Basic Principles Of Growth And Development

According to Haliza Hamzah dan Joy N. Samuel dan Rafidah Kastawi (2008), there
are five principles of child development. The first principle is, the process of
development taking place according to rules. For example, in the early stages, a
baby can sit with assistance, crawl and subsequently be able to stand and walk. All
babiesdevelop in a similar way except premature babies who only develop in some
aspects. The development also starts from the concrete to the abstract, especially in
cognitive development and language.

Next, changes in growth and development are gradually from general to more
specific. For example, a baby can grasp objects with his hands before learning to use
fingers. Growth occurs first with the rough muscles before gradually moving to fine
muscles.

Next, growth and development is a process that occurs continuously. In other

words, the growth and development of children is continuous from birth till death. In
the process of development, a child will acquire other existing skills. At each stage,
the child will obtain certain skills. Skills they acquire at present is also the basis for
achieving new skills later in life.

The fourth principle states that the patterns and rules development are almost
the same for all except the rate which is different for each individual. For example,
some children are able to walk at the age of 10 months while some can only walk at
18 months. This can affect the social and emotional development of the child and
one of the factors that lead to differences between people as we can see in a
classroom.

The next development principle is development as a result of interaction

between maturation and learning. Maturity is the existence of inherent potentials of
an individual, such as crawling, sitting, walking and then running. It is influenced by
genetic factors. Learning is the result of training, process of imitation or identification
process which requires effort.

Other than that, it is also stated that the learning process helps an individual to
expand his inherent potentials. For example a perfect development of muscles and
nerves of the body might enable a person to swim but he can only swim with
sufficient practice or has imitated ways of swimming.