Child Development Stages

Cognitive, physical, and psichosocial development

During the development process a child suffer many changes but not just physical changes like the size or weight. They also experiment other changes, and there are many factors that affect during this process such as the environment, the incentives that the child may receive, etc. 

The stages in the development of a child are Infancy, Early childhood, Middle childhood, and adolescence. These stages are studied for some of the most important theorist such as Gean Piaget that create the cognitive theory,  Lev Vigotsky create the theory of social interaction, Erick Erickson that create the psychosocial stages.  Lawrence who focused on the moral development. Each of these theorist focus on different points that are escential in the development of a child.

• Gean piaget and the cognitive theory

Piaget create this cognitive theory to understand how is that a child start to think and how they develop their brains. Moreover, he claims that children learned base on personal experiences.He create four stages that explain the process that children face during their development. The stages are 

• sensori-motor: child interact with environment by manipulating object around them., pre-operational, concrete-operational, and formal-operational stage.

• pre-operational stage (18-24 months until age 7) language is developing at this stage, they can draw, use words to express emotions.

• concrete-operational stage (7 to 11 years) is characterised by the appropriate use of logic.

• formal-operational stage : Individual begin to think abstractly, they draw conclusions, and they are able to solve problems by themselves.

• The social interaction theory of Lev Vigotsky

Vigotsky thought that the environment in which children grow influence a lot in their development. For example, if a child grows in a very violent environment that would act violent. On the other hand , if the environment in which the chid grows is very quiet and peaceful the child would act exactely in the way he or she experiment. Besides, he said that children's schooling affect their development in vital way. During the development of morality according to vigotsky  children at the begining are not able to disinguish what is good or bad. Moreover, they like to interact and socialize with other people, and they understand that are rules but that some of this rules can be broken.

• The psychosocial stages of Erick Erickson

Erickson consider that many external factors influence in the psychosocial development. For example, confidence that is basic for a child to face the world, another aspects are initiative, they are able to learn new skills, they want to acomplish new thing, they have goals,  and when are not children anymore the individual experiement things such as ego, isolation, and despair. Erickson create 8 stages to support his theory.

• Basic trust vs. Mistrust (0 to 18 months)
• Autonomy vs. shame (18 months to 3 years)
• initiative vs. guilt (3 to 5 years)
• Industry vs. inferiority (6 to 12 years)
• Identity vs. Role confusion 12 to 18 years)
• Intimacy vs. Isolation (18 to 40 years)
• Generativity vs. stagnation (40 to 65 years old)
• Ego integrity vs. despair ( 65 + years)

• The Moral development theory of Lawrence  

Lawrence described 3 stages of moral development and  in each stages he describes the process of how people learn to distinguish right from wrong. He claims that during the first years children are not thougth about morality at least not in a very strict way  just by punisment and rewardsso they are not able to distinguish between these aspects. Moreove,r when children are able to go to school they should have knowledge about moral because they are asked to obey to an authority that is the teacher. In this way when they are older they are able to recognize rules and know about what is moral or not. The three stages of lawrence are.

• preconvencional morality
• convetional morality
• post- conventional morality

STAGES

INFANCY ( 0 to 2 years old)

During infancy children start to develop connection with the environment. They start moving their bodies using their hands to touch things around them. besides, in this stage they crawl and then walk. Also, they start to think and make connection to events that happen around them. For example, they cry when they are hungry and they associate the crying with the food. In this process we can assimilate that children are developing thinking. Moreover, children at this stage are able to produce sounds in order to comunicate with people, and they express emotions to the situation that are happening around them.

EARLY CHILDHOOD ( 3 to 8 years)

During this stage  children start to develop language they are able produce words. Moreover, they start to ask many questions about everything because they want to discover the world. Some children go to school at this stage and they like to be with people specifically with other children. They play alone, they write with help, they are able to recognize letters, and even write some of those letters. When they are older children can write alone, read, and have knowledge about the right and wrong. They are able to distinguish these to important aspects.  Moreover, competence,  proud, egocentrism are aspects that are present at this stage because is when they start to be in company with other children. At school they want to be one the best in order to win a prise and show it to the rest of the class. Besides, they are able to take decisions such as what clothes they want to wear or the food they want to eat. 

MIDDLE CHILDHOOD  (9 a 11 years old)

Children at this stage act most of the time in an independentely way, and they like to spent a lot of time with their friends. Self eseem is a very important aspect to treat at this stage because if children do not receive the correct incentive they would fail in every step they want to take. On the other hand if chidren receive a high enthusiasm of how they behave or act (the incorrect incentive) they would think that anybody can be better that they are. Besides, tehre are many physical changes in this stage.

ADOLESCENCE (12 to 18 years old)

They are capable to solve abstract problems. They have knowledge about morality and they take the important decision about what they want to be and follow. They choose their friends, they have specifiv goals that they want to achieve. Furthermore, at this stage adolescents see their groups of friend like their refugi in which they can share anything.