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Infants have a built-in plan for how they will learn. They start to pursue their course work even in the womb and, when born, are ready, interested, and actively engaged in study. For those who are asked to develop curricula and lesson plans for infants, it would be a great mistake to do too much planning without paying close attention to the infant's built-in curriculum.
DEVELOPMENT is A CONTINUOUS PROCESS through which a child gradually grows and changes. But as early childhood professionals we need to keep in mind that each developmental period has its own challenges and opportunities. As brain development research has reached the general public, most of us have become aware of the infant period as an important time when neural pathways that influence learning and development are formed.
The rapid development of the brain during the early years does not mean that infancy is the most important period in life. Each period is important. Although optimum attention to infants' development helps them become resilient, it is not an inoculation against negative experience in subsequent periods. Infancy, however, is distinctly important. It is a unique period that calls for unique responses from adults.
The ways infants think, feel, and function differ significantly from the ways of children and adults in other periods of life. The developmental periods of preschool, middle childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and aging are unique as well. Each period of life has its special challenges, issues, and developmental milestones, calling for different responses, attention, and care.
This article focuses on children in the first two years of life. It points out the unique aspects of this period, and makes recommendations for the ways infants need to be approached and treated. We propose that infants should be treated differently from preschoolers and older children with regard to approaches to readiness for school, guidance and discipline, selection of curriculum content, the learning milieu, and the relationship of teachers to children.
In this article we use the terms genetic programming and genetic wiring to indicate that infants follow common developmental paths and have strong inborn drives to learn and develop. Experience plays a necessary and important role, but infants follow these common developmental paths even though their early experiences vary greatly. We...