The developmental assessment of pediatric patients entails processes involved in gathering essential information concerning their growth and development. These pediatric patients are children aged between one day and 12 years old, which brings variance in their profile, development needs, and rate of growth. The information collected has different aspects, including psychosocial and methods to learning, language, motor, and cognitive facets (Black et al., 2017). The healthcare professional should be well equipped to comprehend these children’s mental, emotional, and physical needs that overly rely on the specific growth stage and age ranges. Thus, through evaluation based on these factors, the care provider subsequently develops a customized approach for children in different age groups in offering care. He/she will also involve the children’s parents for an effective support health-wise. Therefore, the information details prepare the caregiver to provide the correct intervention depending on specific assessment tools that are particular to different school-age children.
Age is a significant factor in human needs, and pediatric patients have variable data at every age. Health care professionals use dynamic evaluation methods and rely on growth charts for these school-aged children’s assessment prerequisites. These charts provide representative standards as recommendations for conducting overall assessment in pediatric patients. In the absence of charts, the information on children, say five-year-olds, is usually obtained from guardians or parents since they tend to act shy compared to 11 or 12-year-olds that express themselves articulately. The health care provider can employ observation while interacting with the children and developing a diagnosis from their conduct. There are other assessment methods such as standardized tests, ratings from caregivers, and the use of portfolios (Black et al., 2017). Nevertheless, these methods work effectively for different age groups. Some situations may call for modification of assessment techniques, and this may imply reading questions and writing answers for the five-year-olds. The 11 or 12-year-olds will work with little help.
An 11-year-old child is in the teenage bracket of rapid growth phase with varying physical and emotional maturity levels. The signs of puberty and growth make them conscious of their body at this stage of life. They become sensitive to hair growth on both underarms and faces, and girls increase their generation of fat with physical changes, for instance, breast enlargement (Large et al., 2019). Late 11-year-old girls will start experiencing menstrual cycles, and these children will have stronger perceptions of friendships and associations. They will value interrelations with attachments made to each other. Both boys and girls will develop a sense of responsibility, predict the outcomes of actions, and understand the connections of things such as how mood changes affect people around (Large et al., 2019). These children will also become increasingly independent, develop a need for privacy, and retract from family activities, thereby concentrating on selfish interests.
Erickson’s developmental theory is based on self-centered growth and development that provides a different perception of a particular child’s stage of development. In conjunction with environmental factors and impacts, the self-centered character work to fashion the child’s identity and understanding of personality (Jones & Waite-Stupiansky, 2017). To illustrate, Erickson’s theory of growth and development puts the 11-year-old child in the fourth stage of psychosocial development. Therefore, the child’s competency and attitude become boosted highly and positively upon providing positive experiences and supports. On the contrary, their frustrations resulting from school failures and the resulting confusion will make them opt for isolation and subsequently suffer depression.
The environmental factors and support from parents have utmost significance in fashioning the children in this growth stage. Further, in the fourth stage, industry versus inferiority, entails competency, and when assessing the child based on Erikson’s theory, it requires emphasis on his ability to read and write (Syed & McLean, 2017). The expectation is that this child should have developed cognitive skills that comprise solving simple mathematical summations in school, and this will provide information on the child. At this stage, the child values friendship and association, and the peer group is vital in developing self-respect. It would be easy to gather information from their best friends, those who bully them, and their prospective associates, thereby forming the haters’ inferiority circle. In gaining cooperation, I would conduct the child’s assessment in the friend’s presence.
The assessment of a child’s development is a significant way of caring for pediatric patients. It is an essential tool for the health care professional in determining a child’s specific needs. Further, it offers a transparent platform for collaboration between parents and care providers in rendering support for the child, even though the needs may shift with time. Therefore, care providers can employ different assessment mechanisms to varying ages for effective evaluations.
References
Black, M. M., Walker, S. P., Fernald, L. C., Andersen, C. T., DiGirolamo, A. M., Lu, C., … & Lancet Early Childhood Development Series Steering Committee. (2017). Early childhood development coming of age: science through the life course. The Lancet, 389(10064), 77-90.
Jones, E., & Waite-Stupiansky, S. (2017). The Eriksons’ Psychosocial Developmental Theory. In Theories of Early Childhood Education (pp. 31-44). Routledge.
Large, I., Pellicano, E., Mojzisch, A., & Krug, K. (2019). Developmental trajectory of social influence integration into perceptual decisions in children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(7), 2713-2722.
Syed, M., & McLean, K. C. (2017). Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development.
