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The developmental phase of 3 to 6 years old marks the progression from parallel play to group interaction in expanding peer and academic settings (preschool through first grade). Learning continues at an explosive rate with rapid brain development (nature) interacting with a protected and enriching environment (nurture). As children become increasingly familiar with and master activities, their cognitive resources are freed up to grasp an increasingly complex understanding of the world around them. During this time our amazing little beings are blossoming and developing initiative, complex communication, and creativity.

This article offers a developmental psychology review/crash course outlining the developmental tasks children master between the ages of 3 to 6 years old. With this information, you can decide for yourself if screen time would enhance, be neutral, or interfere with your child’s development.

Brain Development

Research on brain structure has been difficult with this age group due to the complexities of sedating children for brain research. However, with more sophisticated brain imaging and recording technologies, we have evidence that the preschool developmental period is characterized by the ongoing “remodeling” of brain tissue. More specifically, brain cells (neurons) grow and migrate, only to die off or be “pruned and tuned” later as the child matures and gains experience (Brown). Brain maturation is affected by experience and interactions between nature and nurture. The better the match between children’s capacities and the demands placed on them, the better the learning. If the mismatch is too big, stress and dysfunction may result (Lenroot). Fortunately, loving parents are expert at ratcheting up difficulty level at a customized rate that best fits their child. It is the perfect partnership!

Here are some quick brain facts to help you customize your parenting genius:

• At 3 years old, your child’s brain has reached 50% of its adult size already and will reach up to 95% of its adult size by 6 years old (Lenroot).

• The brain remodels from phylogenetically older to newer brain structures. As lower brain regions develop, they perform scaffolding for later developing, higher brain regions. In other words, when performing a cognitive task, young children must enlist more brain regions for a single task, while older children with more specialization use fewer regions to perform the same task (Brown). This progression of mastery frees brain resources for more and more specialized development. Truly magical to behold!

• Just as we see a spike in surface area growth of the frontal lobes at age 2 years, we see another between 5 to 7 years. This is consistent with the dramatic improvements in executive functioning (attention, concentration, and organization) that we see at these two phases of development.

There’s increasing evidence that frequent and rigorous exercise, good sleep, good nutrition, unstructured play, one-to-one parent and peer interaction, and time with nature play important roles in the healthy development of executive functioning. Parents would be well advised to structure their preschooler’s day with quality stimulation in all of these areas.

Although educational and prosocial screen media activities are a cognitively- and socially-enriching addition to a well-balanced life, limits are necessary. There is also increasing evidence that too much screen time can contribute to attention problems (Christakis).

• The brain’s auditory system develops rapidly during these ages, consistent with rapid language acquisition.

• Consistent with the language and motor advances during the preschool period, rapid myelination occurs throughout the brain, particularly in the areas of the hippocampus (memory) and in the fibers linking the cerebellum and cerebral cortex (fine motor skills) (Lenroot).

• More effective connections are also established between the temporal, occipital, and parietal lobes, which are brain areas critical for the synthesis of information and processing of temporal, visual, and spatial information.

• Although little research has been conducted regarding screen-media technology use and brain change in young children, there is evidence of brain structure change with older kids. For example, Hong et. al. report evidence that there is a significant relationship between Internet addiction and the thickness of a child’s medial and lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), similar to changes seen due to drug addiction. The medial OFC is affected by choices involving immediate rewards, and the lateral OFC is affected by choices involving delayed rewards. These areas of the brain also demonstrate similar changes among subjects with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In conclusion, it doesn’t take a brain scientist to recognize that even child programs on screen media are expertly designed to encourage compulsive play. It’s up to parents to run a risk/benefit analysis about whether to allow play at all, to choose appropriate content, and to monitor use time. I suggest you keep it conservative for now. There’s plenty of time to develop expert digital literacy.

Cognitive & Motor Development

• Preschool children are rapidly developing a self-concept, with both concrete and psychological dimensions (e.g., sociability). Preschoolers are wildly curious and often focused on gaining independence and self-control. As they collect new experiences, expect new behavioral patterns to emerge. For instance, it is very normal for preschool age kids to become preoccupied with the classification and grouping of things. Clients sometimes worry their children have a clinical form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I assure you, lining up toys and insisting on rigid rules and routines is common among the preschool age group. Go with it, this too will pass.

• Piaget theorized that children of this age are in the preoperational stage of cognitive development and start to demonstrate precausal/magical thinking:

In other words, they still have a hazy idea of how their ideas and desires relate to the world around them. They tend to accept what can be immediately seen (concrete appearance and reality), yet unable to reason concepts through (precausal thinking). As a result, they are better at grasping the short-term rather than the long-term outcomes. Flaws in thinking during this developmental phase include egocentrism (self-centered thinking), irreversibility (things operate only one way), and animism (ascribes lifelike qualities to inanimate objects).

