85 Summary
Dinesh Ramoo
Key Takeaways
- Middle childhood is a complex period of the lifespan.
- Rates of growth generally slow during middle childhood.
- Between ages six and eight, significant improvements in fine motor skills and eye–hand coordination are noted.
- Between ages ten and twelve, the frontal lobes become more developed and improvements in logic, planning, and memory are evident.
- New understandings and social situations bring variety to children’s lives as they form new strategies for the world ahead.
- Middle childhood seems to be a great time to introduce children to organized sports.
- The decreased participation in school physical education and youth sports is just one of many factors that has led to an increase in children being overweight or obese.
- The current measurement for determining excess weight is the BMI, which expresses the relationship of height to weight.
- Children’s whose BMI is at or above the 85th percentile for their age are considered overweight, while children who are at or above the 95th percentile are considered obese.
- From ages seven to eleven, children are in what Piaget referred to as the concrete operational stage of cognitive development, which involves mastering the use of logic in concrete ways.
