Question

Compose thoughtful answers to the following "developmental difficulties." Explain how you would use your understanding of one of the major theories (focusing particularly on Piaget and Erikson) to deal with each of the difficulties listed below more constructively.
1.A well-intentioned, but meddling, relative comes to visit the weekend before your child's first birthday, in April. She cautions you that you must be spoiling the child, because he hides behind your leg and clings to you when she tries to give him a hug, and he did not do this when she visited at New Year's. How will you explain what is happening with your child?
2.Your three-year old constantly drives you nuts with attention-seeking behaviors while you are on the phone.
3.Your infant daughter puts everything in her mouth, including the dog's food.
4.Your eight-year old son is failing math; all he cares about is baseball.
5.Your eight-year old son is failing P.E. and growing obese; all he cares about is Nintendo.
6.Your teenager has decided not to attend college in favor of joining the stage crew for a touring rock band.
7.Your nine-year old son is being victimized by the class bully.
8.Your nine-year old son IS the class bully. (NOTE: Pay close attention to the difference between the scenarios described in Questions 7 and 8.)
9.Your two-year old daughter refuses to wear the clothes you pick for her every morning, making getting dressed a twenty-minute pitched battle.
10.Your thirty-six-year old friend is showing symptoms of the classic "mid-life crisis," buying a trendy new sports car, flirting dangerously, and alluding to leaving his wife.
11.Your sixty-eight-year old neighbor is chronically depressed, feeling she has wasted her life.

Answer 1

Answer:

(a) Here the child is going through a Sensorimotor stage of cognitive development in Piaget's stages. A child basically becomes more familiar to the people whom they see and interact everyday as compared to the people whom they meet once in a while. That's the reason why they are resistant towards these people and act differently as they don't feel secure with them. It will take him time to become comfortable. To gain child's confidence and trust it is important to treat him with care and love. To ease out the situation for the child and to make child interactive to the aunt, I would make sure that child sees his parents communicating and interacting with the aunt so that he is not afraid of her.

(b) Here child as per the Erikson's theory is in the stage of Autonomy vs. Shame. In this stage, the children feel that to get Parents attention they have to behave in a certain manner. In this case, I would try to ignore her activities and would make her engage in some other activities of her interest like toys, games or videos.

(c) Infant daughter is in the first stage of development i.e Sensorimotor stage. In this stage according to Piaget newborns explore the surrounding through their senses. There is nothing to worry about this, as it is completely normal. In this case what I can do is to avoid unwanted mouth to object interaction of the things that are injurious to her and will try to convey her that these things are not good through bad facial expressions. Also, till the time child is in this age, I will try to keep the home clean and safe as much as I could.

(d) According to Erikson's stages of development, this stage is called Industry vs. Inferiority stage. The child becomes comparatively more confident and skilled in baseball than mathematics. That's why he focuses on the activity in which he is more comfortable and capable.

In this case, I would encourage him to improve his skills. It is important at this to become friendly to the child and let him do the activities which he likes, otherwise, he will mental pressure. I will give him personal tutoring of maths and at the same to develop his interest in the subject, baseball can be used as a reward. In the meanwhile of studies, we can have an interesting conversation about baseball as well.