Early childhood characteristics: (2 to 6 years)
i) Early childhood is a distinctive period in the span of life. It is a troublesome or problematic age for parents as most of them are focused on the physical care of the baby. In infancy, behavioral problems become more frequent and troublesome than childhood physical care problems. As behavior problems dominate early childhood, young children develop distinctive personalities and aspire to independence. Also, very often they are stubborn, stubborn, disobedient, protestant and antagonistic. They are often disturbed by daytime dreams at night and irrational fears during the day and suffer from jealousy.
ii) Dependence during infancy changes to independence by reaching the age of childhood. On many occasions, they seem to reject the help offered by the elderly. Still, early childhood is an age of playing with toys most of the time. When children enter the first standard at school, they begin to participate in games and modified forms of sports without toys. However, when they are alone, children are seen playing with toys.
iii) It is the pre-gang age during which children learn the basics of social behavior. As a general rule, during the preschool years, children find social contacts with members of their own sex more pleasurable than with members of the opposite sex.
iv) It is an exploratory age in the sense that they want to know what their environment is and how it works, how it feels and how they can be a part of it.
v) It is an imitative age. Imitations of the speech and actions of others prevail. The imitative nature develops creative talents.
vi) Early childhood is also known as the age of quackery. The reason for this is that once they can speak easily, many children talk a lot and more than others. The other children, by contrast, are relatively silent and are called ‘Silent Sams’.
vii) It is an ideal age to learn various skills through repeated tests and adventurous attempts. Skills are learned easily and quickly.
viii) Improvement in speaking and comprehension is an important matter. Skills to build vocabulary, master pronunciation, and combine words into sentences are growing rapidly.
ix) Moral development is at a slow level. This is because intellectual development has not reached the point where children can learn or apply the abstract principles of right and wrong. They learn to act in specific situations without knowing why they are doing it. Even bright children tend to be poor at learning how to behave in a socially approved way is a long and difficult process. Children may be told not to do something one day, but the next day or even the day after, they may have forgotten what they were told not to do. Thus, what may seem like willful disobedience is often just a case of forgetfulness. They obey the rules without using reason or judgment because they consider adults to be in authority at all times. They judge all acts as right or wrong in terms of the consequences rather than in terms of the motivation behind them. They consider a matter to be wrong in punishment.
x) The development of consciousness does not live up to expectations. They don’t feel guilty or ashamed if they are caught doing something. What they know is wrong Instead, they may be frightened by the prospect of punishment, or they may try to rationalize their actions in the hope of escaping punishment.
xi) Questioning behavior is another major concern. The questions asked at first refer to physical causation and then to various categories. If they are not satisfied with the answer, they tend to ask more and more questions in a chain until they are satisfied. They also feel proud of themselves by asking such aspirational questions.