Psychosocial Development encompasses changes in individuals’ understanding of both themselves and others’ behavior
Preschool years largely encompass what Erikson called the initiative-versus-guilt stage , which lasts from around age three to age six
–INITIATIVE = desire to act independently from parents and becoming autonomous
–GUILT = guilt of unintended consequences resulting in shame and self-doubt
Society and culture present the developing person with particular challenges, which shift as people age. Erikson believed that people pass through eight distinct stages, each characterized by a crisis or conflict which the person must resolve.
Our experiences as we try to resolve these conflicts lead us to develop ideas about ourselves that can last for the rest of our lives.
In the early part of the preschool period, children are ending autonomy-versus-shame-and-doubt stage, which lasts from around 18 months to 3 years. In this period, children either become more independent and autonomous if their parents encourage exploration and freedom or they experience shame and self-doubt if they are restricted and overprotected.
What else you need to know about the psychological development among preschool years children? Take a look at these several point:
1.Personality (Initiative vs Guilt)
2.Self-concept (set of belief about ownself)
3.Types of play (parallel play, onlooker play, solitary play, associative play, and cooperative play)
4.Parenting Style (authoritative, permissive, authoritarian, and uninvolved)
5.Abuse (cause and effect)
6.Morality (heteronomous morality, incipient cooperation stage, and autonomous cooperation stage)
7.Aggression (instrumental aggression, and relational aggression)
25 Responses
Lau Shi Jie
Psychosocial Development is a change of perceiving toward ourselve and other’s action. During the pre-school, kids start to explore and learn how to be independent. If during this stage, their parent is over protect them, personality of independent cannot be shaped. The kid will always depend on his parents when he faces problem. The kid will fail to grow because every action is limited and control by his parent.
Maahesh Naidu
Majority of parents these days tend to become more overprotective over their children and without realizing it, they cause their children to develop shame and self-doubt in them. Parents should allow their children to discover more things. Parents should let their children get back up on their own if they fall so that they will gain more experience from it which might be useful for their future.
Khoo Si Ni
Psychosocial Development helps us to understand ourselves and our behaviors. Children are influenced deeply by their parents. The early part of the preschool period is the best timing for parents to shape their children’s attitudes. What kind of education and knowledge from their parents will influence children’s whole life. Children will also modify their parent’s action in front of them and apply in daily life. Parents should give opportunities to their children to explore and learn new things themselves. Overprotective will make the children lose experience and general knowledge to solve problems.
Aiman Ali
From my perspective, most of the preschool kids experience shame and self-doubt as for their parents become a strict and overprotective. The kids cannot develop a sense of independent because they feel the need to ask their parent thought before they make the decision. Therefore, parents should let their children experience new things on their own and guide them when they have a problem and not just gave them the solution for their problem, so they can develop their own idea in the future.
Hajar jafri
Most of the parent nowadays didn’t let their children discover the world and become too overprotective of their children. The children end up growing up without the necessary skills to solve problems in their lives and tend to become too dependant on their parents
ahmad amirul
good sharing from Dr. Saipol. I totally can relate to this topic and I can confirm that it is true. as a child, my parents gave me a lot of freedom. well, today I can say that I am quite independent and autonomous. I believe that every parent should let loose a little bit with their kids so that they could grow up to become an initiative, opiniated person. Thanks for the sharing, Dr. Saipol.
Nuraisyah Athirah
In my opinion, the preschool stage is a crucial phase in everyone’s live since it helps to shape our personality later. the parents should encourage their kids to explore the world more rather than limit the children’s capabilities. During this phase, the kids will be more curious about everything they see and they are gaining experiences and perceptions. the experience is very important since it can guide ourselves to survive everyday and help us to improve our critical thinking skills. The parents who motivate their kids will shape independent individuals while the parents who overprotective will only cause the children to have self doubt and have low confidence to face the world later.
Aqilah Zullkeply
I think preschool stage is an important period for us to grow and learn. But most of the Asian parents are overprotective towards their children eventhough it’s clearly give bad effects towards the kids. The kids tend to be dependent on their parents or siblings and fail to be independent in future. Parents should let their children grow by trusting them but at the same time observing their activities to prevent anything bad happened.
Nabilah Nasrin
I personally believe childhood is the most vital stage in your development in terms of personality. We can see how a person that has grown up in an abusive household tends to be more agitated, aggressive and vulgar with words. This is due to the surrounding they’ve been in and they think it’s the right way to act. Most of them also do grow up having personality disorders such as ASPD, DID and etc. Definitely a person who grows up in a nurture environment and a healthy environment tends to grow up to become a very confident person. Thus, I conclude childhood is very important for the development of a person
Tnio Zhao Ton
From my point of view, we should be a wise parents by not over protecting our future children but with an appropriate way especially in their early childhood because in the early part of the preschool period, children are ending autonomy-versus-shame-and-doubt stage, which lasts from around 18 months to 3 years. In this period, children either become more independent and autonomous if their parents encourage exploration and freedom or they experience shame and self-doubt if they are restricted and overprotected.
Tnio Zhao Ton
Early childhood education is the most important stage to influence the children’s life
Shivanee Kuhan
After reading this, I realized that the early part of the preschool period is extremely important as it plays a big role on determining our personality and way of approach in the future, whether an individual is independent or constantly feeling self doubt throughout their life. I agree that parents should give more freedom and support to childrens in doing things by themselves during this period of time because it will help to shape the child’s way of thinking but too much of freedom is never a good thing. In my opinion, parents should always monitor their children without interfering in their decisions and motivate them to achieve what the want on their own. So I would conclude this by saying that parents should do their duties of protecting the child without overpowering their opinions and decisions so they’ll grow into someone who’s independent and be able to make their own decisions.
