Characteristics of children in middle childhood

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Human development refers to the processes of change and stability throughout human life. The early stages of development in children are important in their life span. Children in middle childhood are those who are in the age between 6 to 11 years old. Most children in middle childhood start their formal education in primary school. In this stage, they have more opportunities to expose themselves to people and environment they had never known. In general, children in middle childhood are characterized by 3 major domains which are physical, cognitive and psychosocial (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1). The first domain that describes children in middle childhood is physical characteristic. The physical characteristic of middle childhood includes their height and weight, and motor development (Papalia, Olds & Feldman, 2009). Motor development is sub-divided into two distinct groups which are gross motor and fine motor (Papalia et al., 2009). According to Santrock (2008), children grow in an average of 2 to 3 inches and gain approximately 5 to 7 pounds annually. Girls are slightly shorter and lighter than boys between ages 6 to 8. However, girls become heavier and taller than boys after age 8 (Papalia et al., 2009). In addition, girls have more body fat compared with boys whereas boys are more masculine than girls in this period (Papalia et al., 2009). One of the sub-division of motor development is gross motor. Gross motor is the physical skills involving large muscle (Papalia et al., 2009). This kind of motor skill improves children’s abilities of force, movement, balance, and flexibility in middle childhood. Examples of gross motor activities are running, jumping, hopping, and cycling (Papalia et al., 2009). Fine motor is another... ... middle of paper ... ...9(2), 31-41. Livingston, J. (1997). Metacognition: An overview. Retrieved from: http://gse.buffalo.edu/fas/shuell/cep564/metacog.htm Magnuson, K., & Berger, L. M. (2009). Family structure states and transitions: Associations with children’s wellbeing during middle childhood. J Marriage Fam, 71(3). Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2836533/pdf/nihms181881.pdf Middle childhood: Cognitive and language development (2008). Retrieved from http://mcweb1guides.s3.amazonaws.com/520157.pdf Middle
childhood:
Psychosocial
development (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.mc.edu/faculty/files/1813/5293/4195/Berger9thedition_Ch_13_notes.pdf Papalia, D. E., Olds, S. W., & Feldman, R. D. (2009). Human development (11th ed.). New York, USA: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Santrock, J.W. (2008). Life-span development. New York, USA: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

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