Eighteen to Twenty-Four Months

Eighteen to Twenty-Four Months Fogel Chapter 10 Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros

Twelve to Eighteen Months Motor & Cognitive Development Emotional Development Social and Language Development Family and Society • Experiential Exercises

Motor Advances Motor & Cognitive Development Infants’ locomotion is so stable that they now prefer to be independent walkers and may resist holding an adult’s hand They easily make the transition from walking to running, so by this age, most infants can run reasonably well More experience with self-propelled locomotion also increases the infant’s awareness of and memory for spatial locations It is not until the third year that infants living in cultures where there are homes with stairs can negotiate them on their own Most 18-month-olds can feed themselves, and most prefer to manage their own food Self-dressing is well under way by 18 months, and many infants will be able to put on their own coats, shoes, and socks by the time they are 2 years old

Motor Advances Motor & Cognitive Development One of the big advances that is likely to occur at this age is toilet learning based on findings from some African countries in which toilet learning begins in the first month of life, it is likely that infants have the potential to regulate their bowels and bladders well before they are trained in most Western countries in these African societies, there is almost constant physical contact between the mother and infant, enabling mothers to detect the signs of impending elimination in societies where physical contact is at a minimum, infants must signal their intentions across a distance typically, this means using words the trick in Western societies is to help the child associate the need to eliminate with a verbal communication about being taken to the toilet toilet learning in industrialized cultures is most likely to begin between 18 months and 3 years, although it may take up to a year to complete

Motor Advances Motor & Cognitive Development Most infants of this age are still napping during the afternoon, and they can sleep through most of the night It is not uncommon for infants between the age of 1 and 3 years to wake occasionally at night Out of 77 babies in one study, 29 were waking during the night at 1 year the style in which parents handled the situation, such as how much the baby was encouraged to “cry it out,” did not affect whether the baby woke at night families had tried different techniques to handle the problem: verbal battles with the babies; sleep deprivation by keeping the baby awake during the day; and, as a last resort, the modification of parental lifestyles so the parents could spend several hours awake with the baby at 3 A.M.

Motor Advances Motor & Cognitive Development none of these parental methods seemed to change the babies babies who woke at night at 1 year had been born after longer labors and were more wakeful—but more fussy—during the first 10 days of life at 3 years, these same children slept through the night, but it was still difficult to get them to The findings suggest that night waking may result from a biological predisposition some infants are night owls, probably from birth or even prenatally, and this pattern tends to persist for many No documented method exists for changing sleep patterns, but some methods are available to train children to sleep independently from parents these methods do not guarantee that the child will remain asleep throughout the night

Cognitive Development: Symbolic Play Motor & Cognitive Development Piaget has referred to the sixth and final stage of sensorimotor development as the invention of new means through mental combinations children no longer have to physically carry out actions: they can think about the possible paths to a goal, eliminate the most improbable ones, and only then act according to Piaget, the child’s first thoughts are internalized action sequences babies now can find objects after any number of visible or invisible displacements; they can go around a detour to get at something

Cognitive Development: Symbolic Play Motor & Cognitive Development At the heart of all forms of human thought is the symbol, a representation of a thing or event that is conventionally shared among the members of a community By 18 or 20 months, infants understand that the symbolic object (the bowl) is not the same thing as the thing it represents (the hat or the boat), or that a pretend snack is not the same as a real snack

Cognitive Development: Symbolic Play Motor & Cognitive Development Symbols appear only gradually in children’s repertoires at first, children represent objects by performing some action related to the objects and physically similar to the represented objects, like moving one’s open hand through the air to represent an airplane or a bird later, symbols become arbitrary in the sense that the form of the symbol bears no physical resemblance to the thing it represents the word “airplane,” for example, neither looks nor sounds like an airplane words as verbal symbols are arbitrary in this sense, but they are also a form of conventional communication how and when they are used in communication is not arbitrary but bound by the rules of meaning and grammar of the linguistic community

Cognitive Development: Symbolic Play Motor & Cognitive Development In Stage VI, the symbol becomes detached from its original context of meaning and becomes something that, like objects, can be manipulated and explored Several researchers have developed systems for classifying different levels of symbolic play Although there is no clear-cut age at which infants begin to display a particular level of play, by 18 months most babies are entering some of the early stages of pretend play By the age of 2 years, most children can execute complex sequences of play requiring multiple symbols and advance planning, such as pretending to cook a whole meal using blocks and pegs to substitute for food and utensils

