There’s an unspoken rule in my family: if you’re doing something that makes a baby laugh, you absolutely can not stop until the baby is tired of it.
One of the things that usually got babies laughing or smiling was playing the classic game, “peek-a-boo.” Everyone knows it: you put your hands over your face and then quickly remove them, saying “Peek-a-boo!” usually to the delight of the baby.
In the last week, we learned that this is because babies don’t yet understand object permanence. This means that when they can’t immediately see something, babies think that the object literally doesn’t exist anymore. That would explain why they’re so happy to see your face after you move your hands.
Though I’m the youngest child in my immediate family, I get to watch my niece grow up. She’s only three, but many of the concepts and developmental stages we’ve discussed in class are certainly relevant.
For example, I saw her go through Piaget’s theory of the sensorimotor stage. Part of this stage is that the child will take in the world through their senses. When my niece first started to get curious about things, I got to watch her interact with the world around her. Mainly, she liked to put things in her mouth. Of course, she also looked at and touched everything she could.
Another part of the sensorimotor stage is the previously mentioned concept of object permanence, which a child develops around one year old. I remember when my niece first started to realize that when you hid something from her, it hadn’t completely vanished. While this made it harder to protect TV remotes, it was also a really exciting development to watch.
After the sensorimotor stage is the preoperational stage, which kids will stay in until they’re around six or seven years old. In this stage, a child will start to learn the language, but won’t really understand logic. They also lack the concept of conservation, the idea that quantity remains the same despite a change in shape.
In class, we watched the video of young kids thinking tall glasses had more water than a shorter glass, despite watching the same amount be poured into each. This is the stage my niece is currently in. She started to talk a little after she turned two years old, and she can hold a fairly steady conversation now (when she feels like it, anyway).
While she still has a long way to go, it’s been super interesting to watch my niece grow up and develop skills that make her a little more of a functional human. I’m especially excited about the concrete operational stage when she starts to be able to comprehend logic and can hold more complex conversations.
Learning about these different stages is really interesting. It is weird to think about that all of us have gone through these stages and at one time were giggling at a game as simple as peek-a-boo. It’s hard for me to imagine how a person cannot have a concept of object permanence. It is so second nature that if something goes out of sight it could still exist. Yet something as simple as this, we were not born with.
I think it’s fascinating that you have been able to watch a child grow up and go through these different stages. I am also the youngest but unlike you I have never had the experience of nieces or nephews. Even family friends all have kids older than me. I have never watched a child grow up before. It is cool to hear how you can relate these stages to your niece. I look forward to the day when I can see a child develop and reach these different stages of Piaget’s theory.