Young children have basic needs that must be met for healthy development. These include physiological needs like food, shelter and clothing. For many poor children, basic physiological needs are not reliably met. Children in poverty also lack safety and stability in their environments, living in overcrowded and unsafe homes. To develop properly, children need love and belonging through secure attachments with caregivers. Growing up in poverty can negatively impact children's self-esteem and sense of self-worth if their environment consistently provides failure rather than success. When basic needs are not met, it is difficult for children to recognize education as a means of bettering their lives and achieving self-actualization.

1. “Characteristics and Need of Children”
Prepared by :
 Alı Falh abdlhasan
 Zaınab Mohammed Abed Al-Khuzamee
Supervised by :
Dr. Öğr. Üyesi HİLAL SEKİ ÖZ
Kırşehir Ahi Evran
Üniversitesi
Sağlık Bilimleri
Enstitüsü

2. Young Infants (Six weeks – 12 months)
Mobile Young Toddlers (13 months – 23 months)
 Rapidly changing and growing.
 Experiencing the environment through their senses, seeing, hearing, touching,
smelling, tasting.
 Social dependent, developing trust.
 Responds interactively to faces, talking, cooing.
 Express feelings though crying, facial expressions, body language.
 Is reaching out, searching for a response, evoking responses in others.
 Curious and more energetic.
 Babbling; beginning to develop language.
 Judgment based on perception, rather than logic.
 Recognizes parents and special people, attaches to special toys, objects.
 Expresses feelings through crying, facial expressions, body language, sounds
Understands words; communicates via sounds, gestures.

3. Older Active Toddlers (24 months – 35 months)
Preschoolers (36 months – 5 years, 11 months)
 Highly self-absorbed and egocentric.
 Working on physical skills, less clumsy.
 Verbal, rapidly learning words.
 Sense of self; learning meaning of me, my, mine.
 Empathetic if other are hurt
 Increasingly independent; still egocentric.
 Good vocabulary; application of linguistic rules (often with incorrect results).
 Trying to find reasons and meaning; forming concepts based on their perceptions.
 Has formed identity as a person, member of family and extended family.

4. Early Elementary (Kindergarten – Third Grade)
Middle Elementary (Fourth - Sixth Grade)
 Active.
 Acquiring skills, physical as well as reading and numbers.
 Sense of justice (especially if younger siblings).
 Judgments based on reasoning not just perception.
 Mastery of basic scholastic skills; self-esteem will be affected if these skills are not
appropriately taught.
 Increasingly independent
 Mature and sane.
 Sense of justice.
 Ready to be helpful in community, ready to be valued outside the family.

5. Young Teens (Seventh – Ninth Grade)
 Potentially having strong skills, talents and interests, interested in connecting with others
with these interests.
 Self-conscious; beginning to be emotional, adolescent, aware of and uncertain about
their physical development as young men and women, and how to relate to other
gender.
 Are very concerned about what others say and think of them.
 Want to separate themselves from children.
 Interested in future career; opportunities to volunteer in work settings and community
service.

6.  Psychosexual Stages of Development
• Freud said that we possessed multiple erogenous zones.
 Body areas that provide pleasure.
• The importance of various erogenous zones changes as we
grow and develop.
• Move from autoeroticism to reproductive sexuality.

7.  Oral Stage
• From birth to Age 1
• Breast-feeding with mother
• Crying to meet needs
• Babies put everything in their mouths
• The mouth is source of pleasure or conflict
o Source of understanding/discovery of the world
o Prohibited behaviors (biting, thumb sucking)

8.  Anal Stage
• Age 1 to Age 2
• Pleasure derived from the anus
• Greater focus on defecating
• Children begin potty-training
o Conversion of involuntary to voluntary behavior
o First attempt controlling instinctual impulse
• Derive praise from parents for completing potty training
• Punishment often targets buttocks

9.  Phallic Stage
• Between Age 3 and Age 6
• Focus on genital
oPleasurable physiological sensations
oConflictual feelings arise
• Children notice differences between girls and boys
• May fantasize about sexual acts and masturbate

10.  Phallic Stage (cont.)
 Oedipus Complex
• Greek tragedy written by Sophocles
o Oedipus kills his father and weds his mother
o Oedipus unaware of the taboos he has transgressed
o Oedipus blinds himself upon learning of his deeds
• Children have unconscious desire to possess the opposite-
sexed parent and do away with the same-sexed parent
o Not literally sexual
• Boys are fond of mothers
• Girls are “Daddy’s little girl”