Development of the Ability to Categorize Objects Motor & Cognitive Development Even during the first year of life, infants begin to organize the information they see and hear into meaningful groups of items or events at first, this is done at the level of simple categories: faces, birds, cars, and the like next, infants group items into higher-level categories, such as animals and vehicles by 18 months, another important principle of categorization emerges: categorization by sequential order, or by cause and effect

Development of the Ability to Categorize Objects Motor & Cognitive Development Infants at this age remember items and events better if they are organized into a sequence for example, in a bath sequence with a teddy bear, the bear’s shirt is removed, the bear is put into the tub, the bear is washed, and then it is dried Infants can remember exact sequences up to 2 weeks later whether they are familiar sequences, such as the bath, or unfamiliar, such as events related to a train ride Some evidence suggests that even when events are not related naturally, infants will remember them by the sequence in which the events were observed

Development of the Ability to Categorize Objects Motor & Cognitive Development When concepts and memories are organized in terms of how the events are related to each other in time, this kind of conceptual organization is called a script Scripts become increasingly important as ways of representing complex aspects of reality, such as remembering to get dressed, eat, get in the car, get out of the car, walk inside the day care center, take off one’s coat, and go to one’s assigned area All of the separate events required to get from bed to the day care center would be difficult to remember if they were not organized into expectable sequences of events Although 2-year-olds cannot memorize long lists of new words or concepts, they can execute complex sequences of related actions

Square Pegs in Round Holes Motor & Cognitive Development In general, toys are age-appropriate if they match a child’s cognitive level and if they provide a modest degree of challenge to the child Between 18 and 24 months, children love pegboards in which they can fit objects of different shapes in the corresponding holes the challenge of peg boards is to try to match the object and its slot mentally by 22 months, most infants can look at an object and mentally match it to the correct hole: they do not need to use trial-and-error to see what fits the more practice that children have with this and other challenging toys, they better they become and the more they can use their memory to find the correct match

Square Pegs in Round Holes Motor & Cognitive Development Containers are another favorite toy for children this age Children love to put things into containers, and they also enjoy nesting-cup toys, in which smaller cups are placed inside successively larger cups By the age of 18 months, infants understand the concept of containment infants were shown videotapes of sand being poured into cups and tubes in some cases, the sand poured right through the container and came out the other side (violation condition) in other cases, the sand did not go through the container but filled it up to the rim (nonviolation condition) only infants older than 18 months looked longer at the violation condition, suggesting that they found it unusual

Square Pegs in Round Holes Motor & Cognitive Development When actually presented with a set of nesting cups, children of this age period had trouble stacking them without errors the infants might combine one or two cups correctly then they take a small cup and place it at the large end of their stack typically, infants under 24 months of age try to force the cup to fit, perhaps because they see that it might fit if the bottom cup were not in the way at this point, most infants of this age will actually take the cups apart and start all over again or else just give up; they do not attempt alternative solutions, such as simply moving the cup to the other end of the stack

Square Pegs in Round Holes Motor & Cognitive Development These studies show that even though infants recognize what is necessary for containment, they have trouble organizing their actions when a series of containers is present, which is why such toys are challenging at this age This is similar to the A-not-B error in Stage IV, in which infants understand that objects exist when out of sight but persist in searching for them where they were last seen if they fail, they give up the search

Square Pegs in Round Holes Motor & Cognitive Development It is not until about 2 ½ years that infants are able to understand that two objects could have multiple relationships with each other: a cup that will not fit when placed on top of another might fit when placed under it when younger infants place one cup on top of another, they fail to realize that the order of placement of the same two cups could be reversed

Smart Toys, TV, & the Internet: Do They Make Babies Smarter? Motor & Cognitive Development During the period between 18 and 24 months, infants begin to be more interested in television Infants also appear to be interested in most age-appropriate smart toys Surveys show that by 3 months of age, about 40% of children in the US regularly watched TV, DVDs, or videos Children younger than a year were exposed to an average of 1 hour per day and by 2 years to an average of 1.5 hours per day About 75% of parents report that their children under age 2 watches TV, and 1in 5 of these children watch at least 2 hours per day Parents reasons for using these media were listed as entertainment, babysitting, and education

Smart Toys, TV, & the Internet: Do They Make Babies Smarter? Motor & Cognitive Development Many parents and child advocates are strongly against using smart toys they claim that smart toys and TV put the infant in a passive role instead of actively exploring their world the critics think smart toys will create television addicts and sedentary children

