During his second stage of development, when he is between three and six months of age, the baby grows in his ability to engage in an intimate relationship with the parent.  He’ll experience more and more warmth and pleasure and all the related other feelings that spring out of engagement with the parent. This is the time that the infant “woos” the parent and the parent falls in love with the infant.  The infant also seeks interaction with the parent for comfort and soothing when needed, so that he can deal with satisfactions and frustrations.  As the child grows, the capacity for engagement will embrace the full range of emotions (joy, caring, anger, jealousy, fears, competition etc),  supported by affect cues (eg. smiles or scowls) from others. Mutual engagement helps the child stay engaged and feel comfortable and curious about different experiences.

By the time the child is about nine months old he exchanges gestures in a purposeful way.  With parental support, reading and responding to his cues, he will eventually be able to string together more and more of these emotional expressions, sounds and actions.  This is the beginning of the child conveying his intensions or desires to start the “conversations” needed to participate actively in the world.  The simple gestures of a child less that a year old, such as pointing or playing “give and take”, turn to complex gestures in the second year, and then to back and forth conversation as the child develops language. The parent’s response such as making a funny face, or tempting actions, such as covering his favorite rattle with your hand, will inspire him to master the baby version of logic or two-way communication far better than any educational toy or pictures book.

By the time that the child is a year to a year and a half, the child will be learning to be a “complex social problem solver”.  He will take you by the hand to get you to help him. He is starting to figure out how the world works and may even vocalize his own version of words, along with a few real ones, to help you understand his intentions.  Complex gestures involve sequences – all the steps needed to communicate and solve problems – first through actions and then with words as well. When the child grabs his parent’s hand and points to the cupboard to get a toy he wants, he is making his first attempt at social problem-solving. As the parent nods back, the child motions until the parent hoists him up in their arms and he’s able to nab the toy for him.  The child is not only delighted and proud, he’ll be on his way to becoming a budding scientist.  The toddler learns that problems get solved through many interrelated steps and that the world, including his physical surroundings and his own personality and that of his parent, is made up of patterns.  No colorful pop-up toy or computerized light and sound gadget can come close to matching the companionable lessons in problem-solving that a parent can offer their child as they play and engaged in gestural dialogues together.

By the time the child is 24 to 30 months the child is displaying a new ability that is nothing short of miraculous. He will be capable of creating richly detailed, multisensory pictures that we commonly refer to as symbols or ideas.   The child and parent share the development of the child’s use of ideas and creativity.  Now instead of just acting on his environment to get his needs met, he can form mental images of his wants and desires, and label it with specific spoken words.  Instead of plucking your sleeve, dragging you over to the cupboard, pointing to the bag of cookies and jumping up and down in anticipation, he’ll look you in the eye and demand, ‘Cookie now!”. The parent and the child share the development of the child’s use of ideas and creativity.  This occurs as the child and the parent begin to expand play as they pretend to be a “cat and a dog”, a “king and a queen”, “ have a tea party”. The child begins to express thoughts, ideas and feelings through symbols, using pretend play and words.  A child can communicate what she imagines through role play, dress up, dolls, action figures, which now represent experiences from real life as well as those learned from other sources.  These become her own as she projects her feelings into the character and actions.  Play emerges as the child’s choosing rather from set games or impersonal manipulative or computerized toys.

Between 36 and 48 months the child begins to develop logical bridges between ideas, or analytical thinking.  It emerges from more elaborate pretend play , as well as from debates over bedtime or cookies, and from those around him asking him his opinions.  Questions such as “Why do you want to go outside?”, “to the park?”, or “to grandma’s?”, rather than rote teaching of letters or numbers teaches the child to connect his ideas and be a logical thinker. As the child begins to build bridges between ideas his play has a logical beginning, middle and end, taking time and space into account. Realistic conversations and pretend play stories are now made up of logically interconnected ideas, with clear motives and anticipated consequences.  The child can now also abstract and reflect on various feelings and lessons to be learned.  Typically each core capacity continues to develop as the child matures, supporting the next level.  However, some children may show some capacities in a constricted form at a higher level even if they have not fully achieved more basic levels.