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3. Newborn(0-2): Body and Mind
Sensorimotor Stage: The newborn learns through touching objects, hearing new sounds, and using the other senses. This is how they experience the world. As a newborn, I was brought to the park to play with blocks and other things every day. I would play in the grass and touch all the plants. I would always be interested in the flowers and seeing what they felt like. This demonstrates sense-based experiences in the sensorimotor stage of development. -
4. Newborn: The Social World
Social Referencing: Learning how to react to new feelings and things by watching other people and their reactions. Growing up I spent a lot of time around my mom and her friends. When they were doing certain things or talking about certain things I would try to match their energy. -
5. Early Childhood (2-6): Body and Mind
Egocentrism: Young children only see the world from their perspective. I did not like spending time with my grandmother as a child. I would see my time with her as a punishment and would get angry at my mother for making me spend time with her. I did not understand that my mom had to make me spend time with her. -
6.. Early Childhood: The Social World
Empathy: Being able to understand someone else's emotions and feelings that could be different from one's own.
My mom had a friend with a lot of problems and sometimes I would see her cry when she came to our house. I would always try to cheer her up because I was sad seeing her upset. -
7. Middle Childhood (6-11): Cognition
Seriation: Patterns or sequences can be made. In school, I learned how to put things in height, color, size, number, and letter order. I was good at putting things in color order but not good at putting things in letter order. -
8. Middle Childhood: The Nature of the Child
Social Comparison: Comparing one's own accomplishments and other qualities to those of other people.
I would always compare myself to the girls in the friend group I was in. They had very different lives than I did and I became insecure because I thought my life was so boring compared to theirs. -
9. Adolescence (11-18): Adolescent Cognition
Invincibility Fable: A common teenage belief that nothing bad will happen to them and they will not get hurt doing dangerous things.
I deal with this as my friends and I like to drive fast and go to car meets. I also used to do really stupid stuff when I was younger and got myself in trouble because of it. -
10. Adolescence: Close Relationships
Famililsm: The belief that people need to fight for and protect their families.
When my dad had a health scare in January, I did everything I could to be there for him. I woke up three hours early before school on a Thursday to see him at the hospital before his surgery.