All nurses need to be familiar with the principles of Balte’s Lifespan Perspective. The lifespan perspectives will help the nursing students understand the difference in age groups and the challenges found in a particular group of patients. Besides, the perspectives can help a nurse interact and give appropriate remedies to many difficulties encountered in a specific age group. Lally & Valentine-French (2017) believe that development in a human being is lifelong, and many changes can occur within the lifespan. Also, the lifespan philosophers argue that all age periods are equal, crucial, characteristic, and dominant in human development ( Rudolph & Zacher, 2017). Balte’s Lifespan Perspectives has many principles which explain human growth and development. Balte’s principles dictate that human development is multi contextual multidimensional and is categorized by plasticity.
First, human development is multidimensional because it changes across domains such a physical, psychosocial, and cognitive. A human being will change physically in weight, height, nervous system, sensory abilities, and immunity ( Lally & Valentine-French, 2017) . Besides, a human being will change in the cognitive domain by remarkable wisdom, intelligence, perception, language, memories, and abilities in solving problems. Psychosocial development involves a human being changing in their interpersonal relationships, emotions, self-perception. All these domains influence each other by cascading and prompting changes within a person, which will make a child have a different development than an adolescent ( Rudolph & Zacher, 2017) . For instance, while as a child, I had difficulties in regulating my actions and had impulsive reactions. As I grew to adolescence, my self-regulation took a varied dimension, and I began to reason as I engage all the consequences of my actions.
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The second principle of Balte’s Lifespan Perspective is that human development has plasticity. Plasticity means that a human can change, and many human characteristics are malleable. Plasticity focuses on the potential of human beings. A human's development is open to more changes than the traditional perspective, where a human can avoid undesired behaviors and outcomes ( Lally & Valentine-French, 2017) . Also, a human can change in respective of their own experience, and gain some suppressed abilities. Plasticity can be observed daily in our lives. For instance, when my sister lost her sight at the age of twenty-seven, the sense of sight was compensated by the sense of hearing. My sister can perceive sounds clearly than all of us. Therefore, the ability of the human to adapt new skills to compensate for their weaknesses can be described by Balte’s principles.
The third principle entails human development as a contextual. According to Rudolph & Zacher (2017) , human development occurs in three contextual stimuli. The first influence is the normative influences, where humans who share the same age often have similar effects. If individuals are born in the same era, they are expected to share similar life experiences and development. However, in non-normative influences, someone can have a unique encounter that can shape their development. The second contextual influence on a human's development is socioeconomic status ( Rudolph & Zacher, 2017) . An individual's status can influence people to share the same lifestyles, parenting styles, religion, and diet. Humans who have a better economic situation will be privileged to enjoy their autonomy. Unfortunately, poor health, adverse occupations, and low life expectancy lead to poor human development. The third contextual influence on human development is culture. An individual's culture is a complete shared behavior, languages, beliefs, morals, values, and objects in their society ( Lally & Valentine-French, 2017) . The aspect of culture is passed on from one generation to another through parents, media, and churches throughout individuals' lifespan. It can be a pity when an individual who is an orphan, poor, and has no prescribed culture tries to survive in any society. In most cases, such individuals will have a stagnant development, which can only be re-activated through changing their cultural inclinations.
References
Lally, M., & Valentine-French, S. (2017). Lifespan Development: A Psychological Perspective\ . Martha Lally, Suzanne Valentine-French. https://dept.clcillinois.edu/psy/LifespanDevelopment,pdf .
Rudolph, C. W., & Zacher, H. (2017). Considering generations from a lifespan developmental perspective. Work, Aging and Retirement , 3 (2), 113-129. https://doi.org/10.1093/workar/waw019 .
