Lifespan development plays a huge role in our life because it happens in stages where we develop from infancy to late adulthood. Lifespans consist of many phases and changes. Due to this, I believe that for a person to get to know their identity they would have to go through many barriers. In this essay it will detail my lifespan journey to show the major points in the four stages of my lifespan development. The four major points, I will be discussing in this essay are physical/biological, cognitive, social and emotional development.
To start off, my mother’s name is Nancy Avila, she is 42 years old. My mother got pregnant with me at the age of 19, but she didn’t know that she was pregnant with me until 4 months. Prior to those 4 months, she had taken a lot of pregnancy tests, and has gone to the urgent care to draw out blood, but the results came out negative. On the 4th month, she found out she was pregnant because she went to go get an ultrasound done. According to chapter 3 in the book, “Prenatal & Pregnancy”, during her 1st trimester, she started to have morning sickness, fatigue and tender breast. In the 2nd trimester, she started to wear maternity clothes. During the 3rd trimester, she started to have back pains, and massive heartburns. After that, she finally had me on September 23,1997 at Sun Valley, California. Therefore, I spent a two days with my mom at the hospital until she was released. My mom breast fed me for only two days. After that, I was then given to my aunt because my mom was not financially stable. My aunt Martha took care of me mostly throughout my whole infancy. I knew who my real mom was, but I considered my aunt as a second mother because she took me in as one of her own and taught me values and morals. Thus, I believe that I achieved the language milestone in infancy in an early age because my aunt would speak so that I can imitate her because it would help me to better understand what she was saying. I said “mama” and “dada” at around 10 months. as I started to grow, my language development started to increase at age 2 years old by using two words utterance (telegraphic speech) such as “my toy” or “more milk”. Moreover, the Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development begins with the sensorimotor stage. According to Piaget’s theory on sensorimotor substages, infants develops motor skills through stages. For instance, I would fall into the 1st substage of “Simple reflexes” because I would do is rooting, sucking, and grasping on my mother’s breast. Additionally, the 4th substage “Coordination of Secondary Circular eactions” my mother tells me how I would increase the sound of the television by randomly pressing buttons on the remote control. Above all, as for my temperament, I would fall into “slow to warm up” because there were some things that I need to get over in terms of being around other people. Luckily, the type of attachment style; I fall into is Securely Attached because my aunt was my secure base, and when I was young, I would always cling to my aunt because she made me feel safe and loved. I believed she would help me overcome my fear in being around strangers.
In early childhood I was in preoperational stage that spans ages between 2-6 years old. I cannot reason logically because I couldn’t look beyond objects such as images, drawing, and words (Weinstein 6). Due to this, my Aunt Letty who teaches 4th graders, decided to use my zone proximal development to assigned various task that was do-able for my age-group. For instance, she gave me a 4th grade math workbook that had pictures in it and I am supposed to figure out the answer. Of course, my aunt would give me her support whenever I would be stuck on a problem; this is called scaffolding. According to Erikson’s industry vs inferiority: When I was a 3rd grader, I remember my teacher would create mind games to increase our logical thinking skills that helped improved our spatial and counting skills. Furthermore, my family would always tell me that the fairy tale is magical because as we grow our teeth tends to fall out because it was meant for us to put it under our pillow to get money; I believed it. There was a time where my cousin Crystal and I lost about two teeth’s and we rushed to put it under our pillows to see how much money we would get. However, when I woke, I check that I had 2 dollars in quarters and I look to my right… Crystal got two dollars as well, but I was showing a lack of conservation because I thought she had more money than I did. I also believed in animism because I thought that baby dolls were alive because they would cry like a real baby. I don’t consider myself as egocentric because I always look for the common good of other people’s feelings or if they need help then caring for my own needs.
Middle childhood I experienced cognitive changes that spans Ages between 7 to 11 years old. this is where I start to perform concrete operational and can classify things in various sets (Weinstein 7). According to Gardener, I fall in the category of bodily-kinesthetic because I was in a softball team at the age of 8, and I had the ability to manipulate my stance as I would throw myself to catch the ball. However, my greatest struggle was to give up playing softball because I tore my ACL while playing ball. Due to this, it has become one of worst days of my life because softball was the place where I get to release my stress and to forget about everything. Ever Since I stopped playing, I started to have lack of physical activity, increased screen time, and oversized portions of food were all factors of obesity. As I ate nothing but junk food, I considered an overweight child that weighted about 180 pound at 10 years old. Therefore, I am glad that I didn’t get diabetes as such a young age because this disease runs in my family. Thankfully, till this day I have never been bullied about my weight or physical appearance.
Adolescence is considered as “stress and storm”. In my adolescence years, I notice some changes in terms of physical maturation, emotional turmoil and self-identity. Puberty plays a huge role in Human Development because we start to develop bodily changes. I knew my body was going to change, but I didn’t know it was going to be extreme. I had some ideas because my mother began to talk to me about puberty, as she noticed some changes in my body and I began to question her about some things. As I got my menstrual period, known as menarche, at age 9; my body started to experience secondary sexual characteristics such as, I started to develop breast, wider hips, acne and increase of weight. I was self-conscious about my face and weight because nobody would want to have acne on their face or to be overweight. When I had my first period, I started to crave a lot of milk chocolate because it would keep me happy. Serotonin plays a huge role because is defines our mood in terms of being sad, happy or mad. My mother and I would get into an argument about whether I should have a little bit more of freedom; since I am emerging into adulthood. Nevertheless, high school was boring to me because I never really experience high school such as going to football games, basketball game or join any clubs. In a sense it was my fault for not allowing myself the opportunity to explore in meeting friends because I feared what people would think about me or laugh at me. Therefore, in my senior year, I met some new friends that were in a softball team and I thought it was nice because I used to play softball myself. In a way people would consider us a “jocks” because we were athletes. According to Erikson, Adolescents go through identity vs. identity confusion. This stage falls within my so-called adulthood because I believed I had experienced many situation that led me to become who I am today. After I graduated high school, I took a semester off college because I was indecisive in whether I should pursue my career as a nurse or change my major to physical therapy, in the 4 identity statuses by James Marcia, I am still in the process of moratorium.
As I am emerging to adulthood, I decided to attend college at Georgia Gwinnet college to pursue my career as a nurse because I like to comfort those in need of help, and to save lives. Though, I still live with parents because they don’t let me get a dorm due to the expenses of living in school. Thus, my parents have given me their support by paying my car payment, and schoolbooks. This is a huge help because I currently don’t have a job, so there was no way I could of carry the responsibility of paying my car payment. My parents are fine with me not working because they want me to worry about getting my degree and to get good grades. Similarly, my life is running on a social clock because I feel like my time is going by quick because I haven’t yet applied to nursing school.
After all, I have reached Erikson’s intimacy vs. isolations psychosocial stage. Intimacy is about finding oneself while losing yourself to another. I was in a relationship that lasted for about 4 months because our relationship started to go downhill due to mistrust, and lack of communication. According to Hazzan & Shaver, I fall into anxious attachment style because I am less trusting and kind of clingy. After this relationship, I decided to stop dating for a while because I feel like I was wasting my time and energy on a person who just didn’t give their part. However, I don’t plan on getting married anytime soon nor to have kids because I must pursue my education and to achieve further goals that I want to be accomplished.
