Lifespan Development

Final Project: Part I

Patricia Sellers

Walden University

Final Project: Part I

Tarzan is just a fictional character. He is an archetypal feral child raised in an African jungle. The character first appeared in the novel ‘Tarzan of Apes' in 1992. Tarzan embraces an extreme nature of return of nature. In the society, he can be considered as a civilized individual. He has abilities that surpass human experience. He has strength, agility, and senses. Tarzan is intelligent; this is seen when he is taught English and comfortably understands the language which is spoken by people.

Tarzan, representing a child in real life story, got to learn to live among people, learned how to walk and associate with others (Martins, 2012). I believe the environmental setup has a lot to do with both the cognitive and social-emotional development among children and adolescents in the society. If the child is born where there are no people, he or she cannot adapt and live where there are people, until sometime in the future where a period of transformation will be considered.

Consequently, parents play a significant role in determining the kinds of life their children will live. Introverts and extroverts are brought up in completely different settings. These surroundings tend to affect the ways of thinking, development, perceptions and social relations of people. The end goal should be to ensure that a child is all round, and thrives in their respective environments.

Children tend to develop the ability to think and also reason as they age or grow. Adolescence marks the beginning of development, which is also more of a complicated thinking process. The most important question in the development of a child is how nature and nurture together help shape development. Nature is more of our biological endowment, and the genes that we receive upon conception. Children are different, depending on growth elements, and the environments in which they are brought up as well.

Nurture, on the other hand, is made up of environments, physical and social which influence development. The cognitive aspect of human beings is more to do with the way we think and perceive things. Cognitive development plays a significant role in the growth of a child. Perceptions, having normal brain activity and a lot of other factors, are dealt with in cognitive development especially in children. The cognitive part of child transformation and growth should be considered with a high level of parental care for the purpose of nurturing a bright and open-minded child in the society.

Research proves that social, emotional skills are fundamental for the purpose of ensuring that children become successful both academically and socially. Five core skills have been identified for this role, where distances skills have been proposed. These include;

1. Self-awareness

2. Self-management

3. Social awareness

4. Relationship skills

5. Responsible decision making (Martins, 2012).

Social, emotional development ensures that a child can build and maintain healthy relationships, as well as the ability to make good choices about their behaviors and interactions with others. At the same time, social awareness is reflected where an individual can take the perspectives of other people, and be able to demonstrate a high level of empathy. In the case of self-awareness, an individual can recognize their emotions, and more so, understand the major links between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Self-management comes in where there is an ability to regulate behaviors, emotions, and thoughts.

I am going to include Freud’s development theory in my final project (Green, 2014). According to this theory conflicts that occur during each stage of a child can have a lifelong influence on personality and behavior. According to this theory, child development occurs in a series of stages focused on different pleasure areas of the body. According to Sigmund Freud, every stage of a child’s development is rooted in their environmental perspective.

Freud believes that the way parents tend to handle their children drug each stage of their development has an impact on the overall development of the child’s cycle. The oral stage, the anal stage, and the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the genital stage al relate to growth and development of a child. Freud would likely recommend that parents should encourage the natural tendencies of their children, and allow them to overindulge.

Most parents have a tendency to guide their children toward embracing moderation. Parents therefore, need to make every effort to educate themselves about what is considered normal and what is considered healthy (Deaton, 2015). Raising a healthy child is the first priority to developmental functioning. There is a need for the child to establish early relationships, for the purpose of nurturing stable and consistent relationships as they grow.

References

Deaton, S. (2015). Social Learning Theory in the Age of Social Media: Implications for Educational Practitioners. Journal of Education Technology vol. 12.

Green, L. (2014). Do Australian Children Trust their Parents more than Peers when Seeking Support for Online Activities? London: Routledge publishers

Martins, N. (2012). Mean on the Screen: Social Aggression in Programs Popular with Children. Journal of communication