In child development, childhood refers to the stage between 0-9 years of age. In this stage, development encompasses cognitive (which is learning and thinking), emotional, language and speech, social, fine and gross motor skills. As such, in this stage, language development in children is crucial to reasoning, memory processing, and thinking of higher level. Additionally, their brain also develops, and they become emotionally intelligent.
On the other hand, adolescence may be defined as the life cycle stage between the age of 13 and 18 years characterized by rapidly occurring psychological and physical changes, increasing dependency from the control of adults, concerns and social issues exploration with increased attention on actions with a peer group and fundamental self-identity establishment (Simatwa, 2010).
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Adolescents also experience the maturation of reproductive system. Some authors define it as the life period during which a child experiences many changes including psychological, intellectual and emotional. Their personality development gets stronger at this stage, and the life of adolescents are full of hopes. They are excited to interact with experiences that are new and discover new relationships to study their inner strengths and explore inner ability strength. What makes adolescence different from adulthood and childhood is the development of new capacities, a time of changing expectations, responsibilities, roles, and social relations.
Many factors affect child development as they transit to adolescence stage. These factors include family influences which affect their development. Besides, family dynamics such as patterns of interactions or relating between members of a family influence the way young individuals view themselves, the world and others, as well as influencing their behaviors, well-being and their relationship. Therefore, this paper focuses on discussing the developmental analysis of childhood-adolescence stage regarding different theories.
Theoretical Perspectives of Development
Stage of Development according to Freud
According to Freud, the sexual drive has enabled individuals to become who they are and what they do. As such, Freuds’ psychological development stages may have assisted me in my childhood and adolescent processes of development. For instance, the oral stage, since I was born until I was one year, the care from my mum through sufficient and tender breastfeed helped me to develop trust, comfort, and love through the oral stimulation (Benveniste, 2015). The problem I experienced was weaning process which could have led to the oral fixation, the issue that resulted to my eating problems and nail-biting. The anal stage-trained me how to go to the toilet and how to control my bodily needs through libido controlling bowel and bladder movements. This toilet training praise may be attributed to the feeling of capability and productivity. On the other hand, the phallic stage of libido development enabled me to become sensitive to my genitals and that of others. Besides, the latency period assisted my attention and focused to cultural interest while I was growing, while it was the genital stage (transition to adolescent) when I experienced sexual maturation (Benveniste, 2015).
Stage of Development According to Erikson
Unlike Freud, Erickson’s psychological development theory is characterized by one essential element, ego identity, which is the self-conscious sense that people develop through interaction. In the first psychosocial stage- Trusts vs. mistrust, toddlers are utterly dependent, and therefore, trust development is based on the quality and dependability of the caregivers of the child. Thus, trust is associated with the feeling of being secure while mistrust results in belief and fear that the world is unpredictable and varying (Fleming, 2004). This may be associated with the development of the trust I have during my stages of development. The second stage, autonomy vs. doubt and shame, where children develop greater personal control sense and training is an essential part of this process. Additionally, children grow more control over toy preferences, clothing selection, and choices of food. Successful completion of this stage results in the feeling of confident and secure, while those that do not are left with self-doubt and inadequacy sense (Fleming, 2004). I may attribute that confidence developed in this stage.
In the third stage, initiative vs. guilt happens during the years in preschool, and it is characterized by children starting to assert their control and power over the world by directing play plus other social interaction. Successful children in this stage can lead others and feel capable while failures are left with lack of initiative, sense of self-doubt and guilt. In the fourth stage, industry vs. inferiority, children start to develop the sense of pride in their abilities and accomplishment through social relations. As a result, successful children build competence feeling while those who do not acquire these skills doubts their success ability (Fleming, 2004). The fifth stage, identity versus confusion, is an adolescence period where teenagers are developing self-sense and exploring their independence. The successful ones develop strong self-sense and a feeling of control and autonomy while those who fail remain insecure and confused about the future and themselves (Fleming, 2004).
The sixth stage, intimacy vs. isolation, which is identity vs. confusion, is the adulthood period when individuals are exploring personal relationships. As such, the successful children develop secure and committed relationships while those who fail to have poor self-sense tend to have fewer relationships that are committed, and may suffer emotional depression, isolation, and loneliness (Fleming, 2004). This stage of development assisted my sense of secure and committed relationships. However, sometimes I feel depressed meaning I partly failed in this development stage. As such, I could use my knowledge of security and committed relationships to interact and come out of depressed moods.
Stage of Development According to Piaget
Piaget cognitive stages of development consist of four phases. In the first stage, sensorimotor involves motor activity use without symbols. Knowledge is limited since it is based on physical experiences and interactions, and because infants are not able to predict reactions, they, therefore, learn and experiment continually by trial and error, which might include putting objects into the mouth (Simatwa, 2010). Early development of language starts here, and memory also develops. I can relate that it is this stage that assisted me in speech development. In the second stage, preoperational stage takes place between toddlerhood (18-24 months) and adulthood (7years) where children start to use language, and also imagination and memory develops. Children also express and understand the relationship between the future and the past, and even concepts that are more complex like effect and causal relationships have not been learned. Intelligence is not logical, but intuitive and egocentric (Simatwa, 2010). Therefore, this stage helped me develop significant relationships between what will come in the future and the past during my childhood development.
The third stage according to Piaget, which is concrete operational stage, starts from seven to eleven years, is characterized by the ability of using logical reasoning processes on the basis of evidence which is concrete, and thus reasoning and problem-solving in this stage is strong enough to persist for the rest of life (Lefa, Livingston, November, Condy, Chetty, Shaik, & Aronstam, 2014). In this stage, a child is capable of making logical structures which elucidate his or her physical experiences. Besides, problem-solving which is abstract is possible in this stage of development; thus the child becomes capable of logical thinking involvement. For instance, this stage enabled me to develop problem-solving skills which assisted me in solving arithmetic equations which are solved using numbers and not object. During this stage, a child can successfully do tasks relating to matter conversation, transitive reasoning, and object classification (Lefa, Livingston, November, Condy, Chetty, Shaik, & Aronstam, 2014).
In the last stage, which is formal operation stage, starting at eleven years and above (early adolescence), is characterized by logical and abstract thinking. Concrete objects presence does not necessarily drive the reasoning involved, and as such, children can able to apply systematic fashions to generate potential solutions to issues (Simatwa, 2010). A child in this stage is capable of engaging in more abstract thin thinking, and the cognitive structures of the child are the same as those of an adult and include reasoning that is conceptual. As such, this stage is the highest level of thinking stage and children here possess the capability of going past the concrete evidence; thus the learner here can concentrate their thoughts on things which do not exist. Therefore, the child can do different tasks involving hypothesis use. The views of the learner can be fostered by placing the learner in a condition in which they have to solve problems (Simatwa, 2010). This stage may have assisted me in developing problem-solving skills in my adolescent stage and skills which I still apply up to now.
References
Benveniste, D. (2015). Sigmund Freud and Libido Development. American psychoanalytic Association , 1-6.
Fleming, J. S. (2004). Erikson’s Psychosocial Developmental Stages http://swppr. org/Textbook.
Lefa, B., Livingston, C., November, I., Condy, J., Chetty, R., Shaik, N., & Aronstam, S. (2014). The piaget theory of cognitive development: an educational implication. Educ Psychol , 0-8.
Simatwa, E. M. (2010). Piaget's theory of intellectual development and its implication for instructional management at pre-secondary school level. Educational Research and Reviews , 5 (7), 366.