Nur Ika Iffah
Preschool stage is like the children’s first platform to develop into the world as they are becoming more curious about what is going on in their surroundings. At this stage, they started to do self-learning by observing the environment and facing new knowledge or challenges which helps to shape their personality and maturity in future. It is important for the parents for not being too overprotective towards them; instead, they are recommended to constantly monitor the child’s movements to ensure they are not influenced by negative behaviour.
Aina Nasuha
Some parents tend to be overprotective and strict to their children. This can actually makes them depending too much to the parents and not be able to face any challenges in the future. Parents should be the one to encourage children to explore new things and gain experience from that. This will help the children to easily cope with the problems later and enhance their life skills.
Qurratul Afiqah
most of our parents are being overprotective to their kids. everyone know that overprotective parents usually want the best for their kids and want to make sure that they are safe in the environment that they had created. little did they know that their action somehow affect their kids. their kids will always depend on them to take care of everything and they also could not explore the world. parents should support their kids without controlling their future. they need tp trust that their kids will grow up being a great person.
Martina binti Muhammad Elyas Lim
I heard that 70 percent of our current lives are affected by our childhood memories. That explains a lot. Based on my experience, parents who inhibited their children potential to develop just raised the best liar. Which is not cool. Parents should do better as time revolved.
alya maisarah
Childhood stage is a crucial stage in life as that is the stage where kids’ behavior and ethics are best molded. Parents and society surrounds unconsciously play a big role in influencing the kids’ characters. Good guidance from the parties may have helped a lot in developing positive characters of an individual of their childhood stage. Mistakes and problems may occur along the stage but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored as the mistakes could be the biggest character influences for the children. Therefore, when the unwanted incidents happen, parents or those who guide the kids to develop their own characters must seek solutions.
Nur Shahirah
Preschool stage plays a major role in our personality development. The way parents act, their behavior, the rules they set for us, all of these can influence our personality. If parents is overprotective and paranoid towards whatever their child is doing, the child might experience shame and self-doubt. meanwhile if the parents give their child freedom, the child can grow up becoming independent.
Wan Nurdafina
Development in terms of personality and social during childhood majorly depends on the parenting style. From what Dr. have mentioned above, if the parents are too strict towards their children during preschool years, they will grow as a doubtful person who is scared to get out of comfort zone. They will more likely be less imaginative. In contrast, children whom parents are less strict will be able to explore the world around them even more and become independent. So we can conclude here that parenting style during childhood years is the root of one’s personality and social development, as well as other factors such as types of play and morality.
Nurul Ishiqah
Parents play an important role in child’s development. Parent should act carefully and accordingly to make sure their children also behave how they should behave. For children to be independent and autonomous, parents should not limit their children’s potential. Children should have enough support for them to be able to discover the world. Overprotective parents are going to restrict children’s growth making them to grow as a passive person and someone who also doubt themselves. Question like ‘Am I doing this thing correctly?’ are going to haunt children as they grow. Hence, parents should be able to let children explore the world as they should, not limiting their children’s potential.
Hasuna Asna
One of the main conflict of a parent is in keeping their child safe while letting them explore the world. In a parent’s well meaning intention of wanting to protect the child, it could lead to come off as overprotective and micromanaging if not done in moderation. Because in order for the child to explore, the child will eventually get hurt at some point along the way. So what’s important for the parent is to make the child feel secure in exploring, knowing they have somewhere to return for safety and comfort.
Pan Ka Wei
In my opinion, parents should let their child more explore to the world from childhood. Parents should not be too restricted their while their child want doing something. If the parents too overprotected their child, child will become more dependent to the parents when they grow up. It can cause the child become unable or no willing to face and cope with the challenges in the future. Thus, parents should be more encourage child to explore things that the child was curious and parents should not scare that their child will hurt. Only this, child can be more independent.
Siti Noraini
Childhood experiences do play a very cruical role in the development of personality. I believe it all indeed start from home. Like the reason why we see things in different ways from others probably because of the experiences and environment we have gone through are different. I wonder if our personality in this stage also influenced by our friends or is it strictly comes from parents/caregiver..
Nor Aqila
I think parenting style is one of the main factor that giving so much impact to the children development. Parents should give space for their children to explore more about many things by themselves. Pre-school life is the best timing to let the kids improve their social skill, thingking skill and other important skills that can be learned at school. At this stage of age, their inquisitive feeling are high as they want to know about a lot of thing and want to explore it. Supportive parents are really needed in this case because positive responses from them will influence the children growth and behaviour.
Nadhirah Nizarudin
From my point of view, early childhood is one of the most essential phase in life. Most identity of these kids would be reflected upon based on what they went through in this early childhood stage. If the parents are too controlling in this period of time, there are higher tendency of the child to rebel. I believe every parent should guide their children as children need these role models they look up to, to open the path for them in life and walk alongside them. It’s important for these kids to grow up in a healthy and loving environment because they are fragile at this phase. I believe if they were raised properly in this stage, it’s more likely they would not be associated with delinquency or aggressive behavior and may grow up having empathy.