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Read this article to learn about the Physical Growth and Development of Child During Fifth Year. After reading this article you will learn about: 1. Introduction to Physical Growth and Development of Child During Fifth Year 2. Body Growth and Body Proportions of Child During Fifth Year 3. Neuromuscular-skeletal Changes 4. Development of Intersensory Perception 5. Fine Motor Activities and Other Details.
Contents:
- Introduction to Physical Growth and Development of Child During Fifth Year
- Body Growth and Body Proportions of Child During Fifth Year
- Neuromuscular-skeletal Changes
- Development of Intersensory Perception
- Fine Motor Activities
- Development of Physical Functioning of Child During Fifth Year
- Stuttering of Child During Fifth Year
- Measures Which May Help Cure that Defect or Prevention of Child During Fifth Year
1. Introduction to Physical Growth and Development of Child During Fifth Year:
The period of growth from the second year to the fifth, is characterised by rapid development. Parents and elders at home, find it amazing to see how the baby has transformed into a very active, naughty toddler. The child now, is a bundle of energy, seemingly tireless and always up to something.
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It is quite marvelous to see the progress that the child makes in the field of mobility, handling objects, language, and other activities. The development, of course, is a process of nature but it may be accelerated or decelerated or thwarted due to unfavorable environmental conditions.
Sometimes, parents and the elders at home would be surprised to see how the baby who as a neonate, two years back, apparently had little or no involvements in external world, has grown into a naughty handler of things.
The child keeps moving about all the time, holding one thing after another, throwing this and that, babbling something or the other—the sense of which can be grasped by the listeners only at times; especially, the mother may feel the pause-less activities of the child as tiring.
Nevertheless, the progress that the child makes in the field of mobility, and, in handling objects, and in producing sounds so varied in nature, makes all feel—”it’s quite marvelous”.
2. Body Growth and Body Proportions of Child During Fifth Year:
The average height of a 3 year old male child is 38 inches and weight, 33 pounds. The female child is also, almost of the same height (37.6″) and weight (32.5 pounds). By the time, the child attains 5 years of age, he stands about 43.6 inches tall, and is heavier than the girl, but the latter is roughly comparable to the boy. Even at the stage, prediction is fairly possible regarding the mature height.
At birth, the male baby has 28.6 per cent of mature height; and the female baby 39.9 per cent; at 5, the same become 61.8 and 66.2 per cent, respectively. “Boys, in one study, generally, gained slightly more than twice as much in height during 2½ to 3½ year period of rapid growth as they did in the preceding and following periods covering 2 to 4 years.” [Tables 6.1 (a), 6.1 (b), 6.1 (c) and 6.1 (d)].
Progress in height tends to be more regular than in weight. Weight is more variable because it includes soft tissues, water as well as bones, and is easily susceptible to external factors; as such the impact of home, school and community in bringing about evenness in the tenor of progress in weight, is always very important.
The home, the school and the community as a whole will have to plan properly so that the needs of the children may be met in a desirable way. [Tables 6.2 (a) and 6.2 (b)].
By five, the upper parts of the body approximate the adult size. The growth of the upper parts slows down earlier, and the points of their maturity are reached much earlier. The lower parts keep a rapid pace of growth.
During the pre-school period, the growth of the head, which together with the face, was already of the size of less than one-fourth of the entire body at the time of birth, marks a very slow pace. Growth of limbs, happens to be quite rapid.
Compared to it, the growth of trunk may be termed as intermediate. By 6, the body proportion becomes almost the same as that of an adult. The facial features undergo little or no change after the age of 6. Sex differences are found not only in average height and weight but in the composition of tissues also; the girls have more fatty tissues, and the boys have the heavier muscles. [See Fig. 6.1 and Table 6.3].
3. Neuromuscular-skeletal Changes of Child During Fifth Year:
Skeletal, nervous and muscular systems rapidly grow towards maturity. More and more cartilage in the child’s skeletal system develops into bones. The size and number of bones also increase. They also become harder. The set of deciduous teeth becomes complete up to the age of three; now the child can eat adult food.
