/or emotional disabilities that could have been prevented.

Children and young people are particularly vulnerable to conditions in their social and physical environments. As they pass through infancy and early childhood to the teenage years, they are susceptible to a wide range of positive and negative influences. To grow and mature into healthy adults, they require support, care, understanding and nurturing from their family, peers, school community, and community groups. At each developmental stage, the type and source of the support children require may vary considerably.

Traditionally, the course of childhood development has been seen as a progression through a series of predictable stages, each with its own tasks and accomplishments. Health at later stages and in adult life has been thought to be partially determined by the events, conditions and successes at preceding stages. These models have presented development as a ladder like progression, assuming similar life experiences for all and implying a single route to adulthood (Rutter, 1989).

The nature of the tasks within the different stages is given a different emphasis in different models. Jean Piaget’s model, for instance, emphasizes the cognitive ability to adapt to the environment; Eric Erikson’s concept concentrates on personality development through conflict resolution at each stage; and Robert Havighurst’s framework outlines various developmental tasks that must be mastered at each stage.

Longitudinal studies are offering support for a less rigidly defined line of development, shifting the model to one of pathways. While an individual’s growth physical, psychological and social does progress through stages marked by important life transitions, these transitional events, their meaning, and their impact seem to be varied, and personal. There may be various routes and detours in a child’s movement through life and immense individual variability in important life transitions. Adverse past experiences may be offset by “recuperative experiences occurring later in life or by the present environment and/or circumstances. A single negative event does not necessarily and inevitably lead to a single effect. Childhood development is less a ladder of linear steps than a series of pathways with innumerable routes and outcomes.

What is shared and vitally important in all these models is that chain effects in development are common. The past does affect present health, albeit in individualized ways. If we are to make a difference in the healthy lives of children and the adults they become, we must acknowledge the variety of individual experience and consider them in personal terms; we must see the complex links in causal chains and how they interconnect; and we must search for the unifying principles underlying the diversity of pathways from childhood to adult life.

Selection from: Healthy Development of Children and Youth. (1999). Health Canada