Child Development Theories

A child goes through many changes on the road from infancy to adulthood. There is a never ending struggle to make sense out of this complex process. There is no end to theories trying to explain it. This article looks at a few of the more successful, or famous, child development theories.
Freud tried to explain much human behavior in psychosexual terms.

Interestingly, he even tried to fit infants and children into this by describing their behavior based on shifting sexual interests over time.

His oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital phases have become part of our popular culture.
Current thinking is that sexuality does not have as much importance in childhood as Freud thought. He has also been faulted for only looking at the male perspective. Everyone is affected by the environment they live in.

The ecological systems theory breaks this down into multiple environments and examines how they affect the child that is in them.
Closest in is the micro system, which would include friends, family, and schools.

The society as a whole is the macro system.
This includes the general level of income and the culture.
Changes that affect the child are in the chrono system.

This could include the death of a parent or sibling.
It also looks at how the different environments affect each other.
It has led to significant insights into how the environment impacts a growing child.
Jean Piaget used developmental stages as the basis for his theory of cognitive development.
The essence of this theory is that there are discrete stages that comprise the growth of thinking ability.
Normal humans almost always go through the same stages in the same order.

The first, or sensorimotor stage, is based on direct contact with things of interest. The formal operation stage is the last.

A person reaching that stage is ready to think like an adult. The significance of interpersonal relationships to the growth of children is the focus of attachment theory. It claims that a good relationship with one or more caregivers is essential for a child to reach its potential as an adult. It has been able to influence the design of successful treatments of children's developmental problems. Erik Erikson developed a theory of psychosocial development that covers an entire life. Get through his initial five stages and you will be an adult. Each stage is a challenge or crisis that must be resolved before going on.

His competence stage, for example, focuses on the question, Am I successful or worthless, and is usually encountered between ages seven and eleven.

Behaviorism was a dominant force for a major portion of the twentieth century, and is still significant today.
It advocates looking at measurable and observable behavior, rather than speculating on what is going on inside. More recent developments have backed away from this somewhat extreme position. It has been used to gain some insights into child development.

The answers are not all in on the development of children.

Some theories have led to important insights and discoveries.

Continued progress in this field seems likely.