Children undergo physical, cognitive, and emotional development as they grow. Every developmental milestone has a significant impact on the child. In that case, when a child struggles in one of the developmental area, whether physically, emotionally, or cognitively, their other developmental aspects and behavior are likely to be affected. Child and adolescent development occur up to eighteen years, after which the child transitions into young adulthood. Anxiety is a cognitive developmental concern, in which the brain involuntarily responds to perceived danger based on prior exposure to the stimuli at an earlier developmental stage. Subsequent exposure to the stimuli causes a continuum of reactions, in which the individual expresses fear and unastisfaction in their environment ( Beesdo, Knappe, & Pine, 2009). Anxiety is not a pathological cognitive development disorder, but an adaptive response to perceived danger. Exposure to a certain uncomfortable situation creates an adaptive instinct of danger avoidance on re-exposure.
The Case of Chloe: Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Chloe, a nine-year-old girl manifests symptoms of advanced general distress and anxiety disorder. Her academic performance and social behavior in school has deteriorated, prompting referral to a psychiatric counselor. The manifest odd behavior such as failing to turn her assignments in, reclusive behavior and not talking to her classmates, and refusing to ride the school bus. Although she likes sports, she detests the idea of taking part in the school team and gets nauseated when prompted to join the team. She also has difficulty sleeping and is often paranoid of being kidnapped. According to her mother’s description, Chloe is afraid of her own shadow. Chloe’s case signifies a psychodynamic and psychological model of developmental milestone, as her condition most likely arises from a previous unpleasant experience.
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Applying Developmental Models to the Case in the Human Service Profession
The successful emotional and cognitive development is two different processes. However, both emotional and cognitive behaviors and development are believed to be linked. They all act upon each other and with each other to process ideas and information and to perform. In that case, both the process ought to be considered for children to thrive. Perhaps, an emotionally delayed child hardly excels cognitively and vise-versa (Zimmermann, 2016). The child develops when he or she is in an environment where he or she feels safe and protected. This environment makes the children able to explore both their feelings as well as their actions. The background should be cognitively and physically stimulating. It will offer unique and new concepts while maintained familiarity. The child develops only when he can see and be part of society and experience societal norms. The absence of this crucial piece makes it hard for the child to function in their society successfully.
Models of Development
Erickson’s Psychosocial Model
Considering Erickson’s psychosocial theory, an individual will experience eight psychosocial crisis stages. The stages affect their developmental and personality aspects. According to the scenario presented, most school-age children suffer from the fourth stage, which is referred to as "Industry v. Inferiority." It occurs when the children should learn cultural skills or sometimes face feelings of incompetence. Also, the children can be affected by another stage, which is the fifth stage that occurs at their adolescence age ( Whincup, 2019) . The stage is described as “Identity v. Role confusion.” In this stage, the adolescent seeks to determine who he or she is or a sense of him/her. They start getting confused about some roles. The sixth stage also occurs at adolescence ages, where the child suffers from “Intimacy v. Isolation.” This is common in young adults like our case with Zoey, who is 15 years of age. At this stage, Zoey sought to commit to others and sometimes suffered from isolation and self-absorption, which were linked with depressive disorder.
Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Stage Model
Jean Piaget’s cognitive-stage theory can be pointed at some stages when the children were learning. In his approach, the third stage has been indicated as a concrete operations stage, which takes place at the age of 7 to 11 years (McLeod, 2018), like with Chloe, who was nine years with a generalized anxiety disorder. At this stage, Chloe began thinking abstractly and conceptually. She started to create a logical structure that described her physical experiences. In essence, physical experience accumulates increasing her feeling of accommodation until the final stage for cognition. The characteristics in this stage included the way Chloe started to be egocentric and struggled to see things from other people's perspectives. Besides, she started thinking in a very concrete term. In essence, she began to believe that the washrooms were dirty and that using them would jeopardize her hygiene and standard. Also, this led to a sudden change of attitude to pull herself off from the attachment of other fellows who she used to play with ( Ruggeri et al., 2018) . She also refused to ride on the school bus, and she started hating to play football, which she initially loved playing. She seemed to be uncontrollable even after several plead to the corporate, which she instead turned anxious and upset to avoid games.
Comparing and Contrasting the Models
Besides, Chloe has pointed out some characteristics of psychosocial development. In essence, her general anxiety disorder could hardly allow her to use public washrooms. She was afraid of the restrooms. Just like Freud, Erickson's anticipation that the toiletwas a vital part of his development process, Chloe has some difficulties in controlling her body functions, and that led to a feeling of control and a sense of independence.That is characterized by the way she disregarded everything, including associating with her friends who she used to play with as well as dropping most of her characters like playing ball and other games. This stage is characterized by a push towards autonomy, which is characterized by independence or self-determination, which is linked to maturation (Bell, Wolfe, Diaz, & Liu, 2019). At this stage as well, we can describe how Chloe wanted to do everything herself and wished to expand the boundary of her world. It was during this stage when the virtue of will started emerging, and that was pointed out by the growing power she had to make her own decision. She also wanted to apply oneself to tasks as well as using her self-restraint. To clarify, the actions may persist in sounding weird like abnormal reactions of fear like the way she was afraid of sleeping and “shutting off” her brain. Also, the children at this developmental stage experience persistent fear like Chloe was worried and nervous about being kidnapped at night while sleeping. This stage is characterized by a feeling of security and confidence for the youths.
Conclusion
Children who are at this stage require the right amount of adult control like Chloe did to strike the proper balance. The control should neither be too much nor should it be too little because the imbalance may cause them to rebel against all the rules. Erickson’s developmental model of psychosocial behavior asserted how failure to achieve autonomy could evoke pity, which is manifested in the children's feeling of incompetence and worthlessness, thus affecting their general performance in life. Exposure to unpleasant or seemingly dangerous stimuli invokes a psychological adaptive response that is manifested in an individual’s social behavior.
References
Bell, M. A., Wolfe, C. D., Diaz, A., & Liu, R. (2019). Cognition and Emotion in Development. In Handbook of Emotional Development (pp. 375-403). Springer, Cham.
Ruggeri, A., Luan, S., Keller, M., &Gummerum, M. (2018). The influence of adult and peer role models on children and adolescents’ sharing decisions. Child Development , 89 (5), 1589-1598.
Whincup, P. (2019). An individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis to develop and validate a prediction model for fat mass in children and adolescents.
Zimmermann, G. C. (2016). Incorporating Study Abroad Experiences into the High School Classroom Using Practices Informed by Cognitive Research.
Beesdo, K., Knappe, S., & Pine, D. S. (2009). Anxiety and anxiety disorders in children and adolescents: developmental issues and implications for DSM-V. The Psychiatric clinics of North America , 32 (3), 483–524. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psc.2009.06.002
McLeod, S. (2018). Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. Simply Psychology .
