Developmental Study of an Infant

Developmental Study of an Infant

Introduction

Children undergo an unremitting procedure of gaining knowledge and discovering the hidden mysteries of the whole world. As they enter in their growing years, for them, the world gets bigger from house and parents to the siblings with their companions and, ultimately, people and regions to have a trip. For the purpose of living actively in community, a child is supposed to gain knowledge of knowing their own selves, to acquire their personal identification.

The value of the impact of the family and the relations within the family on the construction and development of the personality of child executes an extremely critical responsibility. So as to help the children to arrive at their extreme potential, it is imperative to understand the normal growth and development of children. Also, the successful physical, emotional, and cognitive development of a child is inter-connected with the growth of other children around them.

Information of the client

For this study, a child named as Bob has been selected. He is 4 months old. This paper will focus upon the stages of development of Bob by keeping in mind the Erik Erikson's theory of psychosocial development and as Bob is 4 months old, we will focus upon the stage of trust vs mistrust.

Discussion

Theory of Development and Growth

Several psychologists and theorists have carried out researches on the development of child and the influence of environment on their growth. For this paper, psychosocial developmental theory of Erik Erikson has been preferred.

In this theory of psychosocial development of personality, Erikson considered the assimilation of the personality as the definitive developmental stage. He visualized the process of shaping a personal identity as an intermediate stage of adolescence, and a pathway for achieving it (Erikson, 1950). For him, the personality of the person is born of the affiliation between personal constraints and expectations of the environment. For Erikson, life rotates in the region of the human being and the environment. Therefore, each step is a leap forward, retrogression or stagnation compared with the other stages.

Erikson identified eight stages of the psychosocial development of a person which are:

Basic trust vs. Mistrust

Autonomy vs. Shame and Dou

Initiative vs. Guilt

Diligence vs. Inferiority

Search for Identity vs. Identity Diffusion

Intimacy vs. Isolation

Generativity vs. Stagnation

Integrity vs. Despair

Infancy expands from birth to 18 months. Erikson termed infancy as the “oral sensory stage”, where the prime emphasis is on mother's love and care for the children and visual contact and touch. If the requirements are not met, the recurrent annoyance may develop mistrust of the world (Nussbaum, 2011). Here comes the concept of trust vs mistrust.

The stage of mistrust vs trust is the initial phase of the theory of psychosocial development presented by Erikson. This phase comes about in between birth and 18 months of age approximately. In accordance with Erikson, the stage of mistrust vs trust is the most significant phase in life of an individual.

For the reason that Bob is completely reliant on his caregivers, the supremacy of ...