Medicine and research experts have long marveled about the stages of human development. This entrancing area of research continues to produce various inquiries such as what affects child development, and in which ages is typically defenseless change to outer impacts. Many hypotheses have in the light of these inquiries proliferated. Development is a continuous change related to age and occurs throughout a life span. Psychologists define development as a staggered development. Stages are phases in which people exhibit traditional behavioral behaviors and set clear limits. The specific stage theories share three presumptions: in a particular case, people go through stages, with each stage building on limits created in the previous stage. Stages are associated with age, and progression is erratic, with specific thresholds evolving subjectively in each stage (Capuzzi et al. 2016). There are five major development theories derived from the concepts of Freud, Erikson, Piaget, Kohlberg, and Maslow’s hypothesis analyzing their application in real life on human behavior.
Erikson’s Psychosocial Developmental Theory
Erikson was observant on how social interaction and partnerships take on a role in human change and growth. The steps in Erikson's theory extends over the intervening stages and plans for the following growth phases. Erikson bestows on individuals at each point where they encounter a confrontation, which qualifies as a defining moment in the growth. According to Erikson, these disputes are either focused on building up a mental quality, or neglecting to build up that quality. The capacity for self-awareness is strong on these times but so is the capacity for frustration. If people handle the conflict successfully, they will come out of the process with intellectual abilities which will perform well for them for the remainder of their lives. When they ignore these disagreements, however, they cannot build up the basic skills needed for a strong sense of self. Erikson also acknowledged that a sense of skill can drive behaviors and events. Each step of Erikson's theory focuses on becoming qualified in a regular issue (Kropf & Green, 2017). If the stage is sufficiently handled, the person may feel a sense of superiority, which in certain situations is referred to as a sense of self-worth or strength of personality. In case the stage is insufficiently supervised, the person in that section of the progression would rise with a feeling of insufficiency.
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These stages are reflected in our daily lives, especially for mothers and babies. For example, my sister feeds her eight-month-old son at specific times while holding him on her lap. The criteria have generated a certain level of trust such that if anyone else tries to feed the baby while not hold holding him, the child refuses to feed, meaning there is a sense of mistrust. Any single change in timing is also an issue, and the nanny has to manage her time to almost fit with the mother’s time table. In addition, I have been a witness to children learning to feed themselves faster if they are allowed to, no matter how they hold the spoon or make a mess. It motivates them to practice and perfect in the activity compared to children who are not given a chance to feed themselves or are scolded for making a mess. That clearly demonstrates that if a phase is handled with care, it creates a sufficient personality of self quality, which makes the upcoming stages easier to handle.
Freud’s Psychosexual Developmental Theory
Freud's philosophy revolves around the belief that character evolves during infancy. To Freud, experiences with children form their personalities and behave like grown-ups. Freud's view of growth was discontinuous; he agreed that each of us as children needs to go through a variety of phases. In case we neglect appropriate care and child-rearing during a phase, we can get trapped in the particular process. The stages in of Freud’s theory are known as the phases of psychosexual development, which include oral, anal, phallic, latency, and the genital stage. As per Freud, children’s desires are centered on specific body parts referred to as erogenous zones that encompass each phase of development (Green, 2017). According to Freud, life revolves around tension and pleasure. Likewise, it is accepted that every single tension is because of the development of sexual vitality and that all delight originated from its release.
The stages handled properly, generate satisfaction, which leads to a greater personality later in life. If not, their neglect can lead to various unpleasant behaviors. The oral stage, for example, can generate unpleasant traits of handling tension such as nail-biting. I am a witness of students’ nail-biting during exams to control their tension. According to Freud, such a student is fixated on the oral stage and is unable to release themselves from it as it was neglected when they were young. The conduct likewise shows that psychosexual stages are connected with a particular conflict that must be settled before the individual can viably advance to the accompanying stage. The destinations of all of these conflicts require the utilization of sexual essentialness and the greater imperativeness that is utilized at a particular stage, the more the noteworthy characteristics of that stage remain with the individual as they grow psychologically.
Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory
Piaget's Theory of Behavioral Development clarifies how an infant is constructing a global developmental paradigm. Piaget rejects the idea that intelligence is a fixed trait and sees intellectual growth as a mechanism that happens due to biological growth and culture interaction. The principle communicates that babies, in comparison to grown-ups, essentially think uniquely. The idea isolates a child's development into four distinct periods, or stages, each conveying its own significant features and vulnerabilities. Four stages of Piaget's development include the sensorimotor period in which children learn simple characteristics such as gripping. The preoperative stage in which main features such as word use, image recognition, and symbol recognition develop. The stage is the basis for the development of language. The next step is the practical step of activity in which children develop logic. The cognitive formal operational stage is the final phase, which includes the advancement of the capacity to reason and take care of issues among youthful grown-ups (Houde, 2019).
