Psychosocial Developmental Stages: Jack's Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt

This assignment discusses Jack's case study, a three-year-old child with poor toileting habits and psychosocial development issues. According to Erikson's theory of psychosocial development, children at this age typically experience autonomy versus shame and doubt. Children should be encouraged and guided by their parents in developing independence and confidence. However, Jack's mother is unaware of how to develop her son's toilet habit independently, resulting in confusion and inability to overcome the situation. Therefore, a nurse should provide the mother with education on alterations required in her behavior to make her child responsive and help him overcome barriers and develop proper skills and habits.

Running head: LIFE TRANSITIONS
LIFE TRANSITIONS
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Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development states a fact that every individual moves
through a procedure of distinct four different stages of cognitive as well as mental development.
It mainly depends upon the understanding about how different individuals gain knowledge and
focuses upon the concept about how natural intelligence is asquired by children (Demetriou et
al., 2016). He also was of the opinion that they take a very important part in process of learning
by the process of making observations and also learning about the world. With their through
interaction with r world, they continuously develop new knowledge, enhance their existing
knowledge and also link with the previously held ideas for accommodation of new information.
Out of the four stages, the main stage that needs to be discussed in relation with the case study is
the sensorimotor stage that usually prevail form birth to two years old. Some of the important
characteristics of this stage are that the toddler develops knowledge about the world through their
movements and sensations (Saxe, 2015). Their basic actions to know the world mainly include
sucking, looking, grasping as well as listening. They believe that things alwyas exist even when
they are unable to visualize them. They consider them to be separate beings form the people who
surrounds them and the objects around them.
The changes that occur during this time involve a dramatic phase of learning and growth where
children undertake interaction with the environment which helps them to gain new discoveries
learning with working systems of the world. Children develop physical actions like crawling,
walking and different aspects of their language form the surrounding people (Bjourklund &
Causey, 2017). This language development then continues to even the preoperational stage hat
extends from 2 to 7 years. At this stage, they start to learn and dvelop the capability to think
symbolically. They also learn to connect words as well as pictures for representation of the
objects.

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A number of important factors can be identified which had impacted the development of speech
and language for the infant if the case study. His mother has stated that he only speaks one or
two times and most of the time he is blabbering which means he is trying his best to
communicate with the surrounding people. The main cause of his ill development of speech is
the lack of spending of proper time with adults which in this case is his mother as well as other
family members (Barrouillet, 2015). As his mother is mostly at work, jack is having difficulty in
cognitive development as well. Researchers state that toddler infer the communicative intent of
the speaker. They then thereby use that information to guide the language learning. They infer
from the adult’s excited tone of voice of the adult. Moreover another reason also stated by
researchers is that they have seen that verbal environment influences language learning and
therefore children form one age to age three from highly verbal professional families hear three
times more words than low verbal families which increases the child’s chances of proper speech
development. As Jack’s mother used to stay away for work over a large period of time, he had
very few chances of active interaction with an adult and therefore he got very few scope of
developing the cognitive skill of language development. Many literatures also suggest that
frequency affects rate of learning. Children who come to hear unusually high proportion of
examples of language form learn the form faster than children who receive ordinary input
(Sieglar, 2016). As he spends a good amount of time with budding children, he tends to pick up
their words which might not be as appropriate as that of adults. As jack spends a lot of time with
small children of his age, he may develop this blabbering habit rather than clear words. His scope
to learn new things from the environment is very high and therefore his mother should make sure
that his environment is modified in a way which provided him the best scopes to learn speech
and language. All these would be stated to the mother of Jack after fixing up of a meeting with

