Infants at the period between birth and one year and toddlers between one and two year old normally grow very first with their physical or bodies changing in a intense and quick manner. Bodily growth is normally taken to refer to changes in biological structure that is experienced in children as time continues to pass.
Among the vital and very critical elements that determine the development of bodily growth in toddlerhood and infancy are brain and bodily adjustments; expansion of reflexes, feelings, motor skills, sensitivities and learning abilities; and health matters.
The period between birth and the fourth week is normally known as the “postnatal period”. The majorities of babies weighs around 5.5 to 10 pounds, and are around 17 to 22 inches long. With male infants, they are a little bit longer and heavier compared to their female counterparts.
Babies who are delivered either two or more weeks after their supposed date are termed as post mature babies. Both post mature and premature infants are normally critically prone to complications such as illness, mental or brain damage, or even transience, than when they are fully developed babies (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 2003).
Physical development particularly occurs during the period between birth and the age of two years. At the age of six months the infant is normally expected to weigh at least double and triple when one year ends.
Likewise, the baby’s length or height also grows to around 10 and 12 inches with the baby’s quantity changing during the first two years. The dimension of the baby’s head is also seen to decrease in quantity from on third of the whole body at birth, to a quarter at the age of two years and to an eighth by the time adulthood is reached.
Since babies at the infant age are not in a position to endure on their own, infants have particular innate skills for endurance and adaptive reasons.
Reflexes are involuntary reactions to stimulus that make it possible for infant babies to retaliate to the surrounding prior to any learning occurrence. Some like grasping are just temporal behaviors that vanish after some time and in due course become part of voluntary reactions.
A lot have been asserted and even published concerning the significance of socialization in the ultimate human natures during adulthood. According to historical thoughts, there have been very few studies and enquiries into the biological impacts of which individuals later become.
A puzzle presented to illuminate the extent to which socialization is impacted by individual’s hereditary and biological factors and the degree of social surrounding one is born into and which bringing up process occurs (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 2003).
The heritable qualities are claimed to be a proportion of individual’s personality, identity, and biological characters which originate from hereditary or socialization surrounding factors.
In the chronicle of social science the claim of a “blank slate” or “tabula rasa” has won wide advocacy. This was a hypothetical assertion that human beings are normally delivered without mental or academic abilities with every thing they learn being recorded before them by their fundamental and secondary socialization providers.
The notion of full nurture has been opposed by numerous scholars, purely because this theory has failed to provide empirical evidence.
Human brain is considered the most complicated known device in the whole universe. Indubitably theories that depress rear as a dichotomy or that associate environment or genetic factors with behavior without considering the superseding brain will at large emerge being either very wrong or simplistic.
However, such a paradox does not imply that individuals should fuzz up the matter by asserting that it is merely just extremely multifaceted to reason out about, or that other presuppositions should be considered a priori as irrefutably true, indubitably false, or extremely detrimental to point out.
As with recession, terminal illnesses, detrimental atmospheric troubles, individuals have no choice but make attempts to unravel the multiple causal factors (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 2003).
Musical talents, genius aptitude levels, athletic talents, several brainpower forms, heterosexuality, homosexuality, compliance, and other features have been associated with biological/physiological and environmental aspects (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 2003).
Inferences reached by numerous scientists at this moment that the organic features are only associated with, not causally deterministic to whatever adult outputs or aftermaths.
From a sociological point of view, the focal point is largely on environmental factors responsible for Marxism, structural functionalism, and social exchange symbolic interactionism hypothetical bases of biological versus socialization and children maltreatment studies and policy intervention.
This is to say that socialization consideration is importantly credible due to biologist hitherto failure to discover any causal factors in individuals’ human nature applicable to raising kids into adults in a society/community that will reveal desired qualities.
A tremendously and abnormal cruel surrounding many children grow up in during childhood should be taken into critical consideration. They are uncommon since the majority human infants will not naturally endure if they are not taken proper care for by their older guardians, that is if instead of being properly nurtured they meet maltreatment.
A single most initial documented research or study in the field of social psychology concerns an isolated young one who was reported on by Davis Kingsley during 1940s. Kingsley outlines and comprehensively explicated two analogous cases of Isabelle and Anna.
Anna was just five years of age at the time of her realization. The little girl stayed for many years in isolation in a garret and kept hardly alive. This girl child unfortunately learned only a few fundamental skills for survival while living which resulted to her death only at the age of ten.
Isabelle also encountered isolation; nonetheless, in this case she had the companionship of her mother who unfortunately emerged to be mute and deaf.
During the time of her realization, she was only six and rapidly she learned the fundamentals in human social capabilities and skills required which rendered her capable of eventual school attendance. Kingsley attributes the distinction in output to nutrition and the reality that Isabelle had little social relationship with her mute and deaf mother.
In very rare occasions, human untamed young ones have endured and documentation of their untamed childhood can be provided. The most cases discussed and attract attention of many scholars include: children brought up in isolation, those brought up in confinements and finally children brought up by wild human beings.
Deceptions of untamed children which are untrue are also refuted or negated. To develop untamed is perhaps the most brutish version of child maltreatment since the crucial preliminary socialization fails to happen (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 2003).
This is an implication for pubescent untamed children lack of sense of identity or self concept; a proto-type of manifold associations and vital others, collections and society; and eventually a discrepancy where acculturation and socialization ought to be.
Usual functioning of the infants’ various systems of the body is very nontrivial to its temporal and permanent health. Less than one percent of the infants undergo trauma during birth, or injuries occurrence at the same time (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 2003).
Studies done using longitudinal approach have outlined that infant trauma, underweight at birth, and early illness can negatively impact future bodily and psychological health but generally only if these infants grow up in poor environmental surroundings. Most children have a tendency of being rather hardy with capability to recompense for less than conceptual situations early in existence.
Nonetheless, occasionally children are delivered with or are subjected to circumstances that posit profound confronts. For instance, “phenylketonuria” is a hereditary metabolic condition in which a child is said to have inadequate “phenylalanine hydroxylase”, the indispensable enzyme in elimination of surplus “phynelalanine”, a very crucial amino acid, from the bodily system (Achenbach & Edelbrock, 2003).
Therefore, malnutrition, poor medical care and personal hygiene subject a child to trivial health risks. It is thus, the responsibility of parents to ensure that their babies are provided with perfect balanced diet meals, maintained proper hygiene and enough and necessary medical care.
These are for instance, appropriate inoculation which is very essential in prevention of such communicable illnesses as measles, rubella, mumps and polio.
References
Achenbach, T., M. & Edelbrock, C., S. (2003). Manual for the Child Behavior Checklist. Burlington: University of Vermont Press.