In this paper I will be observing a little girl by the name of Lillian. I have studied her stages of development by having her come to my house to play with my mother, sisters, her mother, her younger sister, and myself. My family has been closely affiliated with this little girl and her family since Lilly was very young, even before her little sister Maddie, who is now one and a half, was conceived. I chose to observe Lillian because of the fact that I have been able to watch her grow and can reference older milestones in her development I have previously witnessed. In this paper I am going to observe Lilly’s actions over the course of several hours, and see how it correlates to the theories we have learned in psychology thus far. Lillian,
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Lilly has been potty trained for a decent amount of time, that being said, according to Freud she would be in what is called the “Anal Stage”, which is where a child begins to discover certain demands of society such as using the bathroom. However, I believe her to still be partially stuck in the “Oral Stage”, which is a fixation on things like sucking for means of gratification. She sucks her thumb on a continual basis, and steals her sister’s soft top bottles often because she likes them better than her hard top sippy cups. According to what our textbook tells us about Piaget, Lillian would be grouped into the Preoperational stage of development. I agree with this with exception to her stranger anxiety. While she was playing, my sister’s friend walked into the house and said hello to her, Lilly immediately began sobbing because she was afraid. This strikes me as being at a slight delay and swayed more towards the sensorimotor stage. Following Piaget’s theories, I could see animalism extremely prevalent in the way she plays. At one point she was hiding behind a door, when I asked her what she was doing, her response was hiding to see when her baby would come alive and then told me to hide too. A …show more content…
Harvard Psychology professor Elsa Ronningstam has a philosophy about this way of speaking which is that a person may do this if they have an “exaggerated view of how great you (they) are” (Esquire Magazine 2008). Although I could see this being a valid point, I tend to think Lillian may just be a bit behind in understanding how to refer to
Lilly has been potty trained for a decent amount of time, that being said, according to Freud she would be in what is called the “Anal Stage”, which is where a child begins to discover certain demands of society such as using the bathroom. However, I believe her to still be partially stuck in the “Oral Stage”, which is a fixation on things like sucking for means of gratification. She sucks her thumb on a continual basis, and steals her sister’s soft top bottles often because she likes them better than her hard top sippy cups. According to what our textbook tells us about Piaget, Lillian would be grouped into the Preoperational stage of development. I agree with this with exception to her stranger anxiety. While she was playing, my sister’s friend walked into the house and said hello to her, Lilly immediately began sobbing because she was afraid. This strikes me as being at a slight delay and swayed more towards the sensorimotor stage. Following Piaget’s theories, I could see animalism extremely prevalent in the way she plays. At one point she was hiding behind a door, when I asked her what she was doing, her response was hiding to see when her baby would come alive and then told me to hide too. A …show more content…
Harvard Psychology professor Elsa Ronningstam has a philosophy about this way of speaking which is that a person may do this if they have an “exaggerated view of how great you (they) are” (Esquire Magazine 2008). Although I could see this being a valid point, I tend to think Lillian may just be a bit behind in understanding how to refer to