Each phase develops abilities that help the child advance to the next stage. These personalities that develop at each of these stages are difficult to change later in life. For example, during the sensorimotor stage, my reflexes were more advanced on my right hand compared to my left hand which was rather dormant. An adult changing from being right-handed to left-handed is almost impossible. In addition, activities done with my left hand seem to be more tedious compared to my right hand. A similar case goes for the concrete and formal operational stages. They create routines in one’s life. For example, every time I visit a restaurant, there is a specific procedure followed; look at the menu, order, eat, and lastly, pay for the meal. Ordering without being aware of what is on the menu will just seem awkward due to a specific routine followed since I was a child. These examples demonstrate that characteristics developed during childhood become someone’s personality as an adult.
Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development
The previous research by analytical scholar Jean Piaget was developed by Lawrence Kohlberg to explain the moral growth of adolescents. Kohlberg acknowledged that a succession of steps is often followed by ethical development, as is cognitive development. He used moral dilemmas expressing contradictory ideas on two virtues to teach children about values and ethical standards. The "Heinz" situation is most popular idea used by the scholar that talks of upholding the law as opposed to saving an individual’s life. The scholar emphasized that it is the process positive moral development is determined by individual reasons over a challenge. After posing these dilemmas, Kohlberg looked at the responses of individuals and placed them in different stages of moral reflection. As the scholar suggests, people advance from a phase with appreciation to pre-regular profound morality (before age 9) to the restriction with regards to ordinary ethics (early puberty), and towards engaging in post-traditional morality (when Piaget's definition of the formal operational thought is satisfied), which only a few really accomplish (Mathes, 2019). Each degree of profound quality contains two phases, which give the premise to moral improvement in different settings.
Heinz dilemma explains the judgments people make in various situations. A student is left to babysit their younger sister. The parents are out of town but old enough to take care of the child. The child develops a high fever. The parent’s car is still in the garage, but since the student has recently acquired a provisional driving license, they are required by law to only drive in the presence of an adult in the car. The next door neighbor is not yet home. The general reaction by the student will be to their sibling to hospital regardless of the law. As long as they have mastered all the important driving lessons and will be able to drive carefully to an emergency center, the action is morally right to them. Reactions in such situations are developed at a young age, and people tend to improve them as they grow into adults.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory
The principle is a philosophical concept contending that individuals have varying degrees of need. At the base of the pyramid are essential human needs (nourishment, water, apparel, and so on.), and at the top is self-completion (the finding of direction). Every delegate level expands upon the level beneath it. To achieve a child’s wellbeing and security, their fundamental human needs need to be satisfied initially. When fundamental human needs are met, then we can relationship needs, once relationship needs are met, then accomplishment needs can be met, lastly once all different needs are met, the requirement for self-completion can be met (D’Souza & Gurin, 2016).
The theory is reflected even in a student’s daily life. For them to learn to the best of their capacity, their basic human needs should be satisfied. One cannot study while hungry and homeless. Once basic needs are met, their safety and security are of great importance as they cannot study under fear or threats. Healthy relationships are also important for the student to concentrate on their education. Disruptions such as parents divorcing will affect the student’s performance. Students will then desire a sense of achievement, and this is fulfilled by anything related to school work such as completion of a project. Once all these needs are satisfactory, then the student can then venture to achieve self-actualization and completion, for example, acquiring your high school diploma. The example demonstrates that development is a hierarchy of needs, and each phase has to be satisfied for a chance to complete the next phase.
References
Capuzzi, D., Stauffer, M. D., & O’Neil, T. (2016). Theories of Human Development. Human Growth and Development across the Lifespan: Applications for Counselors , 25-54.
D'Souza, J., & Gurin, M. (2016). The universal significance of Maslow’s concept of self-actualization. The Humanistic Psychologist , 44 (2), 210.
Greene, R. R. (2017). Eriksonian theory: A developmental approach to ego mastery. In Human behavior theory and social work practice (pp. 107-136). Routledge.
Houdé, O. (2019). 3-system Theory of the Cognitive Brain: A Post-Piagetian Approach to Cognitive Development . Routledge.
Kropf, N. P., & Greene, R. R. (2017). Erikson’s eight stages of development: Different lenses. In Human Behavior Theory (pp. 75-92). Routledge.
Mathes, E. W. (2019). An evolutionary perspective on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Current Psychology , 1-14.
