One of the most exciting and baffling things about being around young children is decoding the way they think. As a proud aunt of four (currently ranging in age from 9 months to 3 years), I am regularly delighted as I watch these little people make connections. It can be truly thrilling to watch them learn something new. At the same time, it can often be puzzling trying to figure out how they reached a certain conclusion.
For example, let me set the scene: it’s the Fourth of July, the day is hot, and my 3-year-old nephew is deep into his dinosaur phase. It’s the perfect time to introduce an inflatable 5-foot dinosaur sprinkler, which we do. As I approached a group of my family members relaxing in the shade, my sister called out to me, “Careful, Sarah! There’s a dinosaur in the yard!” My nephew roared helpfully, and my sister continued, “You are taller than it, though. You could probably take it.”
Looking back and forth between the dinosaur sprinkler and the group in the shade, I agreed, “Yeah, I think I can take it.”
This exchange was interrupted by my nephew’s quiet objection, “No! Don’t take it!”
While I, personally, thought this exchange was hilarious, it also illustrates some key differences in the way my brain operates and the connections a 3-year-old might be capable of making.
For decades, scholars have worked to understand the mind. Some brilliant minds of the past have put into words the patterns they noticed, and we can learn a lot about the way children learn from those observations. In this instance, I want to introduce (or perhaps reintroduce,) Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. (To see my references and learn more about Piaget’s theory, see here, here, here, and here.)
In his theory, Piaget presented four stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years), the preoperational stage (2-7 years), the concrete operational stage (7-11 years), and the formal operational stage (ages 12 and up). Each of these stages is characterized by different limitations, abilities, and goals that shape the way children interact with their world.
Sensorimotor Stage
As implied in this stage’s title, a baby’s senses are key to their development during this stage! Using senses such as sight, touch, taste, and hearing along with their growing ability to use their body allows babies to learn more about the world they live in and the impact they can have on it. Is it any wonder that babies are constantly putting things in their mouths when there is so much sensory information to be learned from that action? You can see evidence of this stage in so many actions your baby might be making. Take, for example, my niece’s fascination with the sound her stacking cup made on the hardwood floor when she started crawling. It was amazing to see the deliberate choices she made about where she banged the cup, broadening her repertoire of sounds. Another example you might be familiar with is the highchair toy-dropping game, where your baby is learning that his or her actions make an impact on the world around them. (In this case, dropping a toy will make it fall – and sometimes a falling toy will result in a sibling or adult picking it up again!) They are learning that they can influence the world around them, and they are learning what that influence looks (and feels, and tastes, and sounds) like.
Preoperational Stage
Once a child has reached the preoperational stage, there are a lot of things that they can do that they couldn’t before. For example, children in the preoperational stage are getting better and better with symbolic thought. You can see this in the way they now use words to represent ideas and toys to represent other objects in imaginative play. They also still have some big limitations. Children in the preoperational stage are not very good at logic; the way the world looks will have a greater impact on their perceptions than anything logic might tell them. For example, children in this stage will often fail “conservation of volume” tasks – this means that even if it has been demonstrated that two items have the same volume, if one looks bigger than the other, then that is the one they will think has more. (Think of water in a short, wide cup compared to a tall, skinny cup. They could be shown to have the same amount of water, but the preoperational child will think the tall, skinny cup holds more.) Children in this stage are also not great at perspective-taking. Piaget calls this “egocentrism,” and while that may sound like an apt description for toddlerhood in general, in this case it means that they think other people see things the same way they do.
With all of these skills still being developed, it’s truly amazing what they are able to grasp. Going back to my experience with my nephew this summer, you can see his preoperational mindset in his use of language and symbolic thought. As a three-year-old, he’s still developing this skill. He’s getting better and better at language, and knows that words represent certain ideas. If you think about the exact meaning of the words I used, it makes perfect sense that my 3-year-old nephew might conclude that if I “took” the dinosaur, I would be taking it away, rather than winning the hypothetical match of fisticuffs my sister and I were referring to. Thinking abstractly won’t happen for a couple more stages, so it makes sense that the “I can take him” idiom would be over his head.
Concrete Operational Stage
During the concrete operational stage logic starts to come into play. In fact, a lot of the patterns of thought that are hallmarks of the preoperational stage undergo some big changes during the concrete operational stage: children are now able to understand conservation, they are better at seeing things from the perspective of others, and they can use reason to predict things based on logic. Some of these skills might take more time to develop than others, but it can be a fun, exciting time to watch your child’s mind grow!
While thought can become more organized in this stage of development, it is also very rigid. It’s hard for children in this age group to use logic in the abstract; it’s easier if they are thinking about something that is very real, or, as the stage name implies, concrete.
Formal Operational Stage
The final stage in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is the formal operational stage. People in this stage are able to use reason and logic not only on objects they are familiar with in the real world, but they can also use these operations on abstract concepts and hypothetical situations. While even young children can be thought of as little scientists, it is during the formal operational stage that growing brains are really able to use scientific reasoning.
One of the things you may have noticed in learning about these stages is that with every new stage, our abilities grow and our limitations are lessened. I think it’s important, though, to recognize the incredible things these little minds are doing, no matter what developmental stage they are in. Your baby is taking in sights, tastes, sounds, and smells, and building a representation of an entire world in their head! Your toddler is matching that world with symbols, categorizing and making decisions based on the input they are receiving. Your child, whatever his or her age, is using the tools they have to make sense of the world. They’re going to be wrong sometimes in the things they perceive, but, honestly, adults have that problem, too. Celebrate the things they are doing now and the way their capabilities are growing, because your child’s brain is a pretty incredible thing.
To learn more about developmental stages and how play changes from stage to stage, see here.
