Three Theories Of Childhood Development

Welcome back to the blog everyone. As the title suggests, this post will be about three different theories of childhood development that I have found while looking for ways to better assist my clients. This post won’t be too lengthy as it serves as a preamble for the next couple of posts. I want to at least provide you with the names of the three different theories and the reasoning behind choosing those to explore further with you. My hope is to provide everyone that interacts with children in some form with a bit of insight into the psyche of a child. This post also works to keep this information within my own personal mind as I develop as a therapist. In one of the resources that I used to write this post, they broke down these three theories into three separate focuses that are important to a child’s development: emotional, cognitive, and moral. Using these three theories, I should be able to better understand a young client that may be brought into a session.

Erick Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development (Emotional)

This theory goes through 8 stages of development of an individual from infancy until late adulthood. These stages are Hope (Infancy), Will (Toddlerhood), Purpose (Early Childhood), Competence (Middle Childhood), Fidelity (Adolescence), Love (Early Adulthood), Care (Middle Adulthood), Wisdom (Late Adulthood).

Jean Piaget Stages of Cognitive Development (Cognitive)

This theory goes through 4 stages of development from birth to adulthood. These stages are Sensorimotor (Birth to 2 years old), Preoperational (2 years old to 7 years old), Concrete Operational (7 years old to 11 years old) and Formal Operational (12 years old and up)

Lawrence Kohlberg Stages of Moral Development (Moral)

This theory goes through 6 stages of development split into three levels. On Level 1, titled Pre-Conventional, the two stages are “obedience and punishment orientation” and “self-interest orientation. On Level 2, titled Conventional, the two stages are “interpersonal accord and conformity” and “authority and social order maintaining orientation”. On Level 3, titled Post-Conventional” the two stages are “social contract orientation” and ‘universal ethical principals”

In the next few posts I will start with Erik Erikson’s developmental theory and explain it more in depth. The outline that you will see from that post will be duplicated when explaining Jean Piaget’s and Lawrence Kohlberg’s theories, respectfully.