Prenatal Unit, Research Paper Example

In order to understand how an aspect of my development was different from my parents or grandparents’ first one must understand the Life Span Development and how it affects a human being through the understanding “that changes occur in every period of development and these changes must be looked at as a product of the culture and the specific situation surrounding the change taking place.” (Hernandez, 2008). The concept of life span development is a continuous theory and is not more or less represented by one stage of development. Paul Bates, a leader in the development of life span theory debates suggests environmental factors are large influences on development as is the past, “making the life span theory historically embedded.” (Hernandez, 2008). Physical domain such as a person’s height, weight and physical features affect the life span perspective just as cognitive issues such as thinking, decision making and feeling do so. Social changes such as relationship changes, a person’s personality and how a person is able to cope with these changes affect the life span perspectives. (Bee, 2006). Different developmental stages in a person’s life affect the life span perspective theory just as the different three concepts of physical, cognitive and social do. These stages are simply defined as early childhood from ages one to three, middle childhood from ages three to six, late childhood from ages six to twelve and adulthood from ages twelve to adulthood. At early childhood is when a child learns trust skills and develops physical skills to learn new things in life. At mid-childhood is when a child is introduced to the feeling of guilt. At latter childhood is when a child is introduced to having to follow certain rules in life. At latter childhood to early adulthood is when a child is introduced to the feeling of inferiority. A child must pass through each of these stages with good emotional health in order to develop into a healthy adult stage of life.

I grew up differently from my parents and grandparents because both my parents and grandparents were raised in a strong nuclear tied family with both parents together and a strong traditional family who were of Roman Catholic descent and practiced traditional situations such as attending mass every Sunday, sitting together for evening meals with the entire family, reading books every night before bed and an excess of dysfunction in the family. I can remember my father drinking alcohol whilst I was a young child and my mother complaining about his behavior at the age of about five. I remember my father exhibiting some violent behavior towards my mother when he drank alcohol. This went on for years until I was a teenager until my father went ‘cold turkey’ and stopped drinking. The emotional scars still remained with me and my siblings though. My mother always tried to downplay the situation and I did not understand this until I became an adult why she did this and I understand this to be today because she was afraid to leave with me and her siblings to go on her own and she thought she was making the best situation to keep the family together. I love my father very much and still do but believe the dysfunction has scarred me and my siblings with having healthy relationships with others especially with the opposite sex. Children learn from what they are exposed to or from what they see. It is easy to tell a child to ‘do as I say not as I do’ but that simply does not work in the real world. A child is a product of his/her environment. If you practice good habits your child will learn good habits and grow up to be healthy emotionally. A parent should practice what he/she preaches or at least in front of his/her children.