15.6: Infant and Toddler Development and Its Facilitation
15.6: Infant and Toddler Development and Its Facilitation
Because everything is new to infants and toddlers, and their brains are developing rapidly, infancy is a unique period of life that calls for unique responses from adults. The ways infants and toddlers think, feel, and function differ somewhat from the ways children in the developmental periods of preschool, middle childhood, and adolescence think, feel, and function.
Four major aspects of infant/toddler development illuminate the kinds of “basic sensory, social, and emotional experiences” that are “essential for optimizing the architecture of low-level circuits” in the brain. The following four aspects of infant/toddler development call for a special approach to planning and supporting their learning:
1. Infants follow their own learning agenda as is focused on fundamental competencies that are developed at relatively similar times in their development, including “seek and form relationships with people who will nurture and protect them
- learn language for the first time in order to communicate
- construct knowledge of basic concepts such as the relationship between cause and effect and how things move and fit in space
- master rudimentary small-muscle and large-muscle skills
So, adults must be there to support this with responsive relationships by interacting with infants and toddlers in ways that best facilitate the children’s learning and development.
2. Infants learn holistically. This means they take in information continuously, naturally, and fluidly. Although they often focus on one thing at a time, that focus can change quickly. From their actions, interactions, and observations, they pick up all kinds of information that they use to build knowledge and skills. A single interaction can lead to learning about many things in many areas simultaneously.
Because infants and toddlers learn in a holistic way, they may not always focus on the content area that an adult may wish to emphasize.
So, if adults structure interaction with the purpose of creating specific outcomes in a particular content area—for example, language or shapes—they will often miss the child’s larger learning experience. Thus, plans to help with infant learning are best created in ways that reflect the child’s openness to all aspects of an experience.
For Example:
3. During the first three years of life, much of a child’s life is organized around issues related to security, exploration, and identity. While children attend to all three issues throughout infancy, each of these issues generally takes center stage at different points in development. As an issue becomes more or less prominent, developmental transitions occur. The child’s behavior starts to change and reflects a new way of organizing experiences.
So, from about birth to 8 months of age, adults who provide care for young infants need to be especially attentive to the children’s need to feel secure. Physical comfort, and responsive care that helps young inf