Developement of Life Span - Term Paper Example

Development of Life Span Introduction An individual’s external environment dictates the kind of person one ends up being. External environment is critical in the development of the emotional state and personality of a person. It can also dictate how a person would do his or her social tasks in life. According to Erikson, the process of socialization and relationship experiences promote individual’s adaptive nature and social functioning. This implies that if the right kind of relationships is not offered to stimulate the development of an individual, that person becomes emotionally stunted. Consequently, the individual may not able to negotiate the developmental tasks as outlined in Erikson’s stages of development. This could lead to an emotional crisis which can impair his or her process of personal growth (Lerner 417). Therefore, the individual would fail to attain the competency needed to meet personal as well as societal expectations. Societal expectations are social demands that one is required to met once he or she have attained a certain age of assuming responsibility. Lack of individual growth cause emotional crisis because the individual would not be able to adjust to the new demands placed upon him or her. Social, biological and psychological orientations are critical for personal growth and development. Erikson’s eight stages of development According to Erikson, human beings go through eight stages of development. The theory emphasizes the importance of social environment in determining individual’s personality. The first stage is trust versus mistrust stage that refers to the infancy stage of 0 to 1 years. At this stage, children learn to define their environment as either friendly or hostile based on the kind of experiences they have with their caregivers. The children should be provided with adequate food, comfort, warmth and affection to promote children positive attitude towards life. Failure to give children basic needs leads to children’s emotional and personality distortions. This is because children fail to forge trust in a lacking environment and go through life having suspicious mentalities. The second stage in his model is that of Autonomy versus Shame which takes place when a child is between ages 2 and 3 years. The importance of the social environment is evident through efforts that parents or caregivers put into enabling their child to assert their will and attempt minor challenges. Lack of encouragement makes children unable to respond to life’s challenges and societal expectations appropriately. The third stage of Erikson’s psychosocial developmental theory also clearly helps one to see the importance of the child’s external environment in fostering either an initiative personality or a guilt-ridden one. This is from ages of 4 to 5 years of a child’s development where they desire to start and complete their own initiatives. At this stage children should be protected against possible injuries through provision of adequate attention Ralph (7). In the next fourth stage, children between the ages of 6 and 11 years depend much upon the appraisals that they get from both their teachers and parents to foster a sense of self-confidence and achievement. Their ability to perform well at school, observe moral values, take care of themselves and appear responsible to others can lead to a high self-esteem especially if caretakers are keen to praise these achievements. Failure of parents, teachers and caregivers to provide positive feedback could taint a child’s confidence. In their adolescent years, young ones shift their focus from parents as their external motivation, to their peers. If they are not able to locate themselves in a society that has expectations of them, they could end up experiencing role confusion. Their main struggle here is to find identity in a world that already has prescribed rules. At this age, the children should be able to assert themselves into a self-identity. In the Intimacy versus Isolation Stage between 20 to 34 years, their environment is a major influence. At this stage, adults fear being rejected by their lovers and have to act in acceptable ways in order to find life partners. At times, it is the social pressure to conform to the societal expectations of the age at which one should get married that actually causes them to have the desire to settle down. In the last stages of Generativity versus Stagnation and Integrity versus Despair, individuals are pre-occupied with what they can give back to their society to leave a meaningful legacy once they die. If they look around and see that their contribution to the society has been meaningless, they tend to experience despair and discontent. This despair stems from the fact that they have not achieved the standard that society demands of them. This could lead to psychological and emotional disorientation in late years. My life span When I look at my personal journey of development, I must admit that my parents and siblings impacted positively on my life during my formative years. The impact of the environment made me a better person of whom I am today. This is evident because I am emotionally stable and I feel some sense of achievement. I received most basic needs and unconstraint emotional encouragement from my family and relatives as far as I can remember. My mother is a nurse and father is a business man. They have been married and living together for 31 years. Their stable relationship enabled me to grow up in a relatively