Smart Toys, TV, & the Internet: Do They Make Babies Smarter? Motor & Cognitive Development One study shows that smart toys are neither beneficial nor harmful That makes sense if we think of infants as capable of engaging with the world at their own level, then it makes little difference what kind of toy is available so long as it is interesting to the children That means that parents can encourage cognitive and brain development with inexpensive low-tech toys just as easily as with expensive ones

Smart Toys, TV, & the Internet: Do They Make Babies Smarter? Motor & Cognitive Development TV, DVD, and video viewing, on the other hand, has recently been shown to have harmful effects on cognition and brain development for children under the age of 3 years just the opposite of the marketing pitches about these products Children who watched more hours of TV, DVD or video at ages 1 and 3 were more likely to have problems with aggression by age 4, and attention and hyperactivity at age 7, regardless of gender, health, prenatal exposure to tobacco or alcohol, maternal depression, or ethnicity Watching TV and baby DVDs and videos under the age of three significantly impairs communication and language for every hour of TV watched per day, 2-year-olds knew 6-8 fewer vocabulary words at ate 2 years infants do not learn as well from watching adults on TV as opposed to watching live adults

Smart Toys, TV, & the Internet: Do They Make Babies Smarter? Motor & Cognitive Development These studies suggest that TV before the age of three years can actually impair normal brain development and slow cognitive development, even if infants view TV with an adult These products actually make infants less smart rather than smarter it could be because they put the infant in a passive role We know from research that infants learn best by acting and not by simply observing Before the age of two years, in Piaget’s stages I-V, the mental life of infants is in doing rather than in thinking One reason for the language impairment could be that the videos, while visually interesting, show scenes that cannot be easily verbalized

Smart Toys, TV, & the Internet: Do They Make Babies Smarter? Motor & Cognitive Development Children under the age of three certainly should not be left alone in front of the television If parents choose to let their child watch with them, it may be an enjoyable learning experience but exposure times should be low, 15-30 minutes per day or less Most child development experts advocate that parents should carefully monitor children’s television viewing at any age and limit the amount of time children are allowed to watch The bottom line is that pots and pans will make a baby of this age just as smart as a toy that costs a lot of money and TV, DVD and video have demonstrated harmful effects

Smart Toys, TV, & the Internet: Do They Make Babies Smarter? Motor & Cognitive Development These conclusions apply to children under three years of age Preschool children, however, can get more out of smart toys, TV, and the internet because of their more advanced cognitive and social skills One study found that children who watched more of Sesame Street at age 5 had higher scores in High School on english, math and science, spent more time reading books outside of school, perceived themselves as more competent, and were less aggressive than children who watched less

Smart Toys, TV, & the Internet: Do They Make Babies Smarter? Motor & Cognitive Development These results could be explained by parental influence those parents who encourage Sesame Street viewing as opposed to commercial TV may be more concerned with educational rather than entertainment values In general, there is a growing tendency in Western countries to replace active engagement in the environment with vicarious electronic media; playing video games about outdoor adventures, for example, rather than just playing outside Outdoor play and other nature experiences have been shown to lower depression, improve attention and concentration, and increase self-discipline, yet children in the US spend an average of only 30 minutes of unstructured outdoor time per week

Emotional Development The more complex event memories and concepts and the ability to think symbolically account for some of the changes in emotional development during this period of infancy The infants’ emotional expressions continue to become more complex and more closely related to communicative situations They are less likely to show full-face expressions typical of earlier ages now, their facial expressions can be more subtle, involving fewer facial muscles, to reveal more complex feelings and a greater ability to regulate emotions supporting this view, 18-month-olds who showed more full-face expressions were more likely to be rated as having a difficult temperament During the second year, the infants’ predominant emotional expressions are smiling and laughter

Emotional Development Prior to this period, smiles occur when infants accomplish a task such as the successful completion of an offering or a request gesture After 18 months, infants are more likely to smile when both they and their mothers establish joint activity and attention and when they experience periods of affective sharing, rather than just at their own achievements Infants of this age are also increasingly likely to initiate positive emotions in their communications with the parent, acting like a more emotionally autonomous individual

Emotional Development Studies on infant laughter have revealed significant changes between the first and second year of life During the first year, most infant laughter occurs while the mother is smiling or laughing In the second year, infant laughter takes on a specific meaning within the mother-infant communication system a solitary infant laugh might mean “this is fun,” an infant laugh following the mother’s laugh might mean “if you think this is funny, so do I,” and infant laughter while the mother is not displaying positive emotion, especially during teasing situations, might mean “I enjoy it when you look shocked so long as you are not really angry” Laughter also serves as an attention-getting device a laugh can reestablish visual attention or direct the mother’s attention back to the infant who may laugh at his or her own antics

