Kırşehir Ahi Evran

Üniversitesi
Sağlık Bilimleri
Enstitüsü

”Characteristics and Need of Children“

: Prepared by
 Alı Falh abdlhasan
 Zaınab Mohammed Abed Al-Khuzamee

: Supervised by
Dr. Öğr. Üyesi HİLAL SEKİ ÖZ
Young Infants (Six weeks – 12 months)
 Rapidly changing and growing.
 Experiencing the environment through their senses, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling,
tasting.
 Social dependent, developing trust.
 Responds interactively to faces, talking, cooing.
 Express feelings though crying, facial expressions, body language.
 Is reaching out, searching for a response, evoking responses in others.

 Mobile Young Toddlers (13 months – 23 months)

 Curious and more energetic.
 Babbling; beginning to develop language.
 Judgment based on perception, rather than logic.
 Recognizes parents and special people, attaches to special toys, objects.
 Expresses feelings through crying, facial expressions, body language, sounds
Understands words; communicates via sounds, gestures.
Older Active Toddlers (24 months – 35 months)
 Highly self-absorbed and egocentric.
 Working on physical skills, less clumsy.
 Verbal, rapidly learning words.
 Sense of self; learning meaning of me, my, mine.
 Empathetic if other are hurt

Preschoolers (36 months – 5 years, 11 months) 

 Increasingly independent; still egocentric.
 Good vocabulary; application of linguistic rules (often with incorrect results).
 Trying to find reasons and meaning; forming concepts based on their perceptions.
 Has formed identity as a person, member of family and extended family.
Early Elementary (Kindergarten – Third Grade)
 Active.
 Acquiring skills, physical as well as reading and numbers.
 Sense of justice (especially if younger siblings).
 Judgments based on reasoning not just perception.
 Mastery of basic scholastic skills; self-esteem will be affected if these skills are not
appropriately taught.

Middle Elementary (Fourth - Sixth Grade)

 Increasingly independent
 Mature and sane.
 Sense of justice.
 Ready to be helpful in community, ready to be valued outside the family.
Young Teens (Seventh – Ninth Grade)

 Potentially having strong skills, talents and interests, interested in connecting with others with
these interests.
 Self-conscious; beginning to be emotional, adolescent, aware of and uncertain about their
physical development as young men and women, and how to relate to other gender.
 Are very concerned about what others say and think of them.
 Want to separate themselves from children.
 Interested in future career; opportunities to volunteer in work settings and community service.
 Psychosexual Stages of Development

• Freud said that we possessed multiple erogenous zones.

 Body areas that provide pleasure.
• The importance of various erogenous zones changes as we grow and
develop.
• Move from autoeroticism to reproductive sexuality.
 Oral Stage

• From birth to Age 1

• Breast-feeding with mother
• Crying to meet needs
• Babies put everything in their mouths
• The mouth is source of pleasure or conflict
o Source of understanding/discovery of the world
o Prohibited behaviors (biting, thumb sucking)
 Anal Stage
• Age 1 to Age 2
• Pleasure derived from the anus
• Greater focus on defecating
• Children begin potty-training
o Conversion of involuntary to voluntary behavior
o First attempt controlling instinctual impulse
• Derive praise from parents for completing potty training
• Punishment often targets buttocks
  Phallic Stage
• Between Age 3 and Age 6
• Focus on genital
o Pleasurable physiological sensations
o Conflictual feelings arise
• Children notice differences between girls and boys
• May fantasize about sexual acts and masturbate
 Phallic Stage (cont.)
 Oedipus Complex
• Greek tragedy written by Sophocles
o Oedipus kills his father and weds his mother
o Oedipus unaware of the taboos he has transgressed
o Oedipus blinds himself upon learning of his deeds
• Children have unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent
and do away with the same-sexed parent
o Not literally sexual
• Boys are fond of mothers
• Girls are “Daddy’s little girl”
 Phallic Stage
 Oedipus Complex
• Boys experience castration anxiety or fear that affection for Mom will
be met by emasculation by Dad
o A mixture of love and affection for father, but also fears father’s
reprisals
• Girl version called Electra Complex
o Not Freud’s term, considered Oedipus complex as universal
• Girls experience penis envy where they feel inferior to males for lack
of a penis
o Not having a penis is their castration anxiety
 Phallic Stage (cont.)

