The Human Development of a Six Year Old
Megan Baur is a 6-year-old Caucasian female who currently attends the first grade at a private school, Rolland Park School for girls. She lives with her birth parents and her 4-year-old brother, Kyle, in a suburban house on the outskirts of Baltimore City. Her father is a successful chiropractor and her mother works part time as a dental hygienist. Her mother was a stay home mom from Megan's birth till very recently, when she decided to return to work only during the hours while Kyle, the youngest attends nursery school.
Megan is a very bright young girl who seems to be progressing in the middle childhood level already. A child in this level must deal with demands to learn new skills or risk a sense of inferiority, failure and incompetence. The opinions of their classmates' matter more than ever before and they begin to feel the effects of peer pressure. In this stage a person can do mental operations but only with real (concrete) objects, events or situations. Logical reasons are understood. For example, Megan can understand the need to go to bed early when it is necessary to get up early the next morning. Children that are in this stage attend school and they enjoy mastering lots of new physical skills. They learn rapidly in school.
She does very well in school and is always will to do school work without even being provoked. She is working on abstract ideas of adding and subtracting things and sounding out words for reading. She is above her age group at reading and has a very extensive vocabulary. Megan seems to enjoy the challenge of reading and it makes her feel grown-up and superior to her younger sibling, since he is too young to read. She is always trying to teach him w...
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...d adolescence. Once she has progressed to the stage of adolescence, she will need a lot of support and love from her parents. In this stage a teenager must achieve a sense of identity in occupation, sex roles, politics, and religion. Megan will be face with many hard decisions and confusing alternatives when trying to resolve the psychosocial crisis of group identity vs. alienation. During that period of her life she will learn some of life's hardest lessons and will have to deal with the issue of peer pressure. As long as Megan effectively demonstrates the leadership qualities she already possesses now, she will obtain the ego adaptive quality of fidelity that a normal teenage should have. Megan is a strong little girl with a good sense of right and wrong and a high self-esteem and I'm sure her parents are very proud to have her as their oldest child and daughter.
In Pale Rider, using an adolescent girl change much of the story. Instead of a young boy trying to find a hero, we see a girl Megan looking for a man or husband. As much of the story is the same, a family or group of families in this movie trying to keep their land from others that want to take it. Megan becomes upset that the stranger Preacher says no about marriage to her because she is too young just like Joey from Shane getting upset about the fight his father had. Megan gets terribly upset, and runs off, trying to show everyone that she is grown up. She only gets into trouble, and is mauled by some of the towns people. The stranger though is there to save her, and she regains his trust.
High school sophomore, Samantha Baker woke up on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, hoping for an overnight transformation. While on the phone with her best friend, she stares at herself in the mirror, praying she had grown a few inches and a set of boobs. Much to avail, she has not and her day goes on just like every other one. She has the added pressure of being a bridesmaid for her older sister Ginny’s wedding, the next day. After being felt up by Grandmother Baker, Samantha deals with the ridicule and torment of her annoying little brother and takes the bus to school. During her study hall class she takes a silly quiz another friend had given her. The quiz ends up in the hands of her crush, Jake Ryan! The anxiety sets in.
Erickson’s Theory has 8 stages (Schriver, 2011). The following text will give the developmental crisis of each stage and relate it to Shannon’s life personally. In Erikson’s Theory developmental crisis “did not mean an impending catastrophe as much as it meant “a turning point, a crucial period of increased vulnerability and heightened potential”” (Schriver, 2011). The first stage of Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages of Development is Trust vs. mistrust (0-1 year) and its crisis is “in establishing trust” (Schriver, 2011). Shannon had developed trust early on in her life due to the loving, caring, and nurturing home she grew up in. She had a sense of physical comfort which eliminated fear and allowed trust. The second stage is Autonomy vs. shame (1-3 years) and the crisis is “parental restrictions vs. autonomy” (Schriver, 2011). Growing up Shannon started learning to walk at 11 months which is a normal age for children to emerge into that. Due to her parents being supportive, it allowed Shannon to start exploring her curiosities and still be loved while doing so. The third stage is Initiative vs. guilt (3-6 years) and the crisis is “in taking initiative without experiencing guilt” (Schriver, 2011). This again correlates to the supportiveness of Shannon’s parents which allows her to be her own person and encourages her to experience her life in her own way. The fourth stage is Industry vs. inferiority (6-12 years) and the crisis is “in striving for competence” (Schriver, 2011). Shannon had a great group of friends growing up and that gave her the inclusion she needed to feel equal to her peers and not inferior to anyone. The fifth stage is Identity vs. role confusion and the crisis is “uncertainty about the future and the child’s role in it” (Schriver, 2011). At this time in Shannon’s life she had already strengthened her hope (trust), will, purpose, and
Theories abound around how people develop emotionally, intellectually, socially and spiritually. This essay will examine the theories of five leaders on the subject of development.