Emotional Development We also found that mother-infant dyads developed their own styles of laughing together a mother would frame an opportunity for infant laughter by providing all the facial features of a laugh, such as a wide open mouth, and waiting until the infant provided the actual laugh before she laughed in unison in another couple, mother and infant would stare silently smiling at each other and then burst out laughing almost simultaneously

How Does Symbolic Thought Affect the Child’s Emotional Experience Emotional Development The ability to form mental images and create symbols increases the range of the infant’s emotional experiences After 18 months, fear can be evoked by a symbolic mental image such as a monster or the thought of being sucked down the drain of a sink Starting at this age, children develop fears of the dark and of things that might lurk behind doors, refrigerators, and other unseen places

How Does Symbolic Thought Affect the Child’s Emotional Experience Emotional Development Dreams, which at this age begin to take on representational forms that can be remembered and talked about, also can be a source of fears, although nightmares do not appear until after the second birthday Piaget reported observing instances of dreaming in one child as young as 21 months; she called out the names of several of her friends in the middle of the night and on one occasion said, “Kitty’s hiding”

How Does Symbolic Thought Affect the Child’s Emotional Experience Emotional Development Symbolic skills also increase the probability that infants will talk about their emotions By 20 months, about one-third of all children will talk about one or more of the following states: sleep/fatigue (“tired”) pain (“ouch”) distress (“sad”) disgust (“yuck”) affection (“love Mommy”) value (“good,” “bad”)

How Does Symbolic Thought Affect the Child’s Emotional Experience Emotional Development By the age of 24 months, infants engage in conversations about their feelings, talk about the causes of their feelings, and play games with siblings in which they pretend to have certain kinds of feelings aside from the connection between emotions and symbols, this kind of talk also shows that the child is becoming increasing aware of internal experience the verbal expression of that internal experience is one of the major characteristics of the existential self compared to the subjective self of earlier ages

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development At this age, children can recognize themselves in a mirror the primary emotion that they experience when they first recognize themselves is embarrassment In one study, infants’ reactions to the mirror were compared with infants’ reactions to an unfamiliar adult to the adult, the predominant expression was wariness, defined as an attentive look, a sober facial expression, and a cessation of ongoing action or vocalization, followed by a gaze aversion to the mirror, infants were embarrassed, as shown by a turning to the nearest adult with a smiling facial expression, followed by a gaze aversion and movement to touch the hair, hands, or face in a self-conscious manner

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development Embarrassment, or shame, is fundamentally different from the other emotions that infants had experienced up to this point in their lives Shame is a self-conscious emotion it requires an awareness of a self that can be seen by another shame is always felt in the eyes of someone else in order to feel shame, one has to realize that others are different from the self and that the self is exposed, separate, and likely to be evaluated by others Other self-conscious emotions are guilt, jealousy, and pride self-conscious emotions begin to emerge around the child’s second birthday

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development Pride occurs when infants see themselves as effective and competent individuals in the eyes of another person, able to achieve and to have an impact on others In this stage, the feeling of pride is the result of meeting their own standards, as well as the awareness of having accomplished a personal goal in the eyes of another person

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development Children observed an experimenter rolling a ball to knock down a bowling pin, and later the children were asked to do it themselves Children smiled when the pin fell in both conditions but they only looked at the experimenter when they had done the task themselves This look seems to be one indication of a sense of pride. Children of this age period are more likely to show pride reactions when achieving goals they determine for themselves rather than those set for them by their mothers

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development Both pride and shame are developed in the context of communicating about success or failure in meeting socially accepted standards, rules, and achievements rules include cleaning up after playing with toys or not touching electrical outlets achievements occur when the child reaches a level of new mastery after putting in some effort, such as putting on one’s own shirt Children at this age become aware of standards, such as completing an entire puzzle or finishing one’s food

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development Parent’s responses to everyday events play a role in the development of the toddler’s emotions Children whose parents respond most positively to the child’s achievements and to when the child follows everyday social rules are more likely to show guilt reactions when a doll they are playing with during an experimental situation breaks the doll had been designed by the experimenter to come apart easily when it appears they have broken the doll, these children are more likely to point out the problem to the experimenter and try to repair the doll

