Early childhood is the developmental period that runs from about
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Human Development · Foundations
Early Childhood
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Early childhood the developmental period from about age two to about age six, between infancy and middle childhood. Full entry → is the developmental period from about age two to about age six, when growth slows but skills multiply. The body settles into steadier, slower growth while the brain races toward ninety percent of its adult size. Children learn to run, climb, and draw; thinking turns symbolic and imaginative; sentences become stories; and play, sharing, and a sense of self take center stage. Milestones at this age are typical ranges, not deadlines — every child develops on their own schedule.
Why this matters
Early childhood is when the person begins to show. The toddler who could barely walk becomes a child who runs, climbs, draws, argues, and tells stories — and every one of those skills will be leaned on for the rest of life. This period matters academically because it is where the foundations of movement, thinking, language, and social life are laid; the later topics in human development keep returning to it. It matters practically for anyone who teaches, cares for, or designs for young children, and for any adult who wonders where their own habits came from. And it matters honestly: the child who emerges from these years is already a specific person.
The college version
What early childhood is
Developmental scientists use "early childhood" for the years when a child is no longer a baby but not yet a school-age child. The working definition used here is the period from about age two to about age six. The borders are drawn differently from source to source — the CDC's milestone program tracks children from age two through age five, while OpenStax's Lifespan Development textbook treats early childhood as roughly ages three to six — so the honest way to hold the definition is as a range with soft edges. The sources do agree on one thing: what happens inside those years. The infant who needed help to stand becomes a child who can be trusted on a playground. The pace of growing slows, and the pace of learning something new does not.
The body: growing slower, building more
Compared with infancy, physical growth in early childhood is modest. On average, children in the United States gain between two and three inches of height and four to five pounds of weight per year across these years, according to the figures reported in OpenStax's Lifespan Development. Original example: Amara's mother marks her height on the kitchen doorframe at each birthday. Between two and three, Amara added nearly four inches; between three and four, about two and a half. The marks keep coming, but they climb the door more slowly than the baby-weight charts of her first year. Meanwhile the brain is the real growth story: by age six it has reached about ninety percent of its adult size, even though the body has reached only about thirty percent of adult weight. Sleep stays important — the World Health Organization notes that preschool children typically need ten to thirteen hours of sleep in every twenty-four.
Motor leaps: running, climbing, drawing
Movement reorganizes itself in these years. OpenStax describes children shifting from somewhat lumbering, awkward behaviors to more adult-like motor movement. Researchers split movement into Gross motor skills whole-body movements such as running, jumping, and climbing that use the large muscles. Full entry → — whole-body actions like running and climbing — and Fine motor skills small, precise movements of the hands and fingers, such as holding a crayon or buttoning a shirt. Full entry → — precise hand-and-finger actions like holding a crayon. The CDC's milestone checklists give typical ranges, and they are ranges, not deadlines: most children run easily by about age three; most climb onto and down from furniture unassisted by about age two and pedal a tricycle by three; drawing improves in visible steps — most three-year-olds copy a circle, most four-year-olds draw a person with a few body parts, and by about five many copy triangles and print some letters. Children develop on their own schedules, and the CDC's own framing is that these are things most children do by a given age.
Thinking and language in these years
The thinking of these years has a famous name. Jean Piaget called it the Preoperational stage Piaget's second stage of thinking, roughly ages two to seven, marked by symbolic and imaginative thought without adult-style logic. Full entry → — the period from about age two to age seven when thinking is symbolic and imaginative, full of pretend and make-believe, but does not yet follow adult-style logic. That one line is all this lesson needs: how that thinking develops in detail, and how language grows from first words into sentences and stories, each get their own lessons (see cognitive development and language development). Piaget's point matters here because it explains why a four-year-old can host an elaborate tea party for invisible guests and still insist that a taller, thinner glass holds more juice than a short, wide one.
The social world: play, sharing, self
Three threads run through the social life of early childhood. Play: children spend these years building imaginary worlds, and researchers treat play as central to development — OpenStax notes that it fosters cognitive, social, emotional, and language skills, and the American Academy of Pediatrics devoted a clinical report to why play matters for healthy development. Sharing: most children take turns in games by about age three and cooperate with other children by about age four, according to CDC checklists — with plenty of honest messiness along the way. Self: children begin to see themselves as a person with likes, dislikes, and a place among others. It is often said that play is the work of this age, and the evidence backs the saying.
The honest framing
Early childhood is where the person begins to show. The particular child who will walk into kindergarten — fast or cautious, talkative or quiet, quick to share or slow to warm up — is already visible in these years. Two honest notes belong here. First, milestones are typical ranges: most children do these things by these ages, and individual variation is normal. Second, this is an overview: the deep stories of how thinking, language, and social skills develop each have their own lesson. What early childhood itself contributes is the frame — a period of slower growth and faster becoming.
