Holistic Development of a Child

Understanding how children develop is an important obligation for all those who work in early years practise. Practitioners need to develop an understanding of the implications of children’s developmental processes in order to meet individual needs. The key to this understanding is the development of skills in observing children and of interpreting those observations.

Throughout the observations the aim is to compare their abilities to the norms of a child their age and to compare and analyse the results against what child development theorists have understood through relevant reading and understanding gained from experiences, also to explain how the characteristics of the child and features of his/her environment may interact to influence growth and development.

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A holistic approach to child development seeks to simultaneously address the physical, emotional, relational, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of a child’s life. The importance of the Holistic Approach is that it Children learn different things at different stages, e.g. walking, talking, fine motor skills etc. Holistic development is the overall development of all areas of development in children.

There are many proven techniques used in observing children. Depending on the reason for the observation some methods will relay the information more clearly, the observation that have been taken have been done in the free description written record method, checklists, web diagram. The free description is observed when a specific task is set, appropriate to the age and stage of development of the child. It is a description of an event unfolding face on, written in the present tense so that the reader can appreciate what has happened. The disadvantages are that may not be able to convey everything you see as it happens and sometimes it is difficult to keep up with what is happening and it may produce an unwieldy amount of information this can be seen in Appendix 1. Checklist or developmental guides are often used for assessing a child on one particular day, but can be used over a long period of time. Checklists often highlight areas of a child’s development that have previously gone unnoticed. For example in Appendix 5, I was able to concentrate closely on what the children were doing and could observe things as they unfolded as I was looking for them. The advantages of the checklist method are that it is a quick way of presenting a great deal of information. The disadvantages are that care must be taken to maintain objectivity.

The role of the childcare and educational practitioner in a home placement stays the same as it would in a school or nursery and we still have to abide by the confidentiality policies.

The 1989 United Nations Convention on the rights of the child sets out 54 Articles. The Articles that relate particularly to observing children are: