Pretend that you are working as a parent educator for first-time parents of infants. Your role is to help them understand developmental concepts and the stages that will impact their children from infancy through adolescence, including information identified by your agency as being important to the parents you serve.

We will be explaining concepts that parents should be familiar with in infancy, early childhood, childhood, and adolescence. we will need to describe developmental concepts, provide an example of what this might look like at the associated developmental stage, and explain what parents can do to help. For example, in early childhood, parents can do to help their child with vocabulary development and literacy skills to read to them often. Finally, we will illustrate why it is important for children in the different developmental stages to develop the concepts being discussed (i.e., for school performance, peer relationships, etc.).

• Theories
  • Discuss Piaget's four stages. Be sure to provide the age range for each of the stages and describe what occurs during each stage.
  • Explain Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of cognitive development.
• Infancy 
  • Summarize the development of attention in infancy.
  • Illustrate what parents can do to help their infants develop attention skills by providing specific examples.
  • Address why it is important to develop effective attention skills at an early age.
• Early Childhood 
  • Explain the development of vocabulary and literacy skills in young children.
  • Apply your knowledge of the development of vocabulary and literacy skills in young children by providing examples of what parents can do to help young children build their vocabulary and develop good literacy skills.
  • Provide details about why young children need to build their vocabulary and develop good literacy skills.
• Childhood 
  • Describe the development of memory, critical thinking skills, and emotional intelligence in children.
  • Provide specific examples to illustrate what parents can do to help their children enhance their memory, develop better critical thinking skills, and become more emotionally intelligent.
  • Explore why children need to have effective memory skills, critical thinking skills, and emotional intelligence.
• Adolescence 
  • Discuss the development of decision-making skills in adolescents.
  • Prepare parents to help adolescents with their decision-making skills by providing specific examples of how to enhance these skills in different situations that adolescents may face.
  • Examine why adolescents need to have effective decision-making skills.