 Oedipus Complex
• Boys identify with their Fathers to overcome wishes for Mother
• Eventually girls identify with Mothers to overcome anger at not
having a penis
• Both boys and girls are then prepared to later seek out members of
the opposite sex for marriage and procreation
 Latency Period

• Sexual forces driven dormant by psychic forces

o Culturally unacceptable sexual thoughts/behaviors are
channeled into other activities (sports, intellectual interests,
peer relationships).
• Preference for same-sex peers
• Modern critics say that children simply learn to “hide” their
sexuality at this point
  Genital Period
• Around the age of puberty
• Return of overt sexual and aggressive desires
• Emergence of interest in the opposite sex
• Sexual needs satisfied through socially acceptable means
• Lieben & arbeiten
o To love in an appropriate way and to contribute as a productive member
of society
  Children and Their Basic Needs
In his hierarchy, Maslow detailed five basic needs of all humans. The five basic needs
identified by Maslow were:
(a) physiological needs, (b) safety needs, (c) belonging and love needs, (d) self-esteem
needs, and (e) self-actualization needs. Moreover, Maslow also emphasized that before
higher level needs are even perceived lower level needs must be satisfied .
Unfortunately, for children reared in poverty, the attainment of each level of need is
jeopardized by the many obstacles presented by poverty.
 physiological needs

physiological needs the first level of basic needs identified by Maslow

are physiological, including life sustaining necessities such as food,
shelter, and clothing. there is no doubt that unless these needs are met,
the child will perish. for many poor children this need is not met, as
evidenced by the rate of death for infants born to poor parents. children
who are poor are two times more likely to die during infancy than
children who not poor. poor children are also one and a half times
more likely than nonpoor children to die between birth and age.
 SAFETY NEEDS

The need for safety includes security, stability, dependency, protection,

and freedom from fear, anxiety and chaos . It is with this need for
safety that poverty presents probably its greatest challenge for children
to fulfill subsequent needs. Unfortunately, many children reared in
poverty live in environments that are both unsafe and unhealthy
Children who are poor are more than twice as likely as their nonpoor
peers to live in homes that are overcrowded and dangerously
substandard. Many of these homes are old and have serious upkeep
problems that present health hazards.
  BELONGING AND LOVE NEEDS

From the first moment of life, human beings continually seek

the reassurances of belonging and love. Children who receive
sensitive and reliable responses from their parents or caregivers
during the early years of their life are able to develop successful,
secure relationships.
  SELF-ESTEEM NEEDS

As with the lower level needs, poverty may severely affect the attainment of the higher level needs. All
people have the need to have a high evaluation of themselves. This is not a new ideology. In fact , one of
the first concepts taught in teacher education programs is “success builds success.” If that concept is in
fact true, would it not be logical to deduce that “failure builds failure”? Growing up in poverty has been
shown to be one of the greatest risk factors for children’s failing in school. Repeatedly receiving low and
failing grades has a detrimental affect on achievement expectancies and academic self-concepts, both of
which have been found to be powerful predictors of grade performance Consequently, if children do not
expect to succeed, they seldom put forth the effort required for success. Once again, these children often
turn to peers from whom they receive powerful rewards and sanctions for behaviors that may even
discourage classroom learning.
  SELF-ACTUALIZATION NEEDS

Self-actualization, the fifth need addressed by Maslow, suggests that

what people are capable of being, they must be in order to maintain their
self-esteem. Children reared in poverty may not recognize education as a
viable means of attaining their goals. The Plowden Report of 1967
summarized the feelings of many children living in poverty regarding
education:
“In a neighborhood where the jobs people hold owe little to their
education, it is natural for children, as they grow older, to regard school
as a brief prelude to work rather than as a avenue to future opportunities”
Thank
you