Long-term Impact on Early Childhood Development and Education

Abstract

Children are a gift of nature and precious human resources for any nation. The worldwide fact is that childhood constitutes the most crucial period in the life because, during the period, foundations are laid for motor, sensory, cognitive, language, social and personality development means all round development. Development means changes in a forward direction and holistic development. Child development is not just child becoming bigger; it involves development in many areas physical, mental, emotional, and psychological and so on. We may define child development as a progressive series of changes of an orderly and coherent type toward the goal of maturity. It can be observed, appraised and measured. As normally believed, development doesn’t start with birth. Birth is only a point, a stage, when the fetus emerges out to be independent of the mother. As a result of then the newly born or neonatal will have developed considerably physically and in sensory motor areas even a fetus shows complex behavior. Development begins with conception. Prenatal development covers development from conception to birth, while postnatal covers development after birth. In this connection, development is a continuous process, although rate of development varies within a child for different bodily parts and for different types of behavior and from child to child. Although continuous, development proceeds stage by stage. All type of behavior do not appear in a child at the same time, each becomes manifest at a certain stage. In general, for each typical behavior there appears to be a stage, although there are individual differences on the rate of development. So, early childhood years should be full of experiences and interactions with peers, parents, family members and other adult care givers for the holistic development (all-round development) of the children.