Psychological, Social, and Moral Development of the Infant and Preschool Child
Both Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson emphasized that the children develop in the predetermined order. Specifically, the Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial development consists of distinct stages with possible results in every stage. The theory explains the successful completion in every stage that results to a healthy personality and interaction with others. In contrast, the failure to complete successfully leads to a reduced capability to complete the other stages resulting to more unhealthy personality and interaction with others. Additionally, Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development applies the different genders and cultures.
Psychosocial Stages of Infants (0-12 months)
Trust versus Mistrust
Preliminary, from birth to 12 months, a child starts to learn the capacity to trust other individuals. The child’s trust is based on the caregivers’ consistency. The successful development of the trust can gain the child’s confidence and security. In addition, the child feels secure even he or she is threatened. However, the unsuccessful completion can result in the inability to trust others. Consequently, the child has the sense of fear towards the inconsistent events. Moreover, it may result in anxiety, increased insecurities, and the feeling of overly mistrust in some events.
Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt
At the ages between one and three, a child starts to assert his or her independence. For example, the assertions are walking away from parents (mother or father), picks the toy to play with, and the choices on what to eat or wear. The child’s independence will increase if his or her parents or guardians encourage and support him or her during this stage. As a result, the child becomes more secure and confident to perform and the capacity to survive. However, if the child is controlled overly, often criticized, or not given the chance to assert, the child starts to feel inadequately to perform or survive. In addition, the child becomes very dependent with others, feels the sense of shame, lack self-esteem, and doubts with his or her ability.
Psychosocial Stages of Preschool Child (3-5 years old)
Initiative versus Guilt
Frequently, the child asserts things such as to plan activities, create some games, and initiates some activities or games with others. If the child is given the chance to do these things, he or she develops the sense of initiative and feels secure to plan, lead, and make the decision. On the contrary, if the child does not the chance to assert these tendencies through control or criticism, he or she develops the sense of guilt, feels a nuisance to others, and remains as followers with lack of self-initiative.
Moral Development of Infants and Preschool Children
Infants (0-12 months)
According to Jean Piaget, the trust is built through the relationship of the child and the caregiver as the basis for the future moral responses and interactions. An infant has no capacity to moralize except the sense of rightness or the opposite feelings applied. An infant sees and concludes that being hungry is wrong and it hurts his or her feelings. He or she feels that being alone is wrong and it is scary. In addition, an infant knows that unresponsiveness of the caregiver is wrong. On the other hand, an infant being held and cared is right. He or she feels the importance of care and attention and develops the feeling of rightness and eventually, it becomes his or her norm.
Preschool Child (3-5 years old)
At this stage, the major turning point in the moral development happens. The child starts to internalize the family values. For example, the things important for the parents become important to him or her and considered as one of the child’s norms. Later, the child starts to understand the concept of moral behavior, for example, the Golden Rule (to consider how individuals affect the feeling of others).
Physical and Cognitive Development
Physical Development
Infancy (0-1)
Reflexes and Motor Skills
The newborns have the specific prewired capabilities for adaptive and survival purposes because they cannot endure alone. For example, most babies suck when they are presented with a nipple, they turn their heads with familiar voices, they grasp at fingers when pressed into their hands, and startle when they heard loud noises.
Sensation and Perception
An infant is capable sensation, the ability to respond to the sensory information in the environment. An infant is born with functional sensory organs. Most babies respond visually to the environment, attracted to objects especially light and dark contrasts, for example, the human face. The deeper perception includes the responses to smells, tastes and sounds, for example, the human voice.
Learning
It results in permanent changes of behavior based on the experience. An infant learns in different ways, the classical conditioning (Pavlovian), the operant conditioning (Skinnerian), and the observable learning . The classical conditioning happens when the stimulus has a certain response that is associated with another stimulus that caused the responses. In the operant conditioning, it happens through the application, rewards, or punishments, the positive and negative reinforcements. In addition, shaping is a gradual application of this type of conditioning, for example, smiling at his or her parents after a positive parental attention. Thus, most babies respond well in this type of conditioning. Last, in observable learning, a baby achieves the things he or she learns through observation and imitation. For example, a baby starts to clap by watching or imitating others. This type of learning is the fastest way to acquire new skills.
Health
The body system of the newborns includes the short-term and the long-term health functions. Some babies experienced birth trauma or incurred an injury during birth about less than a percent only. In addition, the birth trauma, early sickness, and low birth weight affect the physical and mental health later in life, especially in the poor environment. The congenital birth defects are the leading causes of infant death such as heart problems, pregnancy complications, and sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS.
Preschool Child (3-5)
The same with the infants, the preschool child grows fast, physically and cognitively. During the early childhood, the development is strongly integrated such as the biological, social, and psychological changes.
Physical
Most children lose their baby fats at three years old and they acquire a leaner body. The trunk and limbs of a child will grow longer and the abdominal muscles will form. Certainly, the figures are only average and it differs accordingly and it depends on the nourishments, socioeconomic status, heredity factors, and health.
