Theories Of Child Development As They Pertain To Middle Childhood And Adolescence

11 Pages 2667 Words

al, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages. Each stage is characterized by how the desire for pleasure in these erogenous zones and the demands of reality are resolved. An optimal amount of gratification in each stage resulted in a successful passing into the next stage and fixation, which is the over-investment of energy into a developmental stage’s erogenous zone, would not occur which could lead to later maladaptive behavior.
According to Freud, a child in middle childhood would be in the latency stage where the child focuses on same sex friendships, internalizes sex specific behaviors, attitudes, and morality, and develops social and intellectual skills. An adolescent would be in the last stage of development, the genital stage where the focus is on heterosexual relationships with non-family members. At either of these stages, maladaptive behaviors can crop up if the child did not pass through previous stages with the optimum gratification.
Erik Erikson (1902-1994) forwarded and reinterpreted the concept of developmental stage...