Developmental Issue - Essay Example

Introduction While passing through the cycle of life, a person passes through various stages. First one of these stages includes the childhood stage. Then it comes to the adolescence stage which is also termed as youth or teenage stage. And then time by time other stages in a person’s life. These different stages of life have a deep impact on characteristics and personality of any specific individual. The attributes and features, which a person develops in his very first stage of life that is childhood stage, has an implication or effect in almost all of the other stages of his life. Impact on childhood and adolescence stage in accordance with Bronfenbrenner’s theory Let’s discuss the impact of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system’s theory by taking an example of a child who is in his childhood stage and is facing the issue of getting neglected by his parents due to their extensive office works and professions. Studying the microsystem phase of Bronfenbrenner’s theory, we come to know that it is the system in which a child has very direct sort of interaction or dealing with his parents, classmates in the school and other relatives of him. All of them have a deep impact on the nature of a child. When a child gets neglected by his parents, he starts to develop noxious and negligent feelings in him. “Parental neglect is the main cause for behavioral problems” (Kabitzke, n.d.). He starts to feel that he is being ignored and overlooked by his parents and is not getting proper attention. In that stage, a child doesn’t know about the professional extensiveness of his parents, he just knows that he is being neglected by them which results in development of negative feelings in his mind. And when he will move into the adolescence stage, the feeling will change in a sense that now he will start to take revenge from people as what happened with him in his childhood, he will now start doing that with other people in order to get satisfaction. Now, if we study mesosystem of Bronfenbrenner’s theory, we get to know that when a child gets no attention or least attention from his parents or family, he can never be able to develop or maintain smooth and positive relations with his teachers because he will have a negative impact on his mind and that impact will never let him strengthen those relations. So when he will enter in adolescence stage, he will start doing those acts which will provide him negative pleasure. Like what he experienced in his past, he will try to experience it on subordinates of him in order to get relief. Moving on to the next system, which is exosystem of Bronfenbrenner’s theory, it relates with the example being discussed in a sense that when the parents of that specific child will not be able to give him the required attention because of their working hours in the office, conflicts will begin to arise between them and their child. The child will feel that there is no one to spend time with him or he has got no importance for his parents. He will feel that his parents have no time to play with him or to take him out somewhere. It will result in a negative impact on his mind. And when he will enter in the phase of adolescence, he will be likely to fall in the silken snare of crimes because it’s the attention given by parents in childhood which refines psychological and emotional skills needed to handle relationships later in life. Coming to the impact of macrosystem phase of Bronfenbrenner’s theory, the culture in which a person lives has a deep impact on the nature of that specific person. The issues of background and poverty also play a vital role in the upbringing of a child. If the child, in our example, has a stable background in which there is no issue of poverty and also there are some other people present in the home to take care of that specific child, he will not feel that much negligence even when his parents doesn’t spend much time with him. Its not that he will not feel ignored, but the issue is that there will be some people like brothers and sisters in the home to take care of him and make him not feel ignored which will result in development of balanced feelings in his mind. And when he will enter adolescence stage, he will not become aggressive or a spoiled child rather he will be able to realize the fact why his parents were not able to spend much time on him. Now, let’s come to the impact of last stage of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory, that is, chronosystem. This system relates to the changes or transitions of phases of a person’s life. None of the phases is permanent; rather they change from time to time. In our example, the change will occur on the child in a sense that in his childhood, when he was feeling neglected or ignored due to extensive office work of his parents, he developed the feelings of neglection and revenge in his mind because he got no time from his parents who were busy making money. But now, in his adolescence stage, a change will occur either positively or negatively. If it is a positive change, he will make himself realize why he didn’t get that much care and attention from his parents and what were the reasons behind it. And if the change is negative, it may result in development of criminal unconstructive feelings in his mind which may result in academic failure or he may become a withdrawn social outcast. Impact on childhood and adolescence stage in accordance with Piaget’s theory The theory promotes importance of knowledge and the ways to gather that knowledge. It tells us that how a child experiences something and then adds the information gathered from that specific experience to modify his previous experiences. The Piaget’s theory has an influence on the neglected child’s example which we discussed earlier in a sense that a child needs proper love, care and attention right from the beginning, that is, from the sensorimotor stage where a child perceive things according to his own views which means that in the stage where the child is very egocentric, special care is to be given to them because that is the basis of his development stage. The next stage is preoperational stage in a child’s development. A child who is getting ignored and neglected will never be able to understand how the images and the words will be used to identify something. In this stage, where a child learns the use of images and words, proper attention and guidance should be given to him to make him understand those things instead of ignoring him by giving him no time. In the third stage, which is concrete operational stage, the factor of being egocentric no longer exists as the child learns to logically learn the things and starts to be concrete in his ideas and thinking. So the parents should pay efforts to guide and teach the logical aspects of the things. If he doesn’t get any attention, he will start perceiving things according to his own logics which may have been become negative due to negligence and inattention by his parents. In the last stage, the child starts to develop abstract reasoning about any matter of their lives. They can see the logical aspects of different matters of life and can develop hypothesis to test them. In this stage they have developed ideas about certain things and now the role which a child’s parents have played in his upbringing will come into plat whether positively or negatively depending upon the attention given by them to their child. Conclusion Summing it up, attention plays a crucial role in the development of any child. When a person starts his life with self-confidence and self-assurance, he learns to move perfectly and effectively through the challenges and difficulties of life. And if a person starts his life with negligence and disrespect, he learns to live his upcoming stages of life with aggression and vengeance. References Kabitzke, L. (n.d.). Parental neglect causes behavior problems in children. Retrieved December 6, 2009, from http://www.helium.com/items/92336-parental-neglect-causes-behavior-problems-in-children.htm Read More