Eli explains
The same idea, in plain words
Explain it like I’m 10
Between about two and six, a child stops being a baby and starts being a small person. The body grows more slowly than before — a few inches and a few pounds a year instead of the baby-year explosion — but the skills pile up fast. A two-year-old who runs with a wobble becomes a five-year-old who can climb the playground frame, draw a person, and tell a story about their day. The brain is doing the heavy lifting: by six it is already close to its adult size. Thinking at this age is pretend-powered: children talk to stuffed animals, treat boxes as boats, and believe the world works the way they imagine it. And the work of these years is play — the games, the sharing fights, and the invented worlds are how the skills get built.
Picture it like this
Think of early childhood as the framing stage of a house. Infancy pours the foundation; early childhood builds the rooms and runs the wires. The frame does not get much taller, so the height gain is easy to miss — but suddenly there are rooms: a room for running, a room for drawing, a room for stories, a room for playing house with friends. The house is still small, but the structure of the whole person is going up fast.
Where the picture stops working
The house metaphor breaks down because a child is never finished and never static. A house's frame is set once and stays; a child's brain keeps building and remodeling for decades, and a five-year-old who seems framed one way can change direction completely by ten. The comparison can also suggest a fixed blueprint, when real development is full of individual variation and surprise.
Worked example
Meet Diego, who turns six this month. His mother's doorframe marks tell the story of early childhood: he grew about two and a half inches between five and six, slower than his baby year but steady. He runs across the playground without thinking about it, climbs the rope ladder, and his drawings have graduated from circles to people with arms and legs. He told his grandmother a three-sentence story about the park, then spent twenty minutes pretending the sandbox was the ocean. At preschool he takes turns on the swing most days — and had a loud disagreement about the blue shovel yesterday. Every piece of that afternoon — the running, the drawing, the story, the play, the sharing struggle — is early childhood doing its work.
Key takeaway
Early childhood, from about age two to six, is when growth slows but the person begins to show: running, climbing, drawing, imaginative thinking, sentences and stories, and a social world of play and sharing — all on each child's own schedule.
Quick check
3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.
According to CDC milestone checklists, which of the following is something most children do by about age three?
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Amara's mother measures her on the kitchen doorframe at each birthday. Which pattern best matches what developmental science describes as typical for early childhood?
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Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related
You’ll learn to
- Define early childhood as the developmental period from about age two to about age six, using the attributed working definition.
- Explain how physical growth in early childhood differs from infancy, with an original example.
- Identify typical ranges for running, climbing, and drawing in early childhood, framed as milestones most children reach rather than deadlines.
- State Piaget's preoperational stage in one line and explain what it captures about thinking at this age.
- Describe the social world of early childhood — play, sharing, and the emerging self — and why play is called the work of this age.
Common mistakes
Growth slows in early childhood, so the physical side of this age is unimportant.
Growth slows, but the brain reaches about ninety percent of its adult size by age six and motor skills multiply. The physical story of early childhood is skills, not inches.
A child who misses a milestone by a few months is falling behind.
Milestones are typical ranges — things most children do by a given age — and individual variation is normal. They are descriptions, not deadlines or diagnostic tools.
Early childhood is just infancy with walking.
It is its own period, from about age two to about age six, with its own leaps in movement, thinking, language, and social life — not a footnote to the baby years.
Play is a break from real learning, so school readiness means less play.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and developmental researchers treat play as central to development at this age — it is how cognitive, social, and language skills get built.
The preoperational stage means children cannot think.
They think symbolically and imaginatively — pretend play is thinking — they just do not yet reason with adult-style logic.
Easily confused
Infancy (birth to about age two) vs. Early childhood (about age two to six)
Infancy is the fastest physical growth of life; early childhood trades that pace for slower growth plus an explosion of new skills — running, drawing, sentences, and pretend play.
Gross motor skills vs. Fine motor skills
Gross motor skills move the whole body, like running and climbing; fine motor skills use the hands and fingers precisely, like holding a crayon. Both develop across early childhood.
Key vocabulary
- Early childhood
- the developmental period from about age two to about age six, between infancy and middle childhood.
- Gross motor skills
- whole-body movements such as running, jumping, and climbing that use the large muscles.
- Fine motor skills
- small, precise movements of the hands and fingers, such as holding a crayon or buttoning a shirt.
- Developmental milestone
- a skill that most children reach by a typical age, understood as a range rather than a deadline.
- Preoperational stage
- Piaget's second stage of thinking, roughly ages two to seven, marked by symbolic and imaginative thought without adult-style logic.
- Symbolic thinking
- the ability to let one thing stand for another, such as using a block as a phone.
- Parallel play
- playing beside other children with similar toys while interacting little, an early step toward cooperative play.
Sources & references
- 5.1 Physical Health and Growth in Early Childhood — Lifespan Development | OpenStax — OpenStax, Rice University
- 5.2 Motor Development and Physical Skills in Early Childhood — Lifespan Development | OpenStax — OpenStax, Rice University
- 5.5 Play in Early Childhood — Lifespan Development | OpenStax — OpenStax, Rice University
- CDC's Developmental Milestones — Learn the Signs. Act Early. — U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development — Simply Psychology — Simply Psychology (Saul McLeod)
EliExplains lessons are original prose written from the open, credible references above. See Copyright & Licensing.
Researched 2026-08-22
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