 |
3 to 4 Year Old Development
Your 3 to 4 year old will spend most of her waking hours questioning everything that happens around her. She loves to ask, "Why do I have to...?" and she'll pay close attention to your answers as long as they're simple and to the point. Don't feel that you have to explain your rules fully; she can't yet understand such reasoning and isn't interested in it anyway. If you try to have this kind of "serious" conversation, you'll quickly see her stare into space or turn her attention to more entertaining matters, like a toy across the room or a truck passing outside the window. Instead, telling her to do something "because it's good for you" or "so you don't get hurt" will make more sense to her than a detailed explanation. Your 3 to 4 year old child's more abstract "why" questions may be more difficult, partly because there may be hundreds of them each day, and also because some of them have no answers or none that you know. If the question is "Why does the sun shine?" or "Why can't the dog talk to me?" you can answer that you don't know, or invite her to look into the question further by finding a book about the sun or about dogs. Be sure to take these questions seriously. As you do, you help broaden your child's knowledge, feed her curiosity, and teach her to think more clearly. When your 3 to 4 year old is faced with specific learning challenges, you'll find her reasoning still rather one-sided. She can't yet see an issue from two angles, nor can she solve problems that require her to look at more than one factor at the same time. For example, if you take two equal cups of water and pour one into a short, fat container and the other into a tall, skinny one, she'll probably say the tall container holds more water than the short. Even if she sees the two equal cups to start with and watches you pour, she'll come up with the same answer. By her logic, the taller container is "bigger" and therefore must hold more. Although it's almost human nature to try to measure your child's intellectual progress, beware of over- or underestimating her reasoning or thinking ability without formal testing. It's easy to convince yourself that your friendly, happy, highly verbal 3 to 4 year old is brilliant, while the quieter, more laid-back youngster playing next to her is not as bright. This may or may not be true, but the only way to know for sure is to have the child evaluated professionally. All pediatricians are familiar with these developmental evaluations, and some actually conduct formal assessments themselves. Many pediatricians prefer to refer children to testing specialists. So, if you believe your child is either gifted or lagging behind, ask your doctor about such testing. If your suspicions prove true, you may want to enter her in a special program geared to her individual needs and abilities. 
Although 3 to 4 year old children develop at different rates, here are some common things that most can do at this age:
To Return to Child Development, Newborn to Age 5, Click here
CopyrightŠ 2007 My Parenting Portal ABOUT US - PRIVACY POLICY - DISCLAIMER - CONTACT US
|
At about 3 to 4 years of age, your child's sense of time will become much clearer. She'll now know her own daily routine and will try hard to figure out the routines of others. For example, she may eagerly watch for the mail carrier who arrives every day but be perplexed that the garbage man comes only one day out of seven. Your 3 to 4 year old will understand that certain special events, such as holidays and birthdays, occur every once in a while, but even if she can tell you how old she is, she'll have no real sense of the length of a year.