Question

Mrs. Lee has a 2 ½ year-old daughter who has been saying “no” to everything lately. The mother is asking about typical growth and development. Describe the physical development, Erikson’s stage of behavioral development, & Piaget’s cognitive development for this age group. Discuss why this child is reacting negatively and some suggestions for her mother for dealing positively with her daughter.

Answer 1

A child of 2 years and above start growing his/her motor skills including gross motor and fine motor. The chid should be able to make balance while jumping, he/she should be able to make lines on paper with a pen or pencil.

The child of this age can climb the staircase with single steps, can feed himself/herself but not with neatness and willingness. A social interaction with other children is always accepted as they get the sense of own things.

Erikson’s stage of behavioral development involves 8 stages. According to this theory at each stage of life a child or an adult deals with one or many tasks that and keep working on it to resolve. After finishing it and then getting a feeling of competence or after any failure getting a feeling of inadequacy helps to develop mentally beside physically.

These 8 stages of development includea trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame/doubt, initiative vs. guilt, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generative vs. stagnation, integrity vs. despair.

All these stages helps a child to grown into a mature adult with personal experiences while choosing each point at each time of life and thereby creating a unique combination of personality and nature to deal with the world around them.

Piaget’s theory of development includes 4 stages; sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational period.

The child's age is the preoperational stage. At this stage a child begins to think of its own, understands symbols, signs, words, pictures, among all, language makeup is far more important here. They get their own sense of understanding things around them.

They tend to play more and explore more because of which they get tired and irritated easily. And because they can't tell directly that how they are feeling, they just cry or just say no to everything. They are not in phase of make balance between the things they want to do and thing s they should to.

Mother's need to stay calm at this stage also. Though it is now more tough to be so but the changes happening inside the child can't be explained by a child himself, so he/she will just avoid the things with crying or in an irritating patterns. Mothers need to understand their needs and stay calm and be positive.