Over the first 8 years of life children mature physically and emotionally, acquire complex cognitive abilities and demonstrate remarkable social skills. This is the time when young children experience rapid development. Any kind of negligence or ignorance on the part of parents and caregivers during these crucial years can severely hinder the child’s development.

There are primarily three aspects to a child’s development: physical, cognitive and social. Parents and caregivers have a critical role to play in order to ensure the healthy overall development of their child. Each aspect of development is equally important; one cannot afford to pay more attention to enhancing their child’s mathematical skills for instance while ignoring the child’s health and nutritional needs.

Parenthood is thus a very demanding responsibility. Parents have very specific roles to play in different circumstances. In a number of instances they may not fulfill these roles effectively; not out of negligence but out of inexperience or lack of proper knowledge.

The purpose of this article to is to draw the attention of parents and caregivers towards the needs of young children and the responsibilities of the parents.

Physical Development
Throughout the early years, children’s physical skills are developing at an astonishing rate. Children begin life with little control of movement and proceed to run, jump, write with a pencil and control their own small and large muscles with growing confidence. This is what is called physical development.

Although humans change physically throughout life, the changes which occur during the first few years are dramatic and eagerly awaited. From the time of a baby's birth, parents eagerly wait for the day when the child will start to roll over, crawl and then walk. Unlike speech and language development, these milestones are at first glance easily determined i.e. either a child walks or s/he doesn't. Within the field of physical development there are separate areas of development which are:

Gross Motor Development
This is the area of physical development that concerns the general ability of children to move around and use the various parts of their body. Activities like rolling over; crawling, walking, running and jumping are gross motor skills. These skills usually involve using the entire body or several parts of the body at one time.