Introduction
Childhood development has a remarkable impact on further personal development. Of course, no strict rules and dependencies, like in biology or chemistry. But still, based on the social and psychological theories, scholars, childcare, healthcare, and educational service providers can predict the future problems or benefits the particular child will receive from interactions with other people. Emily is a two year and 11 months old toddler whose development is observed in terms of her interactions with her mother at home, in the grocery store, and the nursery when her mum leaves and comes back. This paper aims to analyze how Emily’s psychosocial development is average in terms of three popular childhood developmental theories –Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, Bowlby’s Attachments Theory, Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, and Erickson’s Adolescent Theory.
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
The observational journal provides plenty of evidence of Emily’s normal psychosocial development. Interestingly, there are a lot of situations that demonstrate how she effectively learns from her environment. Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (SLT) implies that children learn from their environments by imitating others (Bandura, 1977). The scholar notes that children learn from live models, demonstrating an observable behavior, symbolic models –characters of books and movies, based on oral requirements, descriptions, and explanations.
According to the SLT, learning does not necessarily lead to copying the observed behavior, and the decision whether to reproduce the behavior or not is made through the particular individual meditational process (Bandura, 1977). The decision entail external stimulation and internal motivation. The meditational process includes five steps: attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. Attention means the initial involvement, retention is an ability to withhold and store the information for some time, reproduction is performing the observed behavior, and motivation is reinforcement or punishment for reproducing the observed behavior.
In this case, Emily demonstrates successful stages of behavioral learning, like learning from her mum how to play ‘farm’ and what to do with the plastic animals or behave in the grocery store. Emily also observes other children in the nursery and shows the signs of reproduced behavior when playing with peers. For instance, she was interested in the pink plastic knife when playing with artificial dough since her peer was using the pink knife. Emily also could handle the tiredness and frustration from it and remained calm in the grocery store when her mum demonstrated calm behavior.
Most likely, Emily is a healthy child that demonstrates successful psychosocial development. Regarding the SLT, she interacts with others, observes, and makes her own decisions, whether to copy or not the observed behavior. Emily must experience distinct interactions, including mum, peers, children, and a caregiver.
Understanding the process of behavior formation through social learning allows for thoughtful and sensible interventions. Parents and educators can encourage or forbid particular behaviors, depending on their understanding of such behaviors as desired or undesired. Interestingly, social learning can be based on the biological phenomenon or mirror neurons that allow people to see themselves in other people’s actions, relationships, and feelings.
Bowlby’s Attachments Theory
John Bowlby’s Attachments Theory seems to be the most exciting and fruitful in understanding childhood development. In the case scenario, most episodes focus on Emily’s attachment to her primary caregiver – her mother. According to Bowlby, all branches are formed based on the external and internal signals that cause fear, anger, pain, or other unpleasant emotions (Bowlby, 1969). The scholar claims that the baby has the highest chances of survival when it stays near its parents, which proves that the theory is based on the evolutional processes of human development.
Most importantly, he emphasizes that attachment was critical to their survival in mammals. Scholars say that when lacking devotion and love from their primary caregiver, children can develop psychopathic behaviors in the future and become incapable of building affectionate relations (Bowlby, 1969). However, critics also notice that when a child that is deprived of its caregivers’ attention and affection is put in a healthy environment, where humans show self-respect and respect to others in their interactions, such a child will be able to build healthy relations in future (Parrish, 2014). Still, the child will likely show avoidance behavior regarding the unsuccessful primary caregiver.
The scholars say that the child demonstrates aggressive, impulsive, and unaffectionate behavior because such behavior becomes a new norm for it, and the child thinks that all other children live in a similar unaffectionate environment and have the same problems. When the mother or other key caregiver leaves, the child may cry and show anger to stop her from leaving, become restrained, depressed, inwardly oriented and lose interest in other children, or show detachment by gradually joining other children but showing anger and avoidance when the caregiver returns (Bowlby, 1969). The critics admit that tears are a normal reaction of a child with a healthy attachment, and when the caregiver returns, the child easily lets them back in.
Interestingly, Emily demonstrates different types of behavior when her mother leaves and comes, and there was no record of her crying or demanding that the mother stay. On the one hand, the theoretical perspective may be wrong in this instance since, in practical situations, Emily and her mother show strong bonds and affection for each other. On the other hand, there were episodes when Emily was a bit reluctant to let her mother in, which can speak of some problems with affection.
