In the first lecture of the whole course you will be introduced to 'child psychology'. You will understand what it implies, and you will find out other similar terms that are used to describe 'child psychology'. Also, in this lecture you will learn about the differences between child psychologist and child counsellor. 

As we’ve been saying in our previous lecture, there are several sub-specialities within child psychology, and it is important to chose the area of speciality that you would be happy to work with. This can be based on the particular age group, a particular developmental problem, or a certain element of development and growth such as learning, memory, cognitive functioning, physical development, parent-child interaction and so on.

So in this lecture we will have a look at the aims and roles of the 'child psychology' occupation 

In this lecture we are continuing talking about the career of 'child psychologist'. Now you know what their role is, what differs them from 'child counsellors', and what your responsibilities might be. 

Now let's talk about where you would meet 'child psychologists' and what their role would be in different settings.

When you decide to study psychology you might feel very unprepared about the amount of theoretical information that you will have to go through during the course at college or university. It is all well and good to learn about what make people tick, why they behave differently when they are on their own and in group, why children don’t understand hidden meanings or when they learn human body language. But every one of the explanations that you will find during your study of psychology will be backed up by several theories, some old and some newer, that were based on research conducted by someone else at some point.

So let's discuss why we need theories when we only want to know about children and behaviour! 

From the previous lecture you know that theories are essential to the science of psychology, and in order to understand psychology and answer so many questions about human nature, we need to know well its theoretical background. For this we study the existing theories and their founders, and we come up with our own theories which we test through research. This is applicable to every area of psychology, whether it is a developmental, cognitive, abnormal or health psychology. 

The main thing to understand about theories within psychology is that they often try to answer this question: How much of a role ‘nature’ play in a certain phenomenon and how much of ‘nurture’ impacted on it. So this lecture is all about everlasting question of ‘Nature Vs Nurture’. 

So what role environment plays in human development and behaviour? Is our personalty shaped by our genes or by our environment? Or perhaps a bit of both?

In this lecture we are looking at the other side of the debate 'Nature Vs Nurture': our environment. We will also be discussing 'behaviourism' - an approach in theoretical psychology that explains that our environment shapes our development. 

Did you notice how babies can be cute without even trying? Did you notice how cute they become when they are looking at their mum and even other people at times? Are they just naturally cute or is there something going on here?

Let's discuss how newborns form their first relationships with their primary caregivers and their reasons for doing so

So far we’ve been looking at the child’s development and the debate of 'Nature vs Nurture'. So we know that to some degree, our genes would affect our growth and development. But the development is also shaped by our environment. So what kind of environment and factors we can think of? Let's discuss it here!

From our previous lectures you know that there are many factors that can influence a child's development. You also know that parents can greatly affect child’s development (depending on their parenting style this could be 'beneficial' or not), but so do teachers, peers, and other people that come into contract with the child. Let's discuss whether the child can also shape their own development and when exactly he /she develops self-awareness. 

We’ve been talking about child’s development for awhile and you might be having your own opinion about what is really significant here - their genes, the children’s own ability to learn and play, the cultural values and beliefs of people around them. So let’s have a look at the child’s development from another standpoint. How important is the role of parenting here? Does it matter whether the parents are strict or put some pressure on the child’s learning or growth? Would the child develop differently - quicker or slower in this case? 

So far we’ve looked at how parenting styles can affect the child’s behaviour and development. What we’ve discussed was typically applied to fully functioning families (with 2 parents present), as this is what often represented by the research. 

So how does the child’s development gets affected if the parents are going through separation or divorce for example? How does it affect the child’s behaviour and their relationships with others? 

As you can imagine, schooling environment is very important to the child’s learning, growth and development. Schools provide an opportunity to learn and grow and develop many valuable skills for the child. But is it always a good experience? When could we say that state- or public schools provide negative experience to the child? Also, let's discussing whether home-based learning is actually a good thing. 

Do you think that young children can be counselled at all? Do you think wether this idea is worth even pondering? Well, in this lecture we will have a look at the methods of counselling for young children, such as dialoguing and play-based therapy. 

Our language and cognitive development is what makes us different from animals. Through language we are able to express ourselves, we can think and ponder, we can share ideas with each other, we can explain what we like and what we don’t like and why.

So lets discuss when and how the language and cognitive development take place, when children are able to speak and think, when their vocabulary significantly expands and much more

As we know, children develop fast and in many ways. It is sometimes surprising to observe and learn about it when we realise how complex this development really is! The child needs to learn how to speak and remember, socialise and relate to others, recognise own things and objects that don’t belong to them, and further to learn how to read and write, how to do complex tasks such as buttoning own coat and tying shoe laces.

Emotional development is another very important area to look at and we need to understand that emotions matter. Why?

Throughout the course we’ve been discussing this subject of socialising many times, though indirectly. From this course you probably have a good idea of why children need to socialise. For example, in the previous lecture we’ve been talking about their emotional development and that letting children to participate in various interactions and social situations can help them to understand and manage their emotions and feelings as they grow. 

So let’s have a look at what else we need to know about child’s development and their socialising with others as they grow older.

This is a final video of this course where your tutor is saying her farewell and explaining how to contact her in the future