Child Development and Child Care
Child Development and Child Care
This domain tests how well you can describe normal development, recognise delay, and plan everyday care for children from birth to adolescence. Questions commonly ask you to match milestones to ages, identify red flags, and choose a safe caregiving response.
Core rules
- Development is assessed in four domains: gross/fine motor, language, cognitive, and socio-emotional. A child can be advanced in one and delayed in another.
- Use age ranges, not single dates: social smile around 6 weeks; sits without support 6–8 months; walks independently 12–18 months; says 2–3 words with meaning by 18 months; uses 2-word phrases by 24 months.
- Correct for prematurity up to 2 years: subtract weeks born early from chronological age before judging milestones.
- Growth is a care indicator: plot weight, length/height and head circumference; a falling growth curve matters more than one low reading.
- Care routines - feeding, sleep, toilet training, play - should be predictable, affectionate and adapted to the child's stage. Toilet training readiness usually appears after 18–24 months, not at a fixed date.
- Never shake a baby; support the head in infants under 3–4 months.
Worked example
A 14-month-old born at 32 weeks is not walking. The health worker notes the child pulls to stand and cruises. Reasoning: walking has a wide normal range (12–18 months); corrected age is about 12 months; cruising is a positive predictor. The correct response is to reassure, encourage floor play, and review in 4–8 weeks - not to diagnose disability. Refer if there is no walking by 18 months corrected, loss of skills, asymmetry, or persistent toe-walking.
Traps that cost marks
- Calling a single missed milestone delay without checking range, prematurity and other domains.
- Missing regression (loss of achieved skills) - always a red flag.
- Giving fixed ages for toilet training or weaning as if they were exam laws.