Factors Affecting Child Development

Having the right knowledge, skills and experience in understanding how children or young people develop are very important tools for early years practitioners. We must put to mind that each child born to this world is unique; they are born with different characters and their personalities and behaviours are formed and influenced by variety of factors. These factors may affect their ways of interacting to the environment and community or setting in which they live in.
In my experience as a child care practitioner most of the time, adults mainly focus on the physical development of a child and so quick to base their conclusion or judgement on the physical aspect. The child being able to sit, stand, walk, talk or even making gestures to communicate in which initiated and strongly coached by the adults at a specific month range; at some point babies and young children are made to do actions and gestures to entertain adults all merely to satisfy the adults expectations.
To assess the child growth and development we should look at each child as a whole; taking in great consideration several factors in which affect their physical, mental, emotional, social and even medical well-being.

These factors include:
Perinatal conditions - is the state of health of the mother and child during pregnancy up to the time of the delivery. This includes congenital anomalies brought about by poor health and diet the child is receiving from the mother during pregnancy.
The mother’s health