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This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

15 - Physical Development in Middle Childhood

from Part 6 - Middle Childhood

Phillip T. Slee
Phillip T. Slee
Affiliation:
Flinders University of South Australia
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Summary

‘If One Only Knew the Right Way to Change Them–’

So she set the little creature down, and felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the wood. ‘If it had grown up,’ she said to herself, ‘it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: but it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.’ And she began thinking over other children she knew who might do well as pigs, and was just saying to herself, 'If one only knew the right way to change them – 'when she was a little startled by seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS

  • Locomotive activities

  • Manipulative activities

  • Norms

  • Somatotype

  • Endomorph

  • Mesomorph

  • Ectomorph

  • Obesity

  • Socialisation

Introduction

Considerable advances have been made in our understanding of the nature of children's physical growth and development thanks to the work of such psychologists as Arnold Gesell (see chapter 6). For all that, developmental psychologists can sympathise with Alice's ruminations about the pig. More particularly, a great deal remains to be understood about the relationship between aspects of children's physical growth and their psychological development in middle childhood. This chapter explores some of these links. Other topics discussed include girls' participation in sport and the relationship between food and physical activity. The Family Life-cycle: 15 focuses on the effect of parental conflict on children.

Gross motor development

The Australian Sports Commission (1997) reports that greater than 30 per cent of Australians do not exercise.

Type
Chapter
Information
Child, Adolescent and Family Development , pp. 313 - 329
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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