During middle childhood, children are able to excel in many aspects of development that they could not have obtained before. Children starting around age seven are able to excel in their learning and cognitive development, like being able to read and enjoy going to school to learn something new. They enjoy being able to practice their new knowledge by practicing it until they get it perfect. By this age, middle school age children are able to direct their attention to a particular situation or objective and ignore everything else; this is also called selective attention, “ability to concentrate on some stimuli while ignoring others.” (Berger, 2011, p.305) Another aspect of middle school age children, are seen to be able to control their actions or thoughts and think about the consequences before doing any given action. This can also be seen as middle school age children, who have major advances in controlling their emotions.
The story follows three girls- Jeanette, the oldest in the pack, Claudette, the narrator and middle child, and the youngest, Mirabella- as they go through the various stages of becoming civilized people. Each girl is an example of the different reactions to being placed in an unfamiliar environment and retrained. Jeanette adapts quickly, becoming the first in the pack to assimilate to the new way of life. She accepts her education and rejects her previous life with few relapses. Claudette understands the education being presented to her but resists adapting fully, her hatred turning into apathy as she quietly accepts her fate. Mirabella either does not comprehend her education, or fully ignores it, as she continually breaks the rules and boundaries set around her, eventually resulting in her removal from the school.
Middle childhood is the time where children start to fully develop their skills. They develop their comprehension skills, communication skills, and many more. In order to get a better look into the life of children during this stage, I decided to observe my niece’s friend, Ryan, who is almost at the end of her middle childhood stage. Ryan is an eleven year old girl who attends Bassett Elementary. I choose to observe Ryan because, she is a very unique girl who does not always fit into what the average girl her age is like.
In stage three, concrete operational, the child now rationalises logically about concrete, real experiences. They have the ability to mentally reverse actions and are able to focus simultaneously on different features of a problem.
Adolescence is the stage in life when you are no longer a child, but not yet an adult. There are many things that still need to be explored, learned and conquered. In the film Thirteen, the main character, Tracy Freeland, is just entering adolescence. While trying to conquer Erikson’s theory of Identity vs. Role confusion, Tracy is affected by many influences, including family and friends that hinder her development. Many concepts from what we have learned in class can be applied to this character from identity development, to depression, to adolescent sexuality and more. In this film Tracy is a prime example of an adolescent and much of what I have learned this year can be applied to her character.
Erik Erikson was an American psychologist famous for his theory of psychosocial development. Erikson postulated that psychological and social factors played an enormous role in human development. The psychosocial theory brakes down human development into eight interdependent stages, with each stage having specific culminating goals and a pair of crises (Woolfolk, 2013, p. 99). The failure to achieve the goals of one stage could hinder the successful completion of subsequent stages.
I was interested in the debate over her taking medication. I, at first agreed with her and her parents about not wanting her on medication. I was also worried about her uniqueness and creativity being destroyed by the medication. I also was excited by the idea of her changing schools in hope that she would make friends. I did not think about the new school working as a substitute stimulus for her. I was very surprised to learn about her lying about her academics and saddened to learn about her social problems. I was surprised at how much the medication helped her in the end and glad it did not hurt her uniqueness.
Every child’s development is distinctive, multipart, and complex. Development comes to pass in five areas. SPICE refers to the five areas of development that all children share. Social, physical, intellectual, creative, and emotional equals SPICE (Early childhood education). Erik Erikson developed a theory of development that considers the impact of external factors from infancy to later life. So, when thinking about early childhood education the one detail that comes to mind is development. Emotional-social development is one aspect of development that is greatly influenced by factors in the environment and the experiences a child has.
One of the biggest challenges is that she was resisting any of their suggestions and was hardly meeting their expectations. She had decided to be her boss by trying new and different aspects of life. I realized that my cousin was displaying Erik Erikson’s fifth stage and was going through an identity crisis that may lead to her identity (Marcia, Waterman, Matteson, Archer, & Orlofsky, 2012). Angie was dressing differently, which was inappropriate and was also dying her hair with bright colors. More so, she is making up her mind on the issue regarding college and career without consulting her parents. As for the parents, they have certain expectations for Angie. In fact, they expect her to dress like a noble girl as they are Catholics. They also expect her to be polite and behave in a certain manner. I observed that there is a conflict between Angie and her parents. Angie is undoing role confusion and her parents are part of the outside
Children in middle childhood are growing psychosocially at a quick rate. During middle childhood they become industrious, develop a self-concept, and learn how to be friends, amongst other things. In Erickson’s Stages of Development, a child in middle childhood (or children from age six to age eleven) moves through the industry versus inferiority stage. This stage is marked by the child working to gain new skills and in general just being productive (Click P. M., Parker J., 2002, p. 89). A child who is successful in their attempts will gain confidence in themselves and move on into adolescence firmly on the industrious side.
In electing to observe a kindergarten class, I was hoping to see ‘real world’ examples of the social development, personality types and cognitive variation found within the beginning stages of “Middle Childhood” as discussed within our text.