Question

Mary has a 3-month-old daughter. Mary bottle feeds her child and follows a strict schedule for feeding times. The child is not allowed to have a pacifier. Mary is an affectionate parent, and all of her child's needs are met.

How could the actions that occur in the child's life now affect her later development according to Freud, Erickson, and Piaget?

Answer 1

• FREUD:-The oral stage is associated with the mouth area as the infant gains pleasure from sucking, swallowing, biting and chewing. The psychological theme to the oral stage is dependency as a baby can do little for itself. Too much or too little fulfilment can result in Oral Fixation. This fixation will be carried onto later life, where this type of personality may have a stronger tendency to smoke, drink, over eat and bite their nails.
• ERIKSON:-During trust v/s mistrust stage, the infant is uncertain about the world in which they live. To resolve these feelings of uncertainty, the infant looks towards their primary caregiver for stability and consistency of care.
• If the care the infant receives is consistent, predictable and reliable, they will develop a sense of trust which will carry with them to other relationships, and they will be able to feel secure even when threatened. This applies in the above case.
• Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of hope. By developing a sense of trust, the infant can have hope that as new crises arise, there is a real possibility that other people will be there as a source of support. Failing to acquire the virtue of hope will lead to the development of fear.
• For example, if the care has been harsh or inconsistent, unpredictable and unreliable, then the infant will develop a sense of mistrust and will not have confidence in the world around them or in their abilities to influence events.
• This infant will carry the basic sense of mistrust with them to other relationships. It may result in anxiety, heightened insecurities, and an over feeling of mistrust in the world around them.
• PIAGET:-In the sensorimotor stage,children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening.
• During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child's entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses.
• It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they are continually making new discoveries about how the world works.
• Since Mary is an affectionate parent and takes care of her child's needs,she will be able to influence the cognitive development in her child.She will be responsive to her child's actions and make him/her learn object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development.
• By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects.
  
• And this will set the base for later cognitive development till the child grows and starts going to school,wherein he/she would eventually start understanding abstract concepts as well.