 Young children are not confident in their opinions and ideas and are easily led astray by the influence of others. Therefore, even if you’ve provided good information and practiced appropriate response, young children should not be expected to be able to make choices about activities and are unable to adequately protect themselves against predatory peers or adults. They simply don’t have the cognitive resources to do it well yet. So as an awesome parent, you must provide deliberately filtered and protected home, school, social, and digital environments. They are not yet ready to go-it-alone.

• Reaching conclusions/moral reasoning:

Preschoolers tend to be impulsive and unsystematic in their thinking. They show little understanding of the need for rules and instead play games to take turns and have fun (Piaget). Piaget called this the Premoral Period.

At this young age, they are still only able to hold a few things in memory at once. As a result, they have difficulty identifying and keeping in mind the relevant features of a complex problem. They must rely on what they can see or on hard rules rather than on another’s intent, abstract factors, or the spirit of the rule. Outcome counts for little kids, not the intent. I see many parents overestimate their children’s capabilities, thus giving them too much independence. It’s better to go in slow rather than let your children run amuck, get into trouble that can’t be undone, and then react.

• Movement:

As with other developmental periods, physical play promotes healthy brain development, particularly in the vestibular, proprioceptive, and tactile sensory system, and results in progressive fine-tuning of gross and fine motor skills. Let those preschoolers run and provide them with fun, enriching social and sporting activities!

Language Development

• During the preschool and kindergarten years, children’s language ability continues to explode in vocabulary and sentence complexity. Children within this age range are actively learning to tailor their language to their audience. Indeed, frequent and rewarding interaction with others is critical to healthy development.

Evidence suggests that excessive screen time, at the expense of conversational interaction, may result in developmental and language delay (Chonchaiya).

Social-Emotional Development

• Freud famously theorized that gender identity forms during this developmental period, with sexual impulse being the primary source of motivation.

He believed that gender identity comes from identification with and fear of the same-sex parent as the child increasingly tries to covet the opposite-sex parent. For boys, this conflict is called the Oedipal Complex and for girls, it is the Electra Complex. Don’t be surprised when your son tries to take over mom’s attention and your daughter openly battles for dad’s attention. Working through this conflict is entirely normal.

• Erik Erikson coined this developmental phase Initiative vs. Guilt. In other words, he hypothesized that children ages 3-6 years are starting to launch on their own while still remaining strongly attached to caregivers. Just as toddlers frequently demonstrate separation anxiety, so do preschoolers. It’s perfectly healthy for your preschooler to be emotionally needy and clingy sometimes as well as start to strike out independently. Be encouraging, cuddly, and patient as your children take their two steps forward and one step back. They’re still experimenting.

• In regard to perspective-taking, preschool children advance from egocentricity (inability to see a situation from another’s perspective) to theory of mind (ability to understand and predict the behavior and feelings of others).

Social learning research has demonstrated that children are more likely to evaluate and regulate their own behavior if they have had lots of playing time with a warm, mutually responsive parent. In contrast, kids who have spent less time with parents will comply due to parent request rather than an eagerness to comply or cooperate (Schaffer, 512-513). That means lots of playtime with parents to build a mutually warm attachment will result in your child having more of conscience outside of your supervision.

Physical and pretend play helps build a theory of mind, social skills, and emotional self-control, as well as creativity and resiliency.

There is evidence that solitary play, as opposed to playing with others, has a significant negative correlation with overall social skills (Newton and Jenvey, 761-73).

Just as too much screen time can cause delay, appropriate technology use can promote individual and cooperative play in children.

• Children are now school age and interact with a larger variety of people. Caretakers still have a lot of influence over whom children spend time with outside of school. Remain choosy and vigilant. The quality of peer interaction makes a difference.

• Preschool children’s pretend play is primarily fantasy practice of cultural roles. They spend a lot of time building upon memorized social scripts, progressively becoming increasingly independent (Cole). Preschool is a time of playing house and practicing gender roles. One of the greatest joys of my career is watching how fathers have become more nurturing caregivers while mothers have an increasing choice in areas of achieved excellence. Raising emotionally literate boys and girls means encouraging compassion, nurturance, hard work, and an open mind. You’ll know what kind of job you’re doing by listening to and watching your child act out your parenting role in fantasy play. I encourage you to make the necessary adjustments in your own parenting behaviors as you go, inching closer and closer to your parenting ideal.