Significant muscular development occurs during this period. Up to the age of 4, the muscular growth of the child, happens, roughly proportionate to the overall body-growth of the child. After 4, there is a spurt in the growth of muscles.
They grow at a much faster rate—a time comes when 75 per cent of the weight of the body happens to be that of the muscles. The large muscles develop more than do the smaller ones; it may be because of the fact that in the activities of the child, the larger muscles are more involved.
The smaller muscles, need to be activated only in case of finer activities. Strength and muscular development, very much depend on the general health of the child, his constitution, habits of eating, sleeping and activity.
The more developed a child is physically, the more he would be able to participate in strenuous activities, in games and physical activities lasting for longer stretches of time—such activities demand endurance, also, on the part of the child. With age, respiration becomes deeper and slower; heart also slows down, and becomes stable.
Blood pressure increases steadily. The nervous system develops rapidly during the nursery school years. The brain has 75 per cent of its adult weight by the time the child is two years old, and 90 per cent when he is 6 years old. Myelination is completed, first in the lower parts, and then, in the higher brain centres. The process is completed before the child attains 6.
With all these physiological changes and neuromuscular-skeletal maturities, the child’s nature of reaction to infection, also changes; the condition of body temperature remains more stable than was the case in infancy; less possibility of serious heart symptoms than as it was during the first two years.
4. Development of Intersensory Perception of Child During Fifth Year:
With the advancement of age, separate sensory modalities improve in their interactions to one another. The reaction of each sense organ to the stimulus that it receives from the external environment, improves in its kind because of the continuous improvement of its own functioning, as well as, because of the improvement of other sensory modalities with which this sense organ interacts.
Berch and Lefford explored uniform relationships among visual; haptic and kinesthetic sense modalities for geometric form of recognition in normal children of school age.
Such an exploration involves tactile, kinesthetic and surface movement sensations. In handling an object, the fingers of the subject become very much active. “Haptic sense modalities are the results of the movements of wrists, elbows, shoulder joints or sometimes of all the muscles of the complete arm in handling an object.
The intersensory judgment of identical forms, improves with age. Much advancement takes place in case of visual- haptic judgments, by the time the child is 8 years old. Depth perception improves fairly rapidly after 3.
Perception of size goes on improving rapidly since the time the child becomes first aware of the presence of general objects and their situations. A general reaction is replaced by the reaction of specific parts of the body. The child takes some time when he can separate the size of an object from its shape while having a visual perception of the same.
During the period from 3 years to 5 years, there occur rapid improvements in the perception of shape, size, height and the like. By two and a half years, a child can pick up the biggest without trial and error, then the next biggest likewise, he can pick up the smallest object.
When he has, thus, developed the perception of size, he can pile up blocks into a tower; can develop different figures by joining, or putting blocks or parts inside one another with least or no error. Now, the child has learnt how much space each object occupies. Even then, in some cases, confusion of size persists even up to the age of five.
“One can see them for a moment, forgetting to realise the size of tiny doll furniture and attempting to sit on it themselves, only to look surprised, and often a little sheepish, because they failed to react accurately to this quality to the object because the child sees himself less than he sees other objects; he usually misjudges his own size.”
Perception of shape also takes its time to develop. Similarity and dissimilarity of shapes; nature and amount of likeness and unlikeness can be judged only through learning. A child of 18 months would indiscriminately throw a square into a round and vice-versa, but, by the time a child is about 3, he can wisely work upon a form-board which, of course, offers a good challenge to him.
First, he can differentiate squares, circles and triangles, then diamonds, crosses and more complicated shapes. In Binet-Terman mental test, a child of 5 could copy a square with a pencil in three trials. A child of less than 4 years of mental age, could scribble, could draw a careless figure resembling an irregular circle.
A diamond imposes difficulty even for a child of 6 to 7 years of mental age. Accuracy of inter-model discrimination is assessed to find out the mental age of a child. This ability depends upon the ability to translate eye-hand co-ordinated, into kinesthetic performance. Such a test should be given only to a child who is not younger than 5 years of age though maturity in this respect is reached only later on.
