At first, you have a question: What is the meaning of cognitive development? In simple words, the meaning of cognitive development is the intellectual development of someone in the sense of knowledge, thoughts, understanding, and emotions.
In this article, we will be discussing the intellectual development of children.
Stages of cognitive development
Jean Piaget, the known Western psychologist and developmental biologist, dedicated his research to children, infants, and teens' intellectual development and invented his theory of cognitive development, which likely referred as Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
In the theory, he discussed the four stages of mental development.
Sensorimotor: newborn to 2 years old
Preoperational. 2 to 7-year-old toddlers
Concrete operational. 7 to 11 years old
Formal operational. 12 years to older adults.
Sensorimotor stage
This is the first stage of Piget’s cognitive development theory. Which generally affects 2–24-month-old children. In this stage, the child's mind is developing to recognize things and people.
In simple words, let’s take the example of Ruhi, a 2-year-old baby girl. When she was six months older, her parents bought her a few books about animals and plants. Ruhi played with the books by seeing elephants, crocodiles, etc.; perhaps she tore the book. But when her parents went to the city zoo at the present age, she wasn’t shocked to see the animals, even though she enjoys seeing them in the real world.
So at this age, children’s minds develop the ability to sense things through chewing and touching due to curiosity.
Children's thought processes at this age are:
What it means
What is its importance?
What happens?
Signs of watching
Preoperational stage
Piaget’s theory of cognitive development's second stage is the preoperational stage. During this stage, children between the ages of 2 and 7 develop their minds to recognize things symbolically. They can also:
Imitation
Draw
Pretend
Make believes
Develop mental imagery
Describe verbally something
For example, now Ruhi is 3 years old, she is ready to go to school. Thus, her parents enrolled her in their nearby playschool, where her teacher taught them the nursery rhyme “twinkle-twinkle little star in a dancing way.
She likes her teacher's actions. Hence, whenever her mother or father said twinkle-twinkle little star, she started dancing like her teacher, but she is learning twinkle-twinkle little star properly.
Although her teacher drew karela in a drawing notebook, saying this is nutritional and tasty, Ruhi wants her mother to cook karela by drawing words; she doesn’t know the vegetable names.
Concrete operational stage
The concrete operational stage of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development focuses on the age group of 7 to 11 or 12-year-old children. the development of children’s minds by focusing on logical facts.
Here, children start to maintain the ability of logical curiosity, where they often understand differences and similarities in things, their own feelings, and world affairs, and slowly counter the reality of the world.
For example, Ruhi’s older sister Sonu learned in class second that plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. Meanwhile, when she came to 6th grade, her science teacher taught them that plants also inhale oxygen, but they often use CO2 while making food.
Although this is the age of skill development and finding visions, even though children have started to understand what is right and what is wrong,?
In this stage, children gain abilities like
Class inclusion
Reversibility
Relations
Conservations
Decentering
Formal operational stage
This is the fourth and last stage in the theory of cognitive development, according to Piaget. It is the age group of teenagers to adults. During this time, the understanding level of children is fostered beautifully.
Now they can understand the family’s critical problems, naturally mastered skills, self-consciousness, etc.
At this age, children are starting to be concerned about their future. They make goals, develop conversation skills, increase their involvement in social activities, take on responsibilities, and their understanding of the real world is now more engaging, creating opportunities, scheduling daily tasks, writing diaries, and maintaining strategies for some critical things.
Let’s understand in simple words by taking the example of Ruhi’s teacher, Amana. Ruhi always noticed her ma’am write something in her blue register after she taught Ruhi and her classmates. But whenever Ruhi approaches, her teacher wants to play with her and her friends, which she denies by saying that she is preparing for the next class.
Afterwards, when Ruhi
shared the incident with her older sister, and she explained to Ruhi that this is their daily duty. Do you know Ruhi? One day, my science teacher shared his routine? that he wakes up daily at 5 a.m. and exercises till 6 o'clock, then takes a bath, takes breakfast, prays to God, and comes to school at 7.45 a.m. Then he is free from school at 2.00 and comes home to take some rest or start preparing for his exams until 9.00 pm.
Ruhi was shocked that he didn’t have a few minutes to play and watch TV, but her sister understood their world well.
Summary of Piaget’s cognitive development theory
In this theory, the inverter discusses the four stages of children's mental development. This is very according to the age of children; however, like every new theory in history, this theory was also suffered with heavy criticism and his counter theories. But when we talk about this specific theory, we analyse the four stages of the intellectual development of children, which looks like the following short description:
Sensorimotor stage: from 0 to 2 years old, children start to understand the world through the senses of touching, tasting, watching, and listening.
Preoperational stage: 2–7 years, children use symbols, words, and behaviour more. Hence, they start talking, dancing, recognising things by symbols, etc.
Concrete operational stage: 7–11 years. In this stage, children’s minds begin to develop logical thinking, and now they can analyse something logically.
Formal operational stage: 12-adulthood; now children can understand the concept of justice, and they begin to understand their responsibilities to their family.
Why should we talk about the cognitive development of children?
If you come here to answer me, yes, the theory that we discussed is familiar in the sense of your own childhood experiences. If I am right, my perspective on discussing the theory is too easy. I want to remember your childhood and understand the feelings of present children.
Let me tell you the story of George Orwell’s life.
If you don’t know who George Oewell is, he was a well-known English writer in the 20th century. Animal Farm, 1984, is one of his masterpieces. George Orwell is his pen name; his real name is Eric Arthur Blair. Let’s begin the story:
Eric Arthur Blair was born in 1903 in India. He gained elementary knowledge from his home town, and at the age of 7, he won a scholarship and started learning at Crossgates, where he was living in a boarding school.
Eric says that he is just a seven-year-old child who wets his bed daily due to the new place. Hence, his headmaster daily beat him and gave warnings. He stated that he is a mute child who talks sometimes. One day, an unfamiliar lady comes into the school to meet the headmaster’s wife. They chatted for one hour, and Eric mutely went downstairs. Suddenly, the headmaster’s wife noticed him and summoned him. He went there, and the headmaster’s wife said that he was the boy who daily wet his bed.
Eric was unable to understand that feeling, but he was triggered by the fear of the headmaster and his wife. Although he stated that he prayed to God daily and said that God gave him the power to not wet the bed,.
However, his appeal file was not approached by God.
Hence, he was daily beaten by the headmaster due to his wetting problem.
I learned the story from the essay of George Orwell; such was the joy. Where the writer expresses his bitter childhood experience, which forced him to hate his childhood.
In the essay, he said that when people reach old age, they don’t care about the children's feelings, even though they also spent their childhood days.
In addition, he said that children look cute with smiling faces; no doubt, they are always happy, but behind this happiness, they have their fear for holders.
Thus, whenever they make some mistake, they are afraid to talk with their mother or father because they think that their parents are angry with them.
Final thought
Pehchaan, the street school, works for the overall development of underprivileged children. Hence, we must support Pehchaan children mentally and emotionally. Pehchaan, the street school psychological team, works day and night for Pehchaan children. We take care of Pehchaan children, but we believe that every child in India is entitled to special treatment, and some parents are suffering from difficulties in understanding their child.
So I wrote this article for these parents. I hope it will help you understand your children.