The Development of the Brain, Memory and Thought in Three and Four Year-Olds
The feeling of being your own person takes another leap forward at this age and is noticeable by the fact that children so often seem to have clear personalities. As a parent, you may feel that you are now getting to know new aspects of your child! Particularly with four year-olds, the relationship may feel mutual in a completely new way and conversations can have a new depth! This is the age at which the child’s questions about completely unexpected subjects begin to crop up in the evening or in the check-out queue at the supermarket.
Memory
The child’s concept of time and memory is strongly developed at the age of three or four. Nevertheless, the child’s ability to hold things in his or her head (working memory) is still less than half that of an adult. The child will therefore easily get distracted when he or she does something or tells a story and needs help to stick to the point.
The three year-old
Many adults’ earliest childhood memories come from the age of three. This may be due to the fact that language is now so developed that the memories are stored in a language that the adult can also understand. It can also be linked to the fact that the child has greater self-awareness. Most children now understand that parents don’t know what happened at preschool if they weren’t there at the time. The child can see things from another person’s point of view and can begin to see themselves from the outside and others from the inside. They understand that it makes a difference whether you know or don’t know something. If they explain the game, anyone arriving later can easily slip in and take on his or her role. The fact that children now think in the form of stories about their personal experiences means that their memories can be retrieved even when they’ve become adults. But the ability to remember is not static. Three year-olds remember things that happened when they were eighteen months old and young people will remember what happened at their third birthday party more often than adults do. Our memories are moving objects that change over time.
The four year-old
The four year-old finds it easier to understand the concept of time and to place things in context. However, real events can still be easily confused with things that are more imaginary. Memories are also affected by how you speak in the family. When you say things like “When you were a baby you were so cute because then…”, the child’s memory and self-esteem are strengthened. It confirms that they are important and that their identity is both constant and at the same time something that develops. Sharing memories with children is also exciting because it gives an insight into their world. When you tell Hugo about his reactions the first time he met his little sister Lisa, you may perhaps get to hear about this little car that was right under the hospital bed. What we adults perceive as important can be completely different from what the child remembers. It’s also a good idea to share earlier childhood memories with four year-olds to hear them talk about the differences between when they were “small” and now.
Rules
The three year-old
Rules now make their entrance in the child’s senses at around three years of age and contribute to stories and understanding. A three year-old is now mature enough to grasp what you desperately tried to get into the head of a two year-old who was having tantrums. It may consist of adult rules, “You have to remain seated until everyone has finished eating”, and the children’s own rules, “The captain drives first and then the chauffeur”. Like all new abilities, they can be excessively conventional and important at the beginning. And even if a rule has become established in a three year-old’s consciousness, it can be completely blown away if the child is tired or hungry or in a competitive situation. In play, arguing about the conditions can take longer than the game itself. “Then you’re a naughty girl who took…” and “On this ship you don’t get” are both exercises in creating intelligibility and common conditions, despite the awkward fact that different people have different thoughts in their heads. The rules can backfire on a parent. When you put the child to bed at night, the child reminds you that the agreement was to read a full story, not half. Rules can also translate to things having to be endlessly sorted on the basis of colour, size or category.
The four year-old
A four year-old often has a greater awareness of what is right and wrong, but still finds it very difficult to take different people’s points of view into consideration or assimilate the fact that rules can be different for a four year-old than for a two year-old. However, all children are different and most children find some rules easy and others more difficult. For example, some four year-olds can also think that the rules of a game are more important for others than for him or herself, particularly if there is a risk that the child might lose! One tip for when a child is a bad loser is to remind the child before the game begins that anyone can win when we play and perhaps Mum might win today? Is it OK for us to play even if we don’t know who’s going to win?
The ability to understand how others think
The ability to understand that other people have their own internal world or their own thoughts is something that gradually develops during childhood. Children under the age of one can show empathy with someone who’s unhappy, which is part of this ability. However, it’s a long way from feeling empathy with someone, which we learn at an early stage, to realising and accepting that other people think differently from us.
The three year-old
A three year-old usually acts on the basis of a position in which he or she is at the centre and where the child therefore assumes that the world looks the same to everyone else as it does to him or her. At the same time, three year-olds can also demonstrate care for others and, for example, feed a doll that’s hungry even if the child isn’t hungry.
The four year-old
A four year-old can begin to get closer to the insight that we have different points of view and that other people may be wrong about things or think differently. It you’re absorbed in something, it can be more difficult to change to another person’s point of view compared to when, for example, the child is listening to a story or wondering what it may have been like for a friend when he or she got shoved. Four year-old children like to plan a game first and then play it. This can also sometimes lead to conflicts if the child has clearly thought out how the railway track has to be built and the other children don’t understand that. In the intensity of the game, a four year-old can also easily forget what needs to be explained to the others in the game.
A four year-old sees what’s true and what’s not true in a practical, objective way, particularly if a smaller sibling is saying something. Then the four year-old isn’t easy to fool! But many children are still happy to tell stories that aren’t completely true — even if it is possible to get the child to admit that it would have been exciting if it had really happened, but it wasn’t really like that, was it?