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her. The nurse should also encourage the mother to spend more time with her son so that he can
develop the speech perfectly and allocate a speech therapist if it becomes too late for the issue.
Another important theory which unlike Piaget’s theory (mainly referring to the cognitive
development of children) helps to provide light on the psychosocial development of the children
is called the Erikson’s theory. He mainly proposed a psychoanalytic theory of psychosocial
development which mainly comprises of eight important stages that range from infancy to
adulthood. During each of the stages the person experiences a psychosocial crisis which results
in either positive or negative experiences for their personality development (Parkey et al., 2014).
Out of the eight stages, the main stage which needs to be discussed in accordance with the case
study is the second stage that prevails in individuals from one and half years to that of three
years. This stage is called the autonomy versus shame and doubt. With the advancing days, the
child develops physically and becomes more mobile. They start to assert their independence by
walking away from their mother, picking up toys they like, making choices about what they like
to eat or wear. They gradually discover skills and abilities such a putting on clothes, playing with
toys, loving their favorite person. Such skills mainly provide an illustration of the growing sense
of autonomy and independence in the children. At this stage children should be allowed by their
parents to explore their abilities at the same time developing an encouraging environment for
tolerating failures. At this stage, the parents should maintain a delicate balance (Cote, 2014).
They should not do everything for the child and at the same time they would not criticize the
child for failures and accidents. In these situations, the child should be encouraged as well as
supported and guided by the parents in every activity. These would make them independent and
be more confident and help him secure their own ability to survive in the world.

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It has been seen that Jack’s mother, although concerned about Jack’s developmental of
toilet habits, does not have any idea of approach in developing the aid habit among her son. With
the growing of Jack over the years, it might have happened that his mother being away from his
form such a tender age had impacted him in his psychosocial development. Although, it is true
that many children pick up the toileting habits involuntarily by connecting hw wetting of their
diapers with the reactions of their parents or try to connect the events of their toileting by their
parents taking them to the washroom (Darling-Fisher & Leidy, 2015). Often children gradually
learn to connect these options and develop an independence where they can themselves carry on
the activities and are parsed by their parents. However no such things have occurred in case of
Jack, as his mother have not been knowledgeable enough to infuse such independent in her son
which have resulted his son in a confused state of mind. He had not being able to be enough
independent. His mother without punishing him, should guide him every time by properly
making him understand the activities he should take when he feels any such sensation of
toileting. Rather than this, she had left the entire incident on the child and is now tensed and is
unable to gain proper ways to overcome this situation. Therefore, the nurse should fix up an
education class for the mother where she would be educated about alterations required in her
behaviour to make her child responsive. Proper behaviour required by the parents to uptake to
influence their sons to develop toileting habits should be provided her verbally and also in the
form of easy brochures (Sacco, 2013). These would help her son to overcome the barriers and
develop toileting habits successfully.

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The theories of Piaget as well as that of Erikson have contributed a lot in understanding
the cognitive development stages as well as the psychosocial developmental stages which affect
children at a tender age of three. These theories act as framework which helps in judging the
capability of any children according to his age and also helps in developing an understanding
about how children can develop in a better way if parents work accordingly to the theories. In the
case study, a three year child namely Jack has poor toileting habits and poor developmental
stages which are making his mother quite tensed. Therefore, the nurse should provide them with
correct guidelines so that she can help her son to overcome barriers and develop proper skills and
habits.
References:

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Barrouillet, P. (2015). Theories of cognitive development: From Piaget to today.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Causey, K. B. (2017). Children's thinking: Cognitive development and
individual differences. SAGE Publications.
Côté, J. E. (2014). The dangerous myth of emerging adulthood: An evidence-based critique of a
flawed developmental theory. Applied Developmental Science, 18(4), 177-188.
Darling-Fisher, C., & Leidy, N. (2015). The Modified Erikson Psychosocial Stage Inventory.
Demetriou, A., Shayer, M., & Efklides, A. (Eds.). (2016). Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive
development: Implications and applications for education. Routledge.
Mooney, C. G. (2013). Theories of Childhood: An Introduction to Dewey, Montessori, Erikson,
Piaget & Vygotsky. Redleaf Press.
Parkay, F. W., Anctil, E. J., & Hass, G. (2014). Curriculum leadership: Readings for developing
quality educational programs. Prentice Hall.
Sacco, R. G. (2013). Re-envisaging the eight developmental stages of Erik Erikson: The
Fibonacci life-chart method (FLCM). Journal of Educational and Developmental
Psychology, 3(1), 140.
Saxe, G. B. (2015). Culture and cognitive development: Studies in mathematical understanding.
Psychology Press.
Siegler, R. S. (2016). Continuity and change in the field of cognitive development and in the
perspectives of one cognitive developmentalist. Child Development Perspectives, 10(2),
128-133.

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