Development and learning
Human development is a continuous and complex process that starts at conception and continues throughout life. Develop is influenced by our biology and our physical, social and learning environments in complex ways. Childhood is a period of particularly rapid physical and mental growth and change for all children. Children with Down syndrome tend to follow similar patterns of development to typically developing children in many ways, although generally making slower progress.
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We use the word “development” to refer to the processes of physical, cognitive, emotional and social growth and change from birth. Areas of development include:
- Motor development - learning and improving movement skills and patterns over time - including both gross motor skills, which involve large muscle activities (such as walking, running, and jumping), and fine motor skills, which involve smaller muscle activities (such as writing, buttoning a shirt, and using utensils)
- Social development - learning and adapting behaviors, skills, and attitudes to interact with and understand other people - including learning social norms, building relationships and forming a sense of identity
- Speech development - learning to identify and produce speech sounds and to combine them to produce whole words, and then learning to improve the clarity of spoken words and sentences
- Language development - learning to understand and use words and sentences to communicate - including learning the meanings of words (vocabulary), learning how to put words together to express different meanings (grammar)
- Reading development -
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