Early childhood is the most rapid period of development in a human life. Teachers need to be able to recognize and understand children's behavior to help them grow successfully in life. One way to better understand children is through child development. Early child care and development is not only what happens within the child, but also the care the child requires in order to prosper. Elementary schools must be more conscious of the physical and emotional needs required during all early childhood development stages.

For a child to develop and learn in a healthy and normal way, it is important not only to meet the basic needs for stability, food, and health care, but also to meet the basic needs for your inner-self, such as your emotions, affection, and security. Although individual children develop at their own pace, all children progress through a similar pattern of physical, cognitive, and emotional growth and change. It's a proven fact that young children respond best when caregivers use specific techniques designed to encourage and stimulate progress to the next level of development. Experts "believe in order to get results with children, you have

evelopment is defined as the process of change in which the child comes to master more and more complex levels of moving, thinking, feeling, and interacting with people and objects in the environment ("Overview" 1).

To better understand our modern views of children, it is substantial to examine views of childhood from earlier points in history. In the eras of the Greek and Roman civilization the childhood years were believed to have a great impact on their later development. During this time period Plato and Aristotle wrote of the importance of early education (Vasta 7). In the "eighteenth century an educational movement called naturalism developed" (Webb 146). The precursor of this movement, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, was best known for his political theories (Webb 146-147). Rousseau construed a philosophy and theory of education that inspired many educators. He believed in the educational demand of adapting instruction to the diverse stages of children's growth and development (Webb 147). The United States schools can trace their ancestry to the ancient Greek and Roman civilization (Webb 163). Through change, the philosophy of childhood has changed immensely over the years (Vasta 10!

Elementary schools are made up of faculty and staff, but the important body is the students. A deliberate part of school curriculum is, peers teaching each other (Vasta 550). "It is the conviction that the enterprise of education begins and ends with children as a dominant and overriding theme (Jordan 1).

A major problem in today's families, is family violence. Adult Family violence is any violent course of action between adults in the home. When a child sees two people they depend upon fighting in the home, it has a great effect on their development. Violence witnessed in the home has a greater effect then any movie or television show ever could (Ricci 1). In, The Journal of the American Medical Association, a test was conduced to examine children for posttraumatic stress disorder. The results show that "children from violent homes

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Approximate Word count = 1379
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)