Middle Childhood Development

Middle childhood to theorists like Piaget, Vygotsky, Erikson and Freud is classified as the period between early childhood and early adolescence, approximately from ages 6 to 11. Recent theorists have recognized the importance of middle childhood for the development of Physical health, cognitive skills, personality, motivation, and inter-personal relationships. Middle childhood is the stage Sigmund Freud refers to as latency stage, a time of slow and steady growth when physical development is less dramatic until the onset of puberty, when individuals begin to develop at a much quicker pace. During middle childhood children learn the values of their societies. Thus, the primary developmental task of middle childhood could be called integration,

Individuals can grow up to four inches and gain eight to ten pounds per year. This growth spurt is most often characterized by two years of fast growth, followed by three or more years of slow, steady growth. By the end of adolescence, individuals may gain a total of seven to nine inches in height and as much as forty or fifty pounds in weight. The timing of this growth spurt is not highly predictable; it varies across both individuals and gender. In general, females begin to develop earlier than do males.

As with physical development, the cognitive development of middle childhood is slow and steady. Children are building upon skills gained in early childhood and preparing for the next phase of their cognitive development. Reasoning is very rule based. Children learn skills such as classification and forming hypotheses. While they are cognitively more mature now than a few years ago, children in this stage still require concrete, hands-on learning activities. Middle childhood is a time when children gain enthusiasm for learning and work, for achievement can become a motivating factor as children work toward building competence and self-esteem as a result of social comparison of self to peers and standard judgment of the larger