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Childhood development overview

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“The CAP Model” helps us remember the three basic categories [Cognitive, Affective, Physical], which make up human development as it relates to skiing. The level at which a child understands, behaves and moves depends on their growth and development.

Your ability to communicate skiing information to children (cognitive) depends on:
  • How children process information.
  • How children express themselves.
  • How children reason.
Young children understand the world in concrete or experience based terms. This means they comprehend only what they can see or touch, or have seen or touched before. Abstract thinking begins to develop by age eleven or twelve.

Concepts such as cause and effect, time and space, and distance and speed, are developed over time. A child’s understanding of these ideas can affect their understanding of communication attempts.

The ability to process information grows with the child. Very young children may not be able to attend to putting on skis while receiving stimuli from another source.

Very young children may have difficulty sequencing more than one or two tasks, while older children may be able to sequence three or more.

Processing of cause and effect, and rules and their consequences, develops with age.

Motivation to ski (affective) depends on:

  • How children relate to their peers.
  • How children relate to adults.
  • How children think about themselves.
Egocentricity, the principle that the child is the center of the universe, affects children's behavior.

Young children often think they are the cause of any ongoing event. They also have difficulty putting themselves into “someone else’s shoes.”

Older children show egocentricity by thinking that others are always watching them, even when it is obvious they can’t be. This causes everything from shyness to cockiness.

Younger children are anxious to fit into the group and please others. Older children are more concerned with their position within the group. They are more readily influenced by their peers. Younger children are usually not competitive; playing alone is enough. Older children may be competitive, and have their self-worth tied to their accomplishments.

Development of appropriate skiing movements (physical) depends on:

  • How children’s bodies are proportioned.
  • The amounts of strength children possess.
  • Spatial awareness.
Whether a child has developed the ability to use parts of the body separately.

Young children’s heads and trunks are large in proportion to their limbs. By 8 or 9 years the proportions approximate that of adults. As a result of a higher center of mass, a small child may have a “back” stance with a reliance on heel pressure.

Younger children move the whole body as a unit. The development of fine motor skills is apparent by ages 9-12. Separation of upper and lower body and left and right sides of the body occurs over time as the child grows.

The muscles of a young child function as if more loosely attached than those of an adult, affording less strength, yet greater flexibility.

PSIA-E Alpine Exam Guide
Revised – October 2009
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