• • Social curiosity increasingly develops as preschool children are now able to use social comparison to assess success and failure, as well as individual performance. They are motivated to identify with others, such as parents, caretakers, siblings, and peers, and learn through modeling and operant conditioning continues (reward and punishment).

• • Based on the theory of Kohlberg, kids this age choose “the right” for self-gratification and in order to avoid punishment (Kohlberg). Don’t be surprised if they use mild aggression or unfair fighting techniques to get their way with family and peers. This is part of the learning process. It’s important that parents don’t retaliate with toxic parenting reactions like belittling, ridiculing, teasing, mocking, or discounting your child. Responding with patience, understanding, and emotional neutrality is key to preserving a positive, hard-earned attachment. Inquiring about their strategy and validating their feelings will help your child learn from the experience rather than avoid you or internalize shame. If they feel your acceptance and celebration of failures that lead to important new learning and skills, they will be more transparent and come to you when they run into challenges.

• • During this developmental phase, little ones learn how to hold a grudge. We see aggression move from simply trying to get ahold of an object to knowingly being aggressive toward a person who’s done them wrong (Cole).

Watch out, parents! Around three-years-old kids start to experiment with name-calling, and tantrums blossom from physical outbursts to verbal ones! I’ve always counseled that the tantrums of three-year-olds are far more impressive (and embarrassing) than the tantrums of two-year-olds. With burgeoning developmental ability comes more impressive tantrums. Wait until you see what your adolescents will be capable of! I celebrate a child’s ability to brilliantly manipulate others while supporting parents on how to stay a step ahead.

What Awesome GKIS Parents Provide

• Children are better adjusted and become increasingly autonomous when parents set standards and provide guidance that is warm, encouraging, and praising without being overly critical of occasional missteps. A sense of humor is EVERYTHING! Enjoy it, mistakes and all.

Theorists call this authoritative parenting, and evidence demonstrates it is better than permissive (i.e., uninvolved) or authoritarian (i.e., overly controlling) styles.

• Children from stimulating home environments not only achieve better in school, but they also demonstrate a stronger willingness to seek out and master challenges for personal satisfaction.

In order to feel confident providing GetKidsInternetSafe screen media guidelines, I felt it important to provide a crash course review of developmental progression and needs during this developmental phase as they relate to technology use. By reflecting on the stimulation and environmental enrichment your child needs to successfully meet developmental milestones, I hope you feel more confident in your family’s technology decisions as well. If you know other caregivers who may like a brush-up, do me a favor and pass it on! To get the free article download “The Top Ten Mistakes Parents Make With Internet Safety (and How to Recover!)“, click here. I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe. Onward to More Awesome Parenting, Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D. Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Works Cited

Brown, Timothy T., and Terry L. Jernigan. “Brain Development During the Preschool Years.” Neuropsychology Review 22.4 (2012): 313-33. Web.

Christakis, D. A., F. J. Zimmerman, D. L. Digiuseppe, and C. A. Mccarty. “Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children.” Pediatrics 113.4 (2004): 708-13. Web.

Cole, Michael, and Sheila Cole. The Development of Children. New York, NY: Scientific American, 1993. Print. Chonchaiya, Weerasak, and Chandhita Pruksananonda. “Television Viewing Associates with Delayed Language Development.” Acta Paediatrica 97.7 (2008): 977-82. Web.

Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society. New York: Norton, 1964. Print. Freud, S. “An Outline of Psychoanalysis.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth, 1940. Vol 23. Print.

Hong, S. “Reduced Orbitofrontal Cortical Thickness in Male Adolescents with Internet Addiction.” 9.11 (2013). Print. Kohlberg, Lawrence. The Psychology of Moral Development: The Nature and Validity of Moral Stages. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984. Print.

Lenroot, Rhoshel K., and Jay N. Giedd. “Brain Development in Children and Adolescents: Insights from Anatomical Magnetic Resonance Imaging.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 30.6 (2006): 718-29. Web.

Newton, Emma, and Vicki Jenvey. “Play and Theory of Mind: Associations with Social Competence in Young Children.” Early Child Development and Care 181.6 (2011): 761-73. Web.

Piaget, Jean. The Child’s Conception of Number. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952. Print. Shaffer, David R. Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence. 9th ed. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1989. Print

Walker, Lawrence J., Karl H. Hennig, and Tobias Krettenauer. “Parent and Peer Contexts for Children’s Moral Reasoning Development.” Child Development 71.4 (2000): 1033-048. Web. Photo Credit First Day of Preschool by Andrew Dawes, CC by-SA

2.0   Some excellent points made!