Child development is a broad subject full of many wondrous things. We’ve assembled some of the more notable and interesting facts and statistics on child development, to give you a broad overview of how children grow and develop.

1. It might surprise you to know that children are actually born with more neurons and brain cells than adults possess. They’ll steadily prune away these additional neurons as they grow, most of them within the first 4 years of life, and then again during a period of brain restructuring that comes during adolescence. Kids are naive and inexperienced, not unintelligent.

2. Children are engaging in anywhere from 500-1,300 distinct tasks in a day, each of which shapes their development. (Cole, 2003, p. 192)

3. Between the ages of 2 and 6, most children acquire an average of 8 new words per day. (Gormly & Brodzinsky, 1993)

4. By 8 years of age a child’s brain is nearly its mature size and roughly the same as an adult’s. Brain waves also increase, producing a more mature level of brain activity. (Epstein, 1980)

5. A child develops approximately 50% of his intelligence by age 4, another 30% by age 8, and the remaining 20% of their intellectual capacity by age 17.

6. Around one-third of all children between the ages of 6 and 12 are said to have some form of emotional problem, and boys are 4-times as likely as girls to have difficulties. (Gormly & Brodzinsky, 1993)