Care practices manual

A baby or a young child is not a passive human being but he/she is a real ‘interactive’ partner in the true sense of the term, who is capable of initiating and controlling, partly, his/her relationship with others, depending above all on the stage of development at which the child finds him/herself.

The child successively goes through one development stage to another, and is not able to go on to the next stage until he/she has completed the previous one. The factors discussed in this document provide elementary information concerning the child’s development.

It is important for people who wish to work with children to be familiar with these development stages. In fact, knowing these stages allows to understand the child’s development and thus to adopt behaviour which is appropriate to the stage and to suggest suitable activities, thus improving the child’s wellbeing.