Incredible Journey of Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Incredible Journey of Development - Essay Example While some theorists hold that children develop smoothly and continuously, others contest this by their belief in the stage-wise development of children, where each stage can be distinguished from the other and is recognizably stable. But both agree that there are certain periods of a children's development when they are capable of learning to perform certain tasks better than at any other age, for example, infants and toddlers have better language grasping abilities. It is also generally agreed that each child is a unique individual, and would pick up skills according to a unique pace and pattern. The first of these developmental theories was by Sigmund Freud, which though considered inaccurate is important because it formed the basis of later theories to mark this field. He held that the way children's basic sexual and aggressive desires are handled by its parents would dictate the development of their future personalities and traits. Freud divided the developmental stages of children in terms of their sexual development and named them Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital stages. Freud's theory formed the basis of Erik Erikson's work which suggested a theory of human development in stages from birth to death in terms of how children begin to gain a sense of identity, as well as develop self-belief allowing them to become productive and successful members of society in their future life. Erikson associates each stage with a particular stretch of life span and goes from trust- versus-mistrust which lasts from birth to one year; autonomy-versus-shame and doubt which can be said to last from one to three years; initiative-versus-guilt which goes from three years to six ; and so on in stages such as industry-versus-inferiority; identity-versus- identity confusion; intimacy-versus- isolation; generativity versus stagnation; and integrity versus despair, each of which corresponds to a particular age.