Infancy Unit, Research Paper Example

My personality began its development from infancy and was shaped by the attitudes of my parents’ for they were the role models for my developments as well as my two older brothers. My mother and father contributed to the largest development aspect of my personality because they were the guiding forces in my life. I paid particular notice to my mother during infancy because I was quite attached to her and needed her for many things such as taking care of me, changing my pants, feeding me, disciplining me, putting me to bed, reading my books to me, playing puzzles with me, making me feel secure, etc. My father was not the large disciplinary during those years according to my mother, for he would simply play with us children after work and guide us with minimal discipline as a friend. My mother had a calm but worried personality because my father was a weekend alcoholic and worried if the bills when he would return home. He also worked construction work hence she worried if the job would have longevity and she would have to continue to be the main breadwinner of the family. She often consumed herself with those worries and was not emotionally available to the children including me. She did a wonderful job taking care of our physical needs but did not meet our emotional needs, hence I was an emotional mess by the time I went into the next stage of development into adulthood. I also took on some of the characteristics of an alcoholic which are to be selfish, mean at times and self-centered which the personality traits of my father were at that time. He did grow up into a wonderful man later in life after he quit drinking for years.

My parents’ state that I was a very shy and orderly child and was much disciplined during infancy and did not begin to show any negative personality traits until high school. I would study very hard as a young scholar and was very obedient. My father was very strict when I was in high school. It appears I began to rebel when I was I entered college and as a result my personality became very aggressive and I made very bad choices due to a lack of self-discipline. I feel if I was given better guidance in a fostered environment and given the ability to make choices rather than ruled and disciplined by an authoritarian style by my father I may have made wiser choices at young adulthood and would not have been so rebellious at the age of eighteen. I was overwhelmed with so many choices and so much freedom after graduating high school. Erikson stated, “(1) the world gets bigger as we go along and (2) failure is cumulative.” The first stage of development is easy to interpret whilst the second is not so quite obvious because different children go through different circumstances and negatives in life in which they must overcome barriers to proceed to the next stage of development in life. (Harder, 2009). Children that are exposed to an extreme amount of negatives in life often find it very difficult to deal with them and progress through stages normally. A child must go through some negatives in life in order to learn to overcome obstacles, but often too many dysfunctions can permanently scar a child’s self-esteem and prevent them from coping properly into adulthood.