peaceful family that offered a lot of support as I negotiated my development stages. Both of my parents were very committed to the raising up my siblings and I. they provided their love, food, clothing, housing, Medicare, education and created their time for us, especially when we were infants. I must admit now that it is because of their physical availability, the love and comfort they offered me during my formative years that made me view life positively. In fact, most of my friends revealed that they find it very easy to relate with me since they find me open and very trusting. My parents were busy with their careers but still found time to be present for their children’s day to day activities. However, this does not mean that they were hovering over us all the time. At the age of three years, my parents had already allowed me enough freedom to explore and attempt some small tasks which they thought I could on my own. I could brush my teeth. As children, we were also given the freedom to design our own games and to freely interact with our neighbor’s children. Their patience and encouragement to attempt tasks which I desired to at that age made me to have the courage to do and face most things in life. If they were not as encouraging as they were, I feel that I would have been less reluctant to attempt major challenges. I attribute this to close relationships I had with my parents and grandparents when I was growing up. My grandfather who died when I was only sixteen was a very powerful force in raising my self-esteem. He encouraged me and believed in potential and affirmed my every achievement especially when I was about 6 to 10years. He loved sports especially basket ball. In fact, he kept saying that he must live to see me engaging in sports. Consequently, I developed such an industrious attitude towards these kinds of activities. True to his word, I played basketball and baseball while in high school and excelled. I learnt from him the importance of having the sound moral values of determination, hard work and persistence. I also learnt to persevere at a task long enough if I am to expect positive results. When I was older during my teenage years, the focus of my attention shifted from my family unit as the external stimulator, to my friends at high-school. I realized that what my friends thought and said about me had such a great influence as to determine my internal sense of calm. At my teenage years, I started to become pre-occupied with how I could be more appealing to others, especially my friends. However, I did not know how to strike a balance between the societal expectations for my behaviour, such as those of dressing, with what I really wanted for myself. I felt I also needed to establish my boundaries so that I did not have to live within anyone’s expectations. My parents as well as grandparents were very instrumental in helping me overcome the emotional crisis I was facing during this stage of my life. They encouraged me on the need to be myself rather than trying to please others in society. My parents were keen on instilling the values of hard-work and discipline as relating to aspects such as saving, budgeting and wise spending. My father especially kept encouraging me to go to the highest level possible in my profession to be successful. Now that my siblings and I are much older, my parents have become less of disciplinarians and more generous to us. They make sure that they are more available than before to share in our career as well as life struggles. The fact that they are now aging, an external motivator, psychologically prepares them to leave a heritage of healthy values to us. As mentioned before, my father owns a bar and our home is in close proximity to it. I have come to learn that most young people between ages 20 and 34 years who visit the bar do not do it just for the sake of consuming beer, but due to the need for social connections. It is therefore very clear that an individual’s social and external environment greatly influences their psychological and emotional adjustment in life. Conclusion When I look at my life now, I realized that I passed through the many steps of human growth. Now I am in the Intimacy versus Isolation Stage. This age too, I shall pass through successfully because I know have a close friend with me now. In this essay, I have depicted how my social environment when I was growing up has enabled me to negotiate properly the developmental stages of my life. It is the encouragement, praise and patience that I experienced during my early years that have contributed to my confident, independent and positive nature. It is also through their encouragement that I was able to avert major emotional crises. Through observing my parents, grandparents and the customers at my father’s bar business, I have learnt that people behave the way they do because they are being motivated by the social and psychological needs of the developmental stage which they are in. Sources Davis, Stephen and Joseph Palladino. Psychology. 6th Ed. USA: Prentice-Hall 2009. Lerner Richard. Concepts and theories of Human Development. U. S. A: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2002. Mosher, Ralph. Human Development Across the Life Span: Educational and Psychological Applications. Cambridge: IAP, 2006. Perrin Linda. Understanding Psychology. 4th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Publishers 1986. Sigelman, Carol and Elizabeth Rider. Life-Span Human Development. 6th Ed. USA: Cengage Learning, 2008. Read More