Psychological Development in Children: A Case Study of Julie

Running head: CASE STUDY 2
Case Study 2
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1CASE STUDY 2
In recent years, the children’s development is greatly affected by the aspects of
psychological development and different stages of children’s psychological development is
present. The stages of the children development can be divided in various stages and the division
is dependent on the age group of the children. In this essay, a case study of a little girl named
Julie is discussed. Julie is 2 years and 2 months old and she spent two days a week in a day child
day care and the duration is about 5 hours per day. Julie’s mother named Victoria had
complained that her daughter had not gathered proper knowledge and her cognition power was
not developed as per expectation. The complain of Julie’s mother was that, Julie had not proper
knowledge about toilet training and Victoria was comparing Julie with other children of same
age group. However, nurses had told that Julie had no problem regarding her learning. Erik
Erikson’s developmental theory is used in this essay to analyze the development of Julie.
Erik Erikson was renowned for his wonderful theory related to the development of
human being and the theory was first published in the year of 1959. According to this theory,
there are overall 8 stages of development. Among them 5 stages were used to assess the
development up to the age of 18 years and the remaining three stages explain the adulthood time
of the human development. During all the stages of development, the individual may go through
various situations that may be positive or negative and that help in developing the personality of
the individual. Erikson described that, after completion of one stage, the individual may suffer
with various problem that can provide hindrances in completing rest of the stages of
development. However, those problems can easily be solved in future. According to Erikson,
there are total 8 stages. Among them, the initial stage is trust vs mistrust and it covers the age
group of 0- 1.5 years of children. The second stage is Anatomy vs. shame and doubt and this
stage is for the age group of 1.5-3 years of age. The next stage is initiative vs. guilt and the

2CASE STUDY 2
children of 3-5 years age are under this stage of development. The next stage is industry vs
inferiority and this stage covers the age group of 5-12 years children. The 5th stage is identity vs
role confusion and 12-18 years children are under this stage. The next stage is intimacy vs
isolation the age group of 18-40 years people are covered in this stage. The penultimate stage of
psychosocial development is generativity vs stagnation and it deals with the age group of 40-65.
The ultimate stage of development is ego integrity vs despair and it is for the age group of 65 and
above ages (McLeod, S. (2013). As per the case study, the children Julie is 2 years and 2 month
old. So, she is under the second stage of Erikson’s developmental theory and the stage is
Anatomy vs. shame and doubt. Julie has already completed the first stage of development and
the first stage deals with the trust and mistrust issue of the children development. However, if the
child had not have proper attention in her first stage of development, there might be issue of
mistrust in that child (Berk, 2017). In this stage, as the children is very much young, she was
completely dependent on her primary caregiver and that was her mother. Lack of proper care
from the primary care giver would hamper the development. In this case study, as Victoria was a
working lady, it was quite possible that, she would not had not given adequate time to Julie. It
might be possible that, due to lack of care from Victoria’s end, Julie had developed some
mistrust issue and it was carried forward to the 2nd stage of Julie’s development. The second
stage of development tells about the children’s independency that is from this stage children
started to take decisions about their own behavior. For example it can be said that, children
choose their own toys for playing, choose their own dress to wear and as well as they eat food
according to their own choice. Children should be given more liberty and as a result children
would realize their own limitation of their abilities (Crain,2015). In addition to this, an
encouraging environment would allow the child to gain proper development. The increasing