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development children whose parents were more negative in response to children’s failure during everyday social situations were more likely to pretend that the doll did not break and to avoid mentioning the problem to the experimenter children whose parents respond positively when they are successful at something are more likely to react negatively when they are unsuccessful It is possible that the parents of these children react more positively because they can see the child is very sensitive to failure It is also possible that when parents are highly supportive and positive, children develop high standards for themselves Most likely, there is a co-regulation between parents and children such that their styles of emotional communication become more similar over time, with each influencing the other

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development In the realm of anger, a growing sense of independence and a feeling that the self is separate from others leads to feelings of defiance,negativism, and aggression These feelings, which arise out of earlier feelings of anger provoked by frustration or the immediate situation, are due more to the mental idea that the self is and should be independent Defiance of parents is one way infants experience themselves—one way they make a declaration of self-sufficiency and explore the boundaries of the existential self

Self-Conscious Emotions Emotional Development In Stage VI, anger is no longer a private response to an unyielding situation; it becomes a communication tool used willfully to affect other people It is one of the first signs of the child’s sense of personal autonomy and signals the first break in the cycle of initial dependency These patterns of emotion as related to the development of the self have been nicely described by Erikson’s theory of development he referred to autonomy (pride, defiance) and shame (doubt, disappointment) as two emotional poles of this developmental phase

How Do Infants of This Age Cope with Stress? Emotional Development At this age, children come to rely on their teddy bears and favorite blankets to comfort themselves in stressful situations and when their parents are not around children can become attached to these objects in the sense that they desire constant proximity with the objects and show signs of anxiety and distress when separated from the objects

How Do Infants of This Age Cope with Stress? Emotional Development Studies compared the behavior of children who were attached to a blanket with others who were not the children, who ranged in age from 20 to 40 months, were observed individually in a novel play situation with either their mother, their blanket, a favorite toy, or no available objects there were no differences in exploratory behavior or in the amount of distress between children with their mothers present and blanket-attached children with their blankets children in these two situations performed considerably better (had more exploratory play and less distress) than either non-blanket-attached children with their blankets, all children with only a favorite toy, or children without any objects

How Do Infants of This Age Cope with Stress? Emotional Development It seems that a 2-year-old may attach himself or herself to a blanket as an effective substitute for the mother, at least for brief periods There are a number of reasons why this might be true blankets are soft and cuddly they carry plenty of familiar smells that may remind the child of the comforts of home and impart an increased sense of security

How Do Infants of This Age Cope with Stress? Emotional Development Children’s reliance on blankets as sources of comfort comes at a time when they are becoming aware of their physical and psychological separateness from the caregiver this sense of self as an independent individual does not fully take hold until the third year of life, when the conceptual self emerges the development of the existential self at the end of the second year can be thought of as an important transitional phase in the growth of independence The blanket and other such attachment objects therefore have been called transitional objects they seem to serve as an intermediate bridge between a child’s total reliance and dependence on the mother and the development of individuation

How Do Infants of This Age Cope with Stress? Emotional Development Not all children develop blanket attachments In countries where there is relatively more physical contact between infants and caregivers, a blanket attachment is less likely to develop In a study of Italian children 4.9% of rural children had transitional object attachments 31.1% of urban children in Rome had them Korean infants used transitional objects less than a matched sample of U.S. infants

How Do Infants of This Age Cope with Stress? Emotional Development Comparing U.S. and Japanese infants: there is less sucking on fingers and pacifiers among the relatively more indulged Japanese infants compared with North American children only 38% of Japanese infants had an object attachment compared to 62% of US infants US infants used their objects when distressed or when sleeping Japanese infants were more likely to use the object only at bedtime It seems that in societies where children have continued access to physical contact with other people, there is little need for transitional objects. In cultures where there is less close physical contact, transitional objects can be effective and adaptive for some children

How Do Infants of This Age Cope with Stress? Emotional Development There are individual differences in infants’ reactions to stressful or frustrating situations In one study, infants were exposed to a variety of frustrating situations a desirable object was placed in a Plexiglas container so the child could not get it food was placed nearby but the child could not eat it the child was asked to sit for 5 minutes in a high chair some children screamed loudly when frustrated, while others showed little or no distress. those who were more distressed were more likely to act out by hitting, kicking, or banging more distressed children were less able to use self-comforting strategies such as finding something to distract themselves, seeking the mother, or making a constructive attempt to get the toy or the food

Eighteen to Twenty-Four Months