5. Fine Motor Activities of Child During Fifth Year:
As the child grows in age, he achieves more ability and proficiency in performing physical activities, requiring quick sensory judgment and better co-ordination of senses between or among themselves, and of the sensory organs with the organs, of action.
Sometimes, in performing a particular action only a specific part of an organ of action, needs to be activated. Thus, the child grows proficient in performing actions which are of finer sorts, and complicated in nature.
A child of two can eat solid food, but for some time he remains a slow and deliberate chewer. His control over the urethral sphincters is almost complete by the end of second year. Sex-typing becomes apparent during the period between second and the fifth year of the child through the games that he or she likes to play.
A female child would like to play with dolls; would put on daintily the feminine-looking clothes. She would also like to play house-keeping activities. The children, during this period, learn the anatomical difference between the two sexes.
The female children easily get more items of play as they happen to be related to the child-rearing or house-keeping which they see their mother or sister/sisters engaged in. The male children cannot get so many occasions of observing their male parent or male sibling/siblings engaged into their sex-specific activities- this is a factor which explains why sometimes, we find male children to be indulging more into acts of mischief.
The world of games and work that the child enters now, demands more of neuromuscular skills, more control over one’s body. He likes driving bicycle, roller skating, and other games. Initiation of training may be made in dance and swimming, too. The kindergarten school children with whom the author had been associated, could learn some Yoga asana in a proper way.
Swinging chair, ladder and slide and see-saw were the very much liked instruments of play for the kindergarteners of our school. Most of the small children of the school could very well learn the physical exercises, which they were expected to perform on the occasion of a function of the school.
Of course, due consideration to their age and tenderness had been given while selecting exercises for them. It was realised that children preferred fine motor activities to the just outdoor games. The children who learnt a particular physical activity, would assume a swaggering gait, and, speak in a pre-emptory manner.
Body co-ordinations and acquisition of good motor skills, are essential for everyone, for survival, and a dignified living in society. Acquiring of such skills only, can enable one to perform one’s adult chores smoothly and in a dignified manner. Efficiency of movements is required for the performance of routines of daily life—driving a car or some vehicle, is one of such efficiencies.
Man needs creative activities for enjoyment, and may be for a living as well—all of which demand the acquisition of fine motor skills, and, intercessory co-ordination. Good physical health is an essential condition, for the acquisition of these skills.
Proper feeding, hygienic home and school environment plus free and congenial environment for games and other physical activities, are important factors for a good physical health.
6. Development of Physical Functioning of Child During Fifth Year:
None the less, physical growth and development is a natural process, [which, of course, needs to be boosted through proper Nurture]. With the growth of body, new bodily functions are required to be done, for which physical development automatically takes place.
The beating of heart becomes stronger, slower and more regular. The digestive process takes more time, and, is not easily disturbed. The urethral sphincters are now strong enough to retain urine longer. The body temperature remains, generally, stable.
The composition of the blood remains more constant. Due to these changes—efficiencies and homeostatic, older children and adults can more easily adjust to changed environments and routines. Periods of their work and play become longer without including much fatigue. Some children have higher levels of globin than others, have larger tonsils, adenoids, and more lymph glands.
The protection of ears and eyes is important in all ages. The ear is well- developed at birth. The inner and middle ear have reached, practically, to the adult size when the child is born.
In the young children, the Eustachian tube which connects the ear with the throat, is short, wide and straight, and so allows, relatively, an easy passage for the bacteria to pass from the throat to the ear—this is why the incidence of ear infection is higher in young children. All necessary precautions should be taken to prevent ear infections which may lead to the impairment of hearing.
The eye continues to develop through all the years of growth. The sight of the child depends upon the growth of his eyeball. Eyeball is the receptor part of the eye; it is a round ball of tissue through which light passes.
