The Developmental Stages of Life by

Patty Sankovich

For many years Ive heard people say that the early developmental days in a persons life
are the most crucial to who they will become later in life. Working in a preschool setting I have
a hodge-podge of personalities in my young students; reading about Erik Ericksons stages of
development makes it clearer to me as to why. Understanding how a personality trait comes in
opposites explains why we identify and classify our friends and acquaintances in different
categories, i.e. optimistic or pessimistic, adventurous or cautious, kind or aggressive, dependent
or interdependent. Ive watched my young nieces struggle to grow up but understand that their
support system was faulty; in that they had an alcoholic mother and their father was thousands of
miles away. Applying Ericksons findings regarding cultural influences would explain why
theyve developed many of their personality traits. The fact that his developmental stages were
based on the philosophy that: (1) the world gets bigger as we go along and (2) failure is
cumulative made me a believer.
It all begins in the infancy stage where a tiny person depends on a caregiver to meet
their basic needs. From the first day of life, his or her future is being formed. Is their caregiver
loving and attentive? Can they depend on their gentle touch and kind voice? These are the
factors that surprisingly determine whether this child will trust that life is good and their future
will be rosy. Early childhood just builds from there, when children are taught to master skills
on their own. Their self-esteem is critical as theyre learning new skills like walking, talking,
feeding themselves and of course potty training. Again, their caregivers method will determine
whether that young person will become confident in tackling new challenges or become tentative

and defeated before they get started. The play age stage takes it to the next level when children
are in the inquisitive mode. Everything is about copying what they see others say and do and
about asking the question why? Children that are not in a healthy home environment will not
be trusting of others or themselves if they didnt get the attention they needed or were put down
for trying new things unsuccessfully, and finally have poor role models. How could we expect
them to grow into healthy, happy, self-reliant adults?
School age children will now take the trust or lack of trust, autonomy vs. shame, initiative
vs. guilt and move onto industry vs. inferiority. Their positive or negative personality will
continue to develop as they rely less on the parental unit and their authority and will expand to
school and peers becoming more of a focal point in their lives. Learning, creating and
accomplishing new skills and knowledge are critical to this stage of life, allowing adolescents to
develop a sense of industry. Self-esteem and competency will be questioned in a big way if the
child has any history of inadequacy or inferiority. Undoubtedly, their peers will be relentless.
As a person progresses into adolescence and young adulthood the development becomes
more of a personal control situation. Lifes complexities come at them fast and furiously and
theyre expected to deal with it with ease and confidence. Theyre no longer children yet they
havent developed the real life skills to properly help them find their own identity. They struggle
with fitting in with their peers as well as facing moral issues theyve never had to deal with.
Adolescence is a period of devotion and fidelity. Young people find themselves trying their hand
at love and intimacy as a young adults. Their past experiences and how they were treated as
young children will greatly influence the successes and failures of their future friendships and
love relationships. Young adulthood is a period of affiliation and love with significant
relationships in their marital partners and friends.

The challenges of life continue as adults progress to middle adulthood and lastly late
adulthood. I personally see many of the scenarios described by Erickson in my own life, my
spouses life and our friends lives and I watch my mother deal with late adulthood and her
optimism that her wisdom will guide my young daughters to live happy and fulfilling lives as she
has. Erik Erickson was without doubt given a vision, and chosen to be a spokesperson of that
vision and if only a few of us can learn from him and pass it on to the young peoples lives well
be touching, then we all know hes made a difference in the world.