11.  Phallic Stage
 Oedipus Complex
• Boys experience castration anxiety or fear that affection for
Mom will be met by emasculation by Dad
o A mixture of love and affection for father, but also fears
father’s reprisals
• Girl version called Electra Complex
o Not Freud’s term, considered Oedipus complex as
universal
• Girls experience penis envy where they feel inferior to males for
lack of a penis
o Not having a penis is their castration anxiety

12.  Phallic Stage (cont.)
 Oedipus Complex
• Boys identify with their Fathers to overcome wishes for
Mother
• Eventually girls identify with Mothers to overcome anger at
not having a penis
• Both boys and girls are then prepared to later seek out
members of the opposite sex for marriage and procreation

13.  Latency Period
• Sexual forces driven dormant by psychic forces
o Culturally unacceptable sexual thoughts/behaviors are
channeled into other activities (sports, intellectual
interests, peer relationships).
• Preference for same-sex peers
• Modern critics say that children simply learn to “hide” their
sexuality at this point

14.  Genital Period
• Around the age of puberty
• Return of overt sexual and aggressive desires
• Emergence of interest in the opposite sex
• Sexual needs satisfied through socially acceptable means
• Lieben & arbeiten
o To love in an appropriate way and to contribute as a productive
member of society

15. Children and Their Basic Needs
In his hierarchy, Maslow detailed five basic needs of all humans. The five basic
needs identified by Maslow were:
(a) physiological needs, (b) safety needs, (c) belonging and love needs, (d) self-
esteem needs, and (e) self-actualization needs. Moreover, Maslow also
emphasized that before higher level needs are even perceived lower level
needs must be satisfied . Unfortunately, for children reared in poverty, the
attainment of each level of need is jeopardized by the many obstacles presented
by poverty.

16.  physiological needs
physiological needs the first level of basic needs identified by
Maslow are physiological, including life sustaining necessities
such as food, shelter, and clothing. there is no doubt that unless
these needs are met, the child will perish. for many poor children
this need is not met, as evidenced by the rate of death for
infants born to poor parents. children who are poor are two times
more likely to die during infancy than children who not poor. poor
children are also one and a half times more likely than nonpoor
children to die between birth and age.

17.  SAFETY NEEDS
The need for safety includes security, stability, dependency,
protection, and freedom from fear, anxiety and chaos . It is with
this need for safety that poverty presents probably its greatest
challenge for children to fulfill subsequent needs. Unfortunately,
many children reared in poverty live in environments that are
both unsafe and unhealthy Children who are poor are more than
twice as likely as their nonpoor peers to live in homes that are
overcrowded and dangerously substandard. Many of these
homes are old and have serious upkeep problems that present
health hazards.

18.  BELONGING AND LOVE NEEDS
From the first moment of life, human beings continually
seek the reassurances of belonging and love. Children
who receive sensitive and reliable responses from their
parents or caregivers during the early years of their life
are able to develop successful, secure relationships.

19.  SELF-ESTEEM NEEDS
As with the lower level needs, poverty may severely affect the attainment of the higher level
needs. All people have the need to have a high evaluation of themselves. This is not a new
ideology. In fact , one of the first concepts taught in teacher education programs is “success
builds success.” If that concept is in fact true, would it not be logical to deduce that “failure
builds failure”? Growing up in poverty has been shown to be one of the greatest risk factors for
children’s failing in school. Repeatedly receiving low and failing grades has a detrimental affect
on achievement expectancies and academic self-concepts, both of which have been found to
be powerful predictors of grade performance Consequently, if children do not expect to
succeed, they seldom put forth the effort required for success. Once again, these children often
turn to peers from whom they receive powerful rewards and sanctions for behaviors that may
even discourage classroom learning.

20.  SELF-ACTUALIZATION NEEDS
Self-actualization, the fifth need addressed by Maslow, suggests
that what people are capable of being, they must be in order to
maintain their self-esteem. Children reared in poverty may not
recognize education as a viable means of attaining their goals.
The Plowden Report of 1967 summarized the feelings of many
children living in poverty regarding education:
“In a neighborhood where the jobs people hold owe little to their
education, it is natural for children, as they grow older, to regard
school as a brief prelude to work rather than as a avenue to
future opportunities”

21. Thank you