The Cute and Complex Code for Children

Little humans are so interesting.

I have been a babysitter and I've worked with summer camps before so I've had my share of experiences with little knee-high people. They're all unique and their minds work in fascinating ways. I'm currently in child psychology so you see where this post is going.

There are so many different theories around child development. It depends on what school of thought you choose to focus on. The beginning debate is nature vs nurture, but there are also other issues that you might not have considered. Is development continuous or discontinuous? Meaning does development occur in stages or is it gradual? What role do children play in their own development? How do our genes and environment interact to influence us? As you can see, there are many things to consider and we're only scratching the surface.

You might be familiar with the conservation task. If you aren't, I found a video which shows the experiment. It's adorable and sad. You'll see. Here is the video: Piaget Conservation Task. Children learn different rules about the world at various times which is why their logic might not line up with an adult's. It's something to consider when you write young children. There are definitely going to be differences in cognition and that will in turn influence how they act in situations.

Communication is so important and children are avid learners of language. If you ask Chomsky, they have an internal language acquisition device that helps them. We'll save the theorizing for coffee shop talk, but the way in which children begin speaking that is what I am interested in. Holophrastic speech is defined by one word containing a wealth of meaning. The child might say, "Up," which is a clear indicator for, "Pick me up. Now."

Then children move onto telegraphic speech. Telegraphic speech gets its name from the old communication of telegrams. Do you know what telegrams are? They were the original text messages. Short bits of information could be sent over long distances. Because of the hassle of sending and receiving messages, sentences used only the necessary words. Children do this too. For example, when my mother was pregnant with me, she was driving to the hospital and my sister sat in the backseat saying, "Juice," and "More juice." It is the "More juice" that defines telegraphic speech. Children use two words to communicate ideas just as my sister did.

Children have adorable ways of communicating with us. It's worth it to listen to them. Here is a video of a poor little boy whose heart was poked, as you'll see it's very upsetting: "You Poked My Heart" Video.

Have you interacted with young children? What have they said? How do they act when they're happy? Sad? Frustrated?