Child Development

What is a child? According to the Funk and Wagnalls dictionary, a child is:

An offspring of either sex of human parents; a son or daughter.
A young person of either sex at any age less than maturity, but most commonly one between infancy and youth.
A descendant in any degree.
A childish person; one immature in judgment or discretion.

Most adults are familiar with the contextual meanings of the word “child”. They were, after all, once children themselves. Perhaps some are now parents or have regular social contact with children. Still others work with kids as part of their professional duties. Does this mean, however, that any of these adults can remember what it was like to BE a child? Simply providing definitions of what a child “is” is not enough. It is a starting point for the purpose of this program, certainly, but the experience of childhood is exponentially more complex than a dictionary entry can convey. The years that mark childhood encompass a non-stop period of physical, intellectual, and emotional growth and development.

For students to be effective and compassionate in their role as juvenile officers, it is critically important that they have keen insight into who children are, what they experience, how they respond to these experiences, and when they require adult intervention and protection. This introductory section will examine how children develop physically and cognitively and how these processes affect behavior.