Brain and Motor Skills
The nervous system continues to develop dramatically. If the brain is developed better, the child is capable of more complex behavior and cognitive abilities. It includes the gross motor skills and the fine motor skills. The gross motor skills are jumping, running, skipping, turning, hopping, dancing, and balancing, all using the large bodily movements. The fine motor skills are writing, typing, and drawing, all using the small bodily movements.
Health
In general, the preschoolers are healthy; however, they may develop some medical issues. The common illnesses are coughs, colds, and stomachaches. The most common is the respiratory ailments because their lungs were not developed fully. The minor illness can help children to cope with skills and deal with some physical distress or discomfort, and to learn empathy or understand others with distress and discomfort. The major illnesses are pneumonia, influenza, cancer, HIV, and AIDS. Consequently, the children suffered these types of illnesses affect their growth and includes some developmental pain, anxiety, and delays. In addition, the children from poor families are prone to sickness or at risk of common illnesses. On the other hand, the majority of death is due to accidental injuries (automobiles, suffocation, drowning, poisoned, falling from heights, and burned) than illnesses.
Middle Child (6-11)
Physical
Typically, they acquire leaner and more athletic appearances. Both the girls and boys change the body proportions as they reach puberty. The secondary sexual characteristics are after puberty; the females have developed the breasts and curves while the males have deeper voices and broader shoulders. When the boys start to mature, they eventually surpass girls in terms of heights and weights.
Brain and Motor Skills
The central nervous system develops maturely and the organs are nearly adult size. Similarly, the motor skills compose with the gross motor skills and the fine motor skills and it continues to refine during this stage. The children enjoy playing different games and it shows that children become stronger, faster, and well coordinated. Some children play different instruments that help more develop their fine motor skills. In addition, they can develop their sense of competence and confidence by using their skills.
Health
Children are very healthy; the usual minor illnesses are the cough, colds, and stomachaches and lessen the occurrence during this stage. They have an improved resistance to the minor illnesses because they have an increased immunity, nutritional practices, and improved hygiene. Correspondingly, minor illnesses do not need medical attention. Similarly, they can acquire some major illnesses as for preschool children do. However, they are more at risk of obesity that can cause high blood pressure, hearts problems, and diabetes. The majority disabilities and death are caused by injuries and accidents . Moreover, some deaths are caused by homicide, congenital defects, cancer, and severe infections.
Adolescent (12-14)
This is the transition period between childhood and adulthood with great changes and discoveries, especially, the physical, intellectual, and emotional growth by adjusting to social identity, new body, and perspective in the expanding world. They become independent and they contribute to help the family and in the society. Specifically, adolescents experience the development of the genital stage. There is rapid development in the puberty stage as a signal of sexual maturity; structurally and hormonally prepared for sexual reproduction.
Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development
The four major stages of cognitive development are the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational, respectively. The stages of development describe the normal intellectual development from infancy to adulthood that includes judgment, thought, and knowledge.
Sensorimotor (0 – 2)
It is centered on the schema; a mental representation or idea regarding the things individuals dealing with. The behavior of the baby is triggered by a stimuli and they are reflexive. After birth, the baby understands through his or senses and learns to receive information known as action schema. Most babies have the ability to build and create mental pictures of objects in the environment and explore with it.
Preoperational (2 – 7)
The children are developing their thought processes and considered far from the logical thought. They have the expanded and developed vocabulary and usually they are egocentric that considering things from their perspective alone and others agree with them. They believe that everything that exists are a kind of consciousness called animism. For example, the vehicle will not start because it is sick or tired. It demonstrates that if they feel pain, everything in the surroundings feels the same way. In addition, the another aspect of the children is symbolism and moral realism. They tend to respect and insist that obedience is important.
Concrete Operational (7 – 11)
The children’s thought is more rational, adult-like or mature, and operational with two distinct stages, the concrete operation and the formal operation. The child has developed his or her logical thinking about the object in the environment if they can manipulate into it. There is a decline on the aspects about animism and egocentric and replace with a well-formed and well-dominated thinking about the appearance of the objects. For example, there are more blocks when spread out than in a small pile. In general, they can conserve the ideas about the objects that they are comfortable with and they learn reversibility (for example, if things are changed in position, it is the same as it was).
In this stage, the structure of the development becomes abstract and logically organized. Fro example, if the adolescent faces a complex problem they think of any possible solutions. They can reason out beyond the concrete reality to its possibility and operate on symbols logically. The major characteristics of an adolescent are hypothetic-deductive reasoning and propositional in nature. In the hypothetic-deductive reasoning, the adolescents come up with general theory when they are facing problems and starts with the possibility and proceed to the reality. In the propositional in nature, the adolescents focus on the verbal assertions, evaluate the logical validity with no reference to the real world events. On the contrary, the concrete operational children evaluate the logical statements and consider it against the concrete evidence alone.
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