Scientists describe child development as cognitive, social, emotional, and physical.
Cognitive development
Cognitive development involves how children think, explore, understand new information, learn language, and figure things out

Social emotional development
Social emotional development includes building self-awareness, self-management of emotions (also known as self-regulation), social awareness, relationship skills, executive function, and responsible decision making.
Emotional learning also involves the development of empathy, morality, and identity. Controlling one’s emotions and understanding that experiencing an emotion differs from expressing it are at the heart of social emotional development.

Physical development
Children go through stages of motor development during which they learn gross motor skills (e.g., riding a tricycle) and fine motor skills (e.g., drawing). To understand how rapidly children’s motor skills develop, picture a one-year-old who is just starting to learn to walk and handle a spoon, and then picture a five-year-old who is learning to ride a scooter and tie her shoes.