Understanding the cognitive development of your children will help you be a better parent …

For years I taught a parenting seminar for churches and large child care companies that focused on two things: understanding your child’s God-created temperament, and understanding the cognitive development of children. Misunderstanding either of these in your children will result in you not rightly understanding your children, and likely not parenting them as effectively as possible.

In today’s blog post, I’d like to help you gain a basic understanding of the cognitive development of children. There is not space here to delve into the vital topic of temperament, as it requires much more space, but you can gain some information and key insights in my workbook, “The Temperament and Cognitive-Behavioral Workbook,” which you can learn more about by clicking here.

There are differing theories regarding cognitive development, but the one I have found to be the most accurate and most consistently supported by sound research, is Jean Piaget’s “Four Stages of Cognitive Development.” Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests children move through four different stages of mental development; he believed children took an active role in the learning process, acting much like little scientists as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. As kids interact with the world around them, they continually add new knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to accommodate new information. Educational consultant, Kendra Cherry, states the following about Piaget’s theory:

“He proposed intelligence is something that grows and develops through a series of stages. Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children, he suggested. Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children.”

Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development that included four distinct stages we’ll examine below. Let me encourage you to not get “hung up” on the ages given for the stages. Obviously, cognitive development is more continuous and doesn’t immediately change from one stage to another just because you have arrived at a certain age — ages noted are given for the cognitive development of children in general.

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE: Ages birth to two years.
Major characteristics and developmental changes of this stage include:

• • The infant knows the world through their movements and sensations.
  • Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening.
  • Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen (object permanence).
  • They learn they are separate beings from the people and objects around them.
  • They realize their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them.

During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child’s entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses. It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they are continually making new discoveries about how the world works. Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking, they also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they interact.

PREOPERATIONAL STAGE: Ages 2-7 years.
Major characteristics and developmental changes of this stage include:

• • Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects.
  • Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others.
  • While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in very concrete terms.

The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development. Children become much more skilled at pretend play during this stage of development, yet still think very concretely about the world around them.

At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy. Kendra Cherry provides the following example:

“A researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child will likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.”

CONCRETE OPERATIONS STAGE: Ages 7-11 years.
Major characteristics and developmental changes of this stage include:

• • During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events.
  • They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example.
  • Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete.
  • Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle.

While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they become much more adept at using logic. The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation. While thinking becomes much more logical during the concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts. Children in the concrete operational stage begin to understand their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE: Ages 12 and up.
Major characteristics and developmental changes of this stage include:

• • Abstract thought emerges. At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems.
  • Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning.
  • Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information.

The final stage of Piaget’s theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them. The ability to think about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage.

Now that you’ve been introduced to Piaget’s “Four Stages of Cognitive Development, Kendra Cherry reminds us of this:

“It is important to note that Piaget did not view children’s intellectual development as a quantitative process; that is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as they get older. Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they gradually process through these four stages. A child at age 7 doesn’t just have more information about the world than he did at age 2; there is a fundamental change in how he thinks about the world.”

As I used to teach the parenting seminars I mentioned previously, what was routine among the parents who participated was their suddenly becoming aware that most of the time how they parented their children was ineffective for their stage of development. For example, many parents attempted to demand abstract and hypothetical reasoning from their children before they were developmentally capable of thinking in such ways.

How about you?

Are you parenting your children according to their cognitive development capabilities? Or are you demanding something of your children they are undeveloped — and, therefore, unable — to provide?

Scotty