To be more precise, the rays of light, enter the eye through cornea, pass through the pupil, are refracted through the aqueous humor on to the lens, which then focuses the rays through the vitreous humor onto the retina at the back of the eyeball. Impulses from the retina pass along the optic nerve to the brain.
Myopia or shortsightedness is the result of unusual growth of the eyeball. The development of binocular vision is essential for a correct judgment of distance; it is the ability to see with both eyes at the same time, it gives a stereoscopic effect. Depth perception cannot develop without binocular vision. The health of the eye is very much dependent on the general health.
So, much care needs to be taken about the nutrition of the child, about the sanitary conditions or hygienic conditions that the child is reared under. The knowledge of the proper use of the eye is essential, both in normal conditions and when the child is ill. The prints for the child should be larger; and frequent relief from close work should be provided to the child.
The heart grows rapidly till the child is 4 years of age, then the rate of growth slows down, until the child is ten. Then again, there is an increase in the rate of growth until it reaches the peak stage. The weight of the heart is very much related to the capacity to bear the strain of competitive sports; and to the pattern of growth in strength.
Physical growth does not mean only growth in height and weight but it also includes all those changes within the tissues and organs of the body. These changes are necessary for a healthful living of the child, and for increase of the effectiveness of the use of the body—so these changes take place in a normal course.
‘The degree of effectiveness depends upon the processes of growth and maturation, and the quality of the body tissues. Good bones, firm muscles and sound organs are invaluable as a basis for a happy, satisfying life.”
A knowledge of the different physical or biological changes taking place during different periods of the child growth, can be a good guide in deciding the needs and routines of the child. The nature and amount of his physical activities and rest, as well as the type of nutrition that should be given to him.
Such knowledge is also helpful in deciding prerequisites of the child, for his healthful and happy living. All precautionary measures may be taken in light of such knowledge, so that the growth and development of the child may be smooth and full.
7. Stuttering of Child During Fifth Year:
Stuttering is a speech defect which has been found, generally, developing during this period of development. When the child makes involuntary stops and repetitions in speaking, we call it his stuttering. The stutterer makes spasmodic repetitions of certain sounds; for example; “t-t-too” or “c-c- cold”, and so on. In general, peak comes at two and a half to three years of age.
Reasons: Johnson W has enlisted the following reasons for the development of stuttering:
(i) Too much pressure exerted on the child for his weaning from bottle to cup;
(ii) Mental strain caused because of very strict toilet training;
(iii) The reaction of the listener, especially of the parent, to the child’s non-fluency of speech;
(iv) The child’s degree of non-fluency as objectively determined;
(v) The child’s sensitivity to his own hesitation in speech;
(vi) The parental or listener’s attitude towards it. In some cases stuttering has been found to have increased when the child joins his first school;
(vii) Because of the child’s difficulty in adjusting to the new authority;
(viii) Because of difficulty in adjusting to other children;
(ix) Because of difficulty in adjusting to the routine of the school;
(x) In 5 to 10 per cent cases, stuttering begins when an attempt is made to convert a left-handed to the right-handedness.
“The nervous tension created may spill over into fingernail biting, a reversion to thumb-sucking, a relapse to toilet habits, or, frequently, into stuttering.”
8. Measures Which May Help Cure that Defect or Prevention of Child During Fifth Year:
(i) Reactions of the parents and of the others should be such as not to make the stutterer conscious of his speech defect.
The listeners should give the impression of finding nothing unusual in the speech of the stutterer or the stammerer.
(ii) Bluemel has suggested that therapy for stutterers and stammerers should attempt at the reorganizing of the speech, rather than at removing “the multiple symptoms of these disturbances.”
(iii) Weaning from bottle to cup, or toilet training should not be so strict as to cause too much strain to the child.
(iv) The treatment of the teachers, especially, toward the new entrants should be such that they may adjust to the teachers and other children and to the routines of the school without feeling much strain. The behaviour of the staff, coming in contact with the child, should be assuring in regard to security and affection.
(v) No attempt should ever be made to wean the child from left- handedness to right-handedness.
(vi) The stimulating and encouraging environment may go a long way in setting the thing right.