Meaning of Child Psychology and its Importance

Every child keeps changing from birth until adulthood. The body grows, the power to think and understand grows, the way feelings are shown changes, and the child learns to get along with other people. These changes do not happen at the same time or in the same way for every child. One boy starts talking early and another a little later. One girl makes friends on her first day at a new school while another sits quietly on her own for weeks. The science that studies these stages of a child's development is called child psychology.

Before we can bring about the good changes we hope for in children, we have to understand the different sides of their development. It is impossible to guide a boy well without knowing why he loses his temper so quickly, or to help a girl who cannot settle to her studies without knowing what is holding her back. The same is true of a child who is deeply interested in one particular activity. For this reason, teachers and parents, who work with children every day, need to study child psychology.

Psychology is, put simply, the study of a person's mind and behaviour. We cannot look directly into someone's mind, but what goes on inside it shows up in the way that person behaves. Think of a student who is afraid of an exam. Her hands tremble, she does not feel like eating, and she keeps flipping through her book again and again. The fear is inside her mind, but the trembling hands and the lost appetite are behaviour that anyone can see. Psychology works in exactly this way: it studies behaviour in order to understand the processes of the mind.

Psychology looks at many sides of behaviour, and it also asks how and why behaviour changes. Its field of study can be set out like this:

• the mind and behaviour of a person
• the physical, mental, emotional and social sides of a human being
• the changes in a person's behaviour and the reasons for those changes
• a person's whole life, from childhood to adulthood

Psychology covers a person's life from childhood to adulthood, while child psychology focuses on childhood alone. It is the subject that studies the developmental process of childhood.

Child psychology looks for answers to questions like these:

• How are the psychological processes of childhood different from those of an adult?
• How do these processes develop step by step, from infancy through to adolescence?
• Why and how do individual differences appear as children develop?
• What kind of environment should children be given at school and at home, and how can their behaviour be improved?

A small example makes the first question clearer. On a long drive, a five-year-old girl looks out of the window and says happily that the moon is running along with the car. Her mother, sitting beside her, sees no such thing. The child is not making it up. Her way of thinking simply has not yet developed into an adult's way of thinking. Child psychology helps us understand differences of exactly this kind.

Child psychology does not study only how a child's body grows. It also studies how the child's intelligence develops, how the child's emotions develop and how the child learns to live with others. This makes it a helpful guide when adults decide what kind of surroundings to give children at school and at home, and how to help children behave better.

Children who sit in the same classroom can still be very different from each other. A big reason is the background they come from: their family, their society and their culture. In any community, people differ in how much money they have, in caste and ethnic group, in class, in the community they belong to, in customs and in religion and culture. So it is perfectly normal for the children of that community to differ as well.

Picture two children in grade three. The first has plenty of books at home, and her parents read her a story every evening. The second speaks a different language at home from the one used in school, and his parents leave early each morning to work in the fields. Both may be equally clever, yet in class they may speak, understand and show confidence quite differently. A teacher who knows child psychology does not treat this difference as a weakness. Instead the teacher deals with each child in the way that suits that child, and this supports the personality development of both.

Both teachers and parents need a knowledge of child psychology, so that they can find out each child's family, social and cultural background and help the child's behaviour to change for the better. The right places for building a child's personality are the home and the school. A child spends most of the day in these two places, so how well the people there understand the child has a great effect on the kind of person the child becomes.

At school, child psychology helps teachers plan their teaching around where each child comes from and where each child is right now. It helps them work out the educational objectives, the teaching methods, the activities and the ways of evaluating learning. It also suggests useful ways to keep children disciplined, to make them interested in lessons, to make a teaching plan and to teach according to that plan.

Parents need it just as much at home. A mother or father who understands child psychology can see why a child is being stubborn, why the child is afraid, or why the child prefers to be alone. Instead of simply scolding, such a parent can listen to the child and then show the right way forward.

The value of child psychology in teaching and learning can be set out in these points:

• (a) It helps us study the physical, mental, intellectual and emotional sides of children.
• (b) It helps adults treat children according to their interests, wishes and needs.
• (c) It helps adults find out each child's individual differences, recognise the child's needs and give the right guidance.
• (d) It helps teachers learn the new theories that psychologists discover and put them to use in classroom teaching and learning.
• (e) It helps teachers measure the level of children's learning in a scientific way and improve teaching and learning in good time.
• (f) It gives knowledge of the factors that affect a person's learning, so that problems in the learning process can be removed in time.
• (g) It helps teachers learn the characteristics of children at each age and choose teaching materials to match, so that teaching succeeds.
• (h) It supports the process of continuous student assessment.

Taken together, these points show that child psychology is useful from the beginning of teaching to the end. Before a lesson it helps the teacher get to know the children. During the lesson it helps the teacher choose suitable methods and materials. After the lesson it helps the teacher check how much has been learnt. For example, teaching grade one pupils through large colourful pictures and games, and teaching grade eight students through discussion and debate, is teaching that has been shaped by knowing what children of each age are like.

A grade four teacher noticed that Sarita, a girl who had just joined the class, never answered questions and sat alone even at lunch time. The teacher did not decide that Sarita was lazy or badly behaved. Using what she knew of child psychology, she went about it like this:

• She talked with Sarita's parents to understand her family background, and learnt that Sarita had only recently moved from a village to the city.
• She seated Sarita next to a friendly classmate so that the two could work as a pair.
• She began by asking Sarita easy questions and praised her whenever she answered correctly.
• She added activities that matched Sarita's interests, such as pictures and group work.
• Every week she kept checking how much Sarita was taking part and how much she was learning.

A few weeks later, Sarita began raising her hand in class. In this example the teacher found out the child's background, recognised her individual difference, treated her according to her interests and kept assessing her progress. Every one of these is a point in the importance of child psychology. Without that knowledge, the teacher might simply have scolded Sarita and made her even more afraid.