Child Development Case Study

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According to Elkind (cited in Walker, 2005) “Today’s child has become the unwilling, unintended victim of overwhelming stress – the stress borne of rapid, bewildering social change and constantly rising expectations”. This rapidness has given birth to hurried childhood. Childhood was once considered a time of stress free period. But this view has considerably been changed now. Children are expected to behave like adults today. Whether they are at home or at the school, they are expected to behave like adults. “Even the parents, who brought in traditional way, are also imposing adult standards on children” (McDonnell, 2002). However, the child developmental theories of Piaget, Erikson and Gesell found that the children learn through different ages and stages of life. Gesell (as cited in Docs, 2002) believes that growth and development occur in orderly stages and sequence. However, Piaget and Erikson (as cited in Docs, 2002) found that personality develops in stages throughout a life and child is an active learner …show more content…

However, these are not appropriately being used by the parents “In Australia approximately 74 per cent of children aged between five and 14 years participated in either organised sports or cultural activities in 2009 (ABS, 2009 as cited in Simoncini & Caltabiono, 2012) . Parents involve their children in these activities to gain the extra skills to cope with the changing demands of society. They even don’t think that the child is at a developmental level to learn all these extra-curricular activities. Gesell identified developmental milestones to specific age groups for parents to track the growth of the children and not to push them to learn too much. Walker also argued that there is nothing wrong in extra-curricular activities but should be scheduled in a way that children don’t get tired. This tiredness can create boredom, which affect their learning and

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