>> So let's look a little bit
at physical development in early childhood.
Children in this age range are often referred
to as preschoolers, and we can see some excellent examples
of what children are doing physically in terms
of gross motor, riding tricycles, and fine motor,
doing more drawing and small manipulative activities there
on the right.
So as far as growth, between two and six years
of age children gain about three inches in height and four
to five pounds every year and that leads them to going
from looking like a toddler to looking more
like an adult-shaped body in terms of proportion
and the average six-year-old so that
by the time they end this stage, about 46 pounds
and 46 inches in height.
And this rate of growth is definitely slower
than what we saw during infancy.
We have to fuel that growth.
So when we look at nutrition, it's really important.
But because that growth has slowed down,
children often get pickier and have a reduced appetite
at this age, which can be really frustrating for caregivers.
So those young preschoolers are going to need about 1000
to 1400 calories a day.
Those older preschoolers will need more like 1200
to 2000 calories a day.
And it's really important to provide adequate
and well-balanced nutrition.
And if you do that often enough and give children healthy snacks
and meals, they won't starve themself even if they kind of go
for a while without really eating a significant amount.
Because eating can be so frustrating at this age,
it's important to remember
that children really are developing their taste
preferences at this age.
And we really want meal times and snack times to be something
that are enjoyable so that they don't have issues
with food later on or they're less likely
to have issues with food later on.
So we've got some tips
for establishing healthy eating habits.
Don't force a child to eat or make a fight out of it.
You can't make them eat so don't make it a fight.
Recognize that appetite varies not only between children
but just between meals.
You may know a child who has a voracious appetite for one meal
and the next, barely eats, or goes a few days and just kind
of picks that their food and then, you know,
for the next week they are just voraciously hungry
so appetite varies.
Keep it as pleasant as possible.
You don't want children to have bad memories about meal times.
Don't be a short order chef because you're setting
up unrealistic expectations.
So it's okay if children don't want to eat, but try
and prepare the same food for everybody.
Limit choices rather than, you know, do you want food?
Would you like an apple or would you like carrots?
So give them less choice in terms of, you know,
having to think about every food out there.
Again, serve those balanced meals.
So have all the nutrients so that children have a chance
to get everything they need to stay healthy.
And think about fresh food as much as possible.
And don't bribe especially with dessert.
So if you say oh, if you eat your green beans,
you can have a brownie.
Now you suddenly made green beans the bad guy
and brownie the good guy, which I'm sure was not the intention.
So that's a whole other topic but often, you know,
if you choose to do dessert, I would serve it with your meal
and just make it part of the food.
Don't make it stand out.
Don't make it better than the healthy food
because the opposite really is true.
And one thing the book doesn't talk about but I know
with my background in ECE is that involving children
in preparing food and even growing the food can be really
helpful as well.
One of the things that we're fueling is also the brain.
Right. So they go from having a 75% of adult weight brain at two
to by six, it's 95% of its adult weight already.
So there's a lot going on: more myelination, more dendrites
so things are becoming better connected.
There is significant gains in the prefrontal cortex
of the brain which lets them better self-regulate
which is why, for most children, you see less temper tantrums
and those types of behaviors in these years.
And if you're curious about --
well, how do I know what's going on?
Look at what children are doing.
One example of that is children's drawings.
You can see how the visual pathways
in the brain are being further elaborated and developed
when you look at the progression of children's drawings.
So it goes from scribbles to things
that are recognizable by an adult.
There is also dramatic growth in the left hemisphere of the brain
which is the side of the brain that deals with language.
And there is a growth spurt in the corpus callosum
which is the connection between the two hemispheres
between ages three and six which allows for better coordination
for things that require both sides of the brain.
When we think about physical development, we often think
about what they're doing with their bodies;
those two pictures I put on that title slide there.
So we have gross motor skills.
Those are things that use the whole body or the arms and legs.
And really when you think about the preschool years,
being active is what children do during this time.
So you can see some typical milestones
that happen throughout those years
and what most children can do by those ages.
And that kind of helps give you an idea of, you know,
what to plan for so you can do things like provide tricycles
and swings and slides and mini-trampolines
and bowling pins and ladders and suspension bridges
on playgrounds and tunnels and balls and playing games
like Simon Says and beanbag toss
and putting on music and dancing.
Those are all things that allow children to continue
to develop those gross motor skills.
But also developing are those fine motor skills.
And those are becoming more refined
because children gain dexterity, strength,
and endurance during this age but these are a little bit --
these lag behind gross motor skills.
So it takes longer for these to develop, which is why we want
to be really careful with what we expect children
to be able to do.
And so there are some typical milestones there on the screen
and some of the things that we can do to support that.
Give them water to pour into containers,
allow them to experiment with drawing and coloring
and using scissors and finger painting and doing finger plays
and playing with play-doh.
So often we think about how
to support children's emerging writing.
All of those things actually do that.
We don't want to have them sitting
down with tracing worksheets at this age,
but we want to give them things that make their fingers stronger
and more coordinated and that would also include lacing
and beading, large tweezers, tongs, and eyedroppers.
So not only do we need to nourish ourselves, we also have
to provide enough rest.
It's a really important physiological need.
Young children need about ten to 11 hours of sleep.
Most children are taking naps during the day at the beginning
of these years but aren't by the end of these years
but we just -- and it's really important to recognize
that children -- their sleepings are going to vary
but they're spending significantly less time
in REM sleep as time goes on.
Some things that you might notice during these years
that relate to sleep are sleepwalking where they,
you know, get up and move around.
They look like they're awake but they're not really.
And it's a myth that it causes damage
to awaken a sleepwalking person, so you can put them back
to bed awake or asleep.
Children might also experience sleep terrors or night terrors.
And those are usually during the first few hours of sleep.
Children don't tend to remember them, but it's really traumatic
for the person who's watching that happen
and then nightmares are little bit different.
They're more of a scary dream that children will remember.
And the last thing I want to talk
about with physical development is toilet training
or toilet learning is often the word that we prefer to use.
We do use toilet training in this book.
Typically that doesn't happen until children are two.
It's a little bit earlier for girls than boys in general.
Ninety-eight percent of children in the U.S. are toilet trained
by 36 months but readiness is really more important than age.
So if a three-year-old isn't ready to be toilet trained,
it doesn't matter how old they are.
And if there is resistance
or it becomes a battle then it's really not the right time.
Typically children develop their daytime bladder control first
and that might even take a while once you start the toilet
learning process.
The more ready a child is, the faster it happens
but then nighttime and nap even training can take much longer,
even years potentially.
And there are two specific elimination disorders related
to this.
So if a child is older than five and they are, you know,
still wetting the bed or their clothing without meaning
to then it's called enuresis
and that is repeatedly not just an occasional accident.
And then if it's more related
to bowel movements then it's encopresis.
And there is, you know, a small percentage of children
that this affects and it gets less and less with age
but it can happen even into the teenage years.
And it is often -- more often in males than females
and it might require medical treatment
if it doesn't resolve itself.
So that's it for this video
about physical development during the preschool years.