What does child development mean?
To fully understand what good child care is, we need to be clear about what child development is. Development should be distinguished from growth. Growing means getting bigger. Development involves learning to function in new and increasingly complex ways. Here is one useful working definition of child development: Child development is a multifaceted, integral, and continual process of change in which children become able to handle ever more complex levels of moving, thinking, feeling, and relating to others. Development is multifaceted and integral. Development proceeds simultaneously along several dimensions: • A physical dimension the ability to move and to coordinate movements. • A mental (or, more broadly, cognitive) dimension the ability to think and reason. • An emotional dimension the ability to feel. • A social dimension the ability to relate to others. Although these dimensions of development can be separated conceptually, they are closely related. Changes in one affect chang