Maybe Emily would prefer her mother to spend more time with her and is feeling offense or grievance when her mother leaves and Emily has to spend her days in the nursery. Her mother could take some additional vacation days, and this could make Emily happy since, for now, she is showing signs of disturbance. As for Emily’s projected life course, she generally shows all the signs of healthy psychosocial development. She feels comfortable among other children, is active in playing games, has a vast vocabulary, and is highly responsive in conversations with her mother. These skills will likely form into the personal traits of communicativeness, openness, ability to concentrate, and effectively cooperate with other people.
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory
This theory determines the environmental-social circles of every person and child regarding their influence on the child’s life and development. According to Bronfenbrenner, every child lives in five ecological systems or social circles that extend from the center to the outer boundaries of social life. The child is in the center, and the first circle is named microsystem, which includes family, school, healthcare services, peers, playground, daycare facilities, and religious organizations (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). This circle is the most important one, as it impacts the child’s wellbeing.
The second circle is a “no man’s land” called mesosystem, and it is activated when the first circle interacts with the third, named exosystem. The exosystem includes extended family and neighbors, school board, social services, mass media, and parents’ economic situation. Teachers and parents cooperate effectively in the child’s best interests (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). At the same time, when the parent has problems at work, they may show temper toward their child, and this is an example of an adverse impact.
The fourth circle is called the macrosystem and includes widespread attitudes in a particular culture. These may be religious beliefs, national identity, political views, and democratic values. These macro-phenomena can also have positive and negative impacts. For example, children who lived in the Islamic State faced severe adverse effects of the macro system. The fifth circle is called the chronosystem and represents life-changing events in a child’s environment, such as wars, floods, or families moving from one state to another.
In Emily’s case, she must feel support from her ecological circles, although the reader cannot have enough information for generalized conclusions. Emily has a caring mother who can pay for healthy products and interacts successfully with Emily’s educators at the nursery. Emily communicates well with her peers, lives in a developed economy and democratic society, and does not face environmental impacts. Therefore, in terms of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, Emily will have a successful and happy life when she becomes an adult.
Erickson’s Adolescent Theory
Similar to Bronfenbrenner, Erikson put out a distinctive theoretical framework for linking the various stages of human development, the maturation of an adult, and the interaction between the self and society. Erikson based his thesis on his work with children and families and Sigmund Freud’s notion of psychosexual development. According to Erikson, social factors that affect human development play a more significant role in determining the identity of the human personality (Erikson, 1963). The circular concept served as the study’s central idea. The maturity of the developing personality is based on the “adaptive strength” or “virtue” that emerges in response to each circle’s imminent crisis. A new stage’s “vigorous development” is founded on the strengths attained due to how the previous stage is handled and how the self is controlled.
Finding and adopting a sense of regulation that protects the ego is the first significant difficulty for the child aged 2-4. The natural joy of learning and mastering a new skill, which would lead to a new way of being, is thus accompanied by the unavoidable compulsion to fit inside socially acceptable boundaries (Erikson, 1963). In Erickson’s research, the radius of closest relations consists of parental figures and is the primary strength that forms personality.
Analyzing Emily’s data, we can see that she has a stable close relationship with her mother, which is one of the critical factors of the study. The autonomy can be seen in the second scene, “Getting dressed,” when child A receives freedom to fulfill her urges and independence to dress herself. Her will is also evident in the episodes when Emily plays with toys alone, exploring her imagination. However, mild cases of compulsion are observed during shopping, when the mum restricts the child’s urges of independency and teaches proper behavior in a social setting. Nevertheless, it may be seen as means of regulation to establish interactive norms and behaviors in different social environments (Parrish, 2014). Thus, according to adolescent theory, Emily perceives typical for her age lessons through interactions that will help to form an adult personality. However, there is a risk of developing doubt in self-regulation as an adult.
Conclusion
Thus, it was discussed how Emily is going through social development in the framework of various theories. Given the analysis presented above, Emily will become a successful adult since she mostly has a healthy psychosocial development. She has some problems with attachment since her mother spends much time at work. However, the positive impacts of ecological systems and the potential of learning through observing the behavior of other children and adults positively impact Emily’s development.
Reference List
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Bowlby J. (1969). Attachment. Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Loss. New York: Basic Books.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1977). Toward an experimental ecology of human development. American Psychologist, 32(7), 513-531.
Erikson, E.H. (1963). Childhood and society. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Parrish, M. (2014) Social Work Perspectives on Human Behaviour. UK: McGraw-Hill Education.