The article outlines a theoretical framework for the study of socialization of children's cognition in their social environments. It is emphasized that human environments are culturally meaningful physical structures, that afford different culturally canalized actions for the developing children. The proposed theoretical framework is based on the theoretical traditions in psychology that emanate from Kurt Lewin and Lev Vygotsky. It explains children's development of acting and thinking through a set of environmentally-localized zone concepts. The "zone of freedom of movement" (ZFM) constitutes the area of environment, set of objects in that environment, and set of actions on these objects, which is made available for the developing child at the given period of development. The "zone of promoted actions" (ZPA) covers the subset of objects and actions that the child's social environment actively promotes to the child to use and perform. The ZPA can be observed in the parents' (and older siblings') preference structure of the child's different actions. Finally, the concept of "zone of proximal development", that originates from Vygotsky's theoretical heritage, is used to explain which subset of ZPA (and ZFM) can become actualized in the immediate future development of a given child at any particular stage of development. The article also outlines the need for developmental psychologists from the occidental countries to become familiar with the phenomenology of child development in cultures other than their own, since any knowledge of European or American children's development in their culturally organized environments is of limited generalizability to other cultures, particularly in the Orient.