Developing Child Paper

Developing Child Paper

Andrew Tavarez

Psych 1

Christopher Gade

March 16, 2017 Although I don’t get to see her very often, it is always fun and games with my little niece Gabriella. Gabriella is the daughter of my cousin Lisa Acosta and is a very young and energetic three year old. Gaby, as most of our family calls her, has grown up living a life that hasn’t been very stable nor has it been the best environment for a young girl to grow up in. My cousin Lisa and her husband Jose currently are living off of welfare and the support of Jose from his two jobs. Lisa would like to work to help support her family, however she has had to stay home these last four to five years with her three daughters, the youngest being one years old, Gaby being three, and the oldest being four years old. Gaby and her family have had to move around the city of Anaheim five times at her young age of three and I have always had the pleasure of being able to help them move. With her having to move so often and living a lower income lifestyle while being so young, Gaby has lived through more than she should have to live through being only three years old. Although she has seen so much at such a young age, Gaby has still been able to overcome adversary and developed into a very fun and caring girl that we are all so proud of.

Since her younger years of age I have personally been able to see her development and how she has grown into a young child that now can think and speak for herself better than she used to be able to. Based off of Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development , Gabriella has gone through two psychosocial crisis’s with them being basic trust vs. mistrust and autonomy vs. shame and doubt. (Kalat, 2014) While Gaby was still young and growing up she used to stay close to her mom and would always hesitate when approached by either me or another relative or adult in the room. She would shy away from not wanting to leave her mom or looking to her mom for approval to interact with either another adult or I. However, looking back now and understanding the different stages that young children go through, I now am able to understand it was her developing a sense of trust for the world.

As Gaby began to grow and became more trusting of the world, she also began to start thinking for herself a little more and finding out who it is she wants to be. This was the second stage of Erikson’s psychosocial development where he explains that in early childhood children began to question if they can start to be themselves without depending or looking to others. (Kalat, 2014) During this past winter break, Gaby came over for Christmas and it was at this exchange that as a family we all had the opportunity to watch her pick and choose