Erickson’s theory of social emotional development, explains that between the age of three and half to four years, children go through the stage of learning versus guilt. During the stage, the child learns to imagine in order to broaden his or her skills through playing, to cooperate with others and to lead as well as to follow. If the child does not develop initiative and instead develops guilt, he or she will be fearful, continues to depend on adults, follows groups and is not developed in her imagination and playing skills (Harder, 2009). During this stage the child learns the skills of imagination; this is important since in later life, it will broaden the child’s perspective. Another important skill that a child needs is the skill of cooperation, this will help boost the child’s team spirit and enable him/her to participate in teamwork. Another important skill is the leadership skill; this enables an individual to organize and manage people effectively in order to be able to achieve something positive in social development.
For the effective development of a child, nurture plays a very crucial role. Maslow’s theory classifies human needs into a hierarchy; he explains that the needs are satisfied in a stepwise manner. The needs in their order of satisfaction include; physiological needs, Safety needs, need for love, affection and belonging, need for esteem and the highest level of need is the need for self actualization (Simons, Donald, Irwin and Drinnien, 1987). The family environment should be rich in terms of learning opportunities so as to bring out the best in the children. One of the important qualities of a family will be one that has a varied learning and educational materials and activities. These can be televisions, newspapers and the internet. These are likely to increase a child’s imagination capability and broaden his or her perspective. A family where every member of the family plays a role in having an activity done instill the values of cooperation in the children. For instance, the family members could be helping each other with the cleaning, meal preparation and so on; but not leaving all the activities to an individual, for instance, the mother or the nanny. The parents should also allow their children to take personal initiative without hindrance; the parents can also consider making the children be in control of given activities in the house, this will encourage the development of leadership skills.
When the heads of the family are dictatorial and do not allow the children to make their own decisions, then it means the children will grow to become followers and not leaders; it also narrows the children’s imagination and innovative capability since the children have almost all of their decisions made by the parents. This will also impact negatively on the child’s development of cooperation skills because the parents act as an autonomous authority and the children are not allowed to cooperate and contribute to decision making in the family.
In order to develop the learners’ imagination, cooperation and leadership skills, the educator can divide the learners in the class and then allow them to select a topic about a challenge in the society that needs a solution. He or she should also organize the learners work in such a way that each of the learners has an active role in the group. The work should also be divided into segments and each of the segments should be headed by a member of the group. This will enhance the learners’ leadership skills.
When the teacher pays a lot of attention on delivering the content to the learners, he will tend to ignore the importance of the learners in the learning process and as a result the learners would have been reduced to listeners instead of being active participants in the learning process. This method of teaching becomes one way – from the teacher to the learners. It reduces the learners’ imaginative skills since they are expected to take in everything the teacher says without questioning. It also reduces cooperation in learning since all the attention is based on the teacher. Finally, it does not enhance the learners leadership skills; this is seen in the way it is executed, the teacher leads and the learners follow, this will make the learners feel like followers and not leaders.
Children have a lot of needs to be met both at school and at home so as to enhance their development. As described in Vygotsky social theory, a child’s development is determined by those he or she interacts with and his or her cultural background. It is therefore important that the interactions are guided and made healthy so as to enhance a positive development in the child. When a child’s needs are met, he or she will feel satisfied, safe, loved and so on, but if the needs are not met then the child will develop restlessness, thus affecting learning process.
Works Cited
Harder, A. F. (2009). The Developmental Stages of Erik Erickson. Web.
Simons, J. Donald, Irwin, B. and Drinnien, B. A. (1987). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Web.