Piaget's Stages of Development

Thanks for coming back to read (or reading for the first time)! So today's blog is going to focus on Jean Piaget. There will also be some cute babies in some videos so try not to get too distracted! 

Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland on August 9, 1896. Piaget is referred to a psychologist, bioligist, and scientist. His greatest interest was young children and how they think. He created 4 stages (Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development) that he called schema, and that's what I'm going to be discussing today. 

Piaget created a stage for 4 age groups: infant-2 years old, 2-6 or 7 years old, 7-11 years old, and 12-adulthood. 

The first stage is the sensorimotor stage. Starting from birth to two, young children learn through their senses: touch, hearing, looking, mouthing, and grasping. However, one thing almost all children of this group fail to GRASP is object permanence. Babies do not understand that objects still exist even when they cannot be seen; out of sight, out of mind. By around 8 months, babies will look for the object for a very short amount of time before their attention span is distracted. 

Another phenomena that this group experiences is stranger anxiety. Again, the same sort of idea. If mommy and/or daddy are gone, they're gone and not coming back. I babysit and this sort of anxiety is so sad to witness because there is no way for a child (around 2 years old) to grasp the fact that mommy and daddy WILL come back eventually. I've had a two year old cry for 3 straight hours before falling asleep because she couldn't find mommy and daddy and I spent the first hour trying to reassure her they would.

The next stage is the pre-operational stage, centering around children 2 to 7 years old. Not in a bad way, but younger children of this group are egocentric. Again, in a non-negative way. Preschool age kids especially find it difficult to understand that we can't see what they see and they can't see what we see. 

The third stage is the concrete operational stage for children 7-11 years of age (a follow-up of the previous stage). Kids of this stage can understand basic mathematical equations, logical thinking, and concrete comparisons. They can also understand conservation, which means that they know something can change form but still be the same item they started with. Take for example, two glasses of juice. They have the exact same amount of juice. If you pour one glass of juice into a taller, skinnier glass (making it look like there's more juice), most children of this group understand that the amount of juice is the same; it just looks different. (Here's a video demonstrating what I just described). 

The last stage involves ages 12 on up and is the formal operational stage. This stage is more abstract thinking. This stage can be seen as more of "If this happens, then that happens" scenarios. For example, in the video the little boy (who looks as if he is still in the concrete operational stage) uses logical thinking to figure out what happens. The older girl (who is in the formal operational stage) knows how to use abstract thinking and reasoning to figure out what happens to the glass. 

These four stages are just one scientist/psychologist/biologist's way of looking at a child's brain as the child matures and grows. There are many other theories out there (which in my next couple blogs, I will cover). If you're interested, the last video puts together all 4 stages and is quite interesting to watch.

Thanks for reading!

References

Baby has NO concept of object Permanence (REALLY FUNNY). (2012). Youtube.com.

Piaget - Egocentrism and Perspective Taking (Preoperational and Concrete Operational Stages). (2013). Youtube.com.

Piaget - Stage 3 - Concrete - Reversibility. (2008). Youtube.com

Piaget - Stage 4 - Formal - Deductive Reasoning. (2008). Youtube.com.

Piaget's Stages of Development. (2011). Youtube.com.

iParents

Well, I hope I got your attention from my last post. As I look back, I realize that my ending statement wasn't entirely true. This post isn't going to just revolve around parents and smartphones. It's going to discuss possible consequences to their own children because of their inability to put down the cell phone. (My next blog will generally discuss the developmental stages of children, tying in to this post).

For many children of a young age in this generation, this is the norm of what they see on a daily basis.
Parents are missing out on their children's lives. Indirectly and with body language, parents are telling their kids that there is an inanimate object that is much more important than the child themselves. It's very sad to me that many parents don't even realize what they are doing; almost all have no idea that they could be harming their child's developmental stages.

There was a study done by a developmental pediatric behaviorist at Boston Medical Center. Dr. Jenny Radesky and a team of her researchers conducted a study. This is how it played out: 55 caregivers (generally parents), all with 1 or more kids (ages ranging from infants to 10 years old) in a Boston fast food restaurant. Out of these 55 adults, 40 were seen using a phone or other device through the meal. 3 gave a device to entertain the youngest (or only) child. 

There has not been complete studies yet on how parents' disconnectedness with their children affects them. HOWEVER, we do know that children's developmental abilities come from interactions with their parents. They learn to vocalize, read others' emotions, language skills, and overall good social skills. But what happens when the parents face is in front of a digital device, teaching the kid that you don't need to have face-to-face conversation? According to Dr. Gail Saltz, a physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital (<http://www.nbcnews.com/health/parenting/put-down-cellphone-study-finds-parents-distracted-devices-n47431>), children who have connected sit-down meals with their families are less likely to fall into the trap of drugs, teen pregnancy, or abuse of alcohol. Also, they have that these children can earn better grades and act out less. All because both parents and kids are connected and talking face-to-face, not talking with their face to a screen.

To me, it's concerning that 5 or 6 year olds can work iPhones, tablets, etc. Why have we left ourselves come this far? Many say it's the generation we live in. Yes, I know that access to technology has been on the rise, but there is no reason to have a 5 or 6 year old believe that they need to have a phone to keep themselves entertained. We live in such a world that we need instant gratification, and so we pass that thought on to our world's youngest. 

So in conclusion, please, parents put down the phones. Disconnect with your devices and reconnect with your kids. 

References 

Alexander, B. (2014, March 9). Put Down That Cellphone! Study Finds Parents Distracted by Devices. Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.nbcnews.com/health/parenting/put-down-cellphone-study-finds-parents-distracted-devices-n47431

Goodman, T. (2010, September 14). Virtual Addiction: Are You a Good Role Model for Your Child? Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.safetyweb.com/blog/virtual-addiction-are-you-a-good-role-model-for-your-child/

Meadows, A. (2013, August 1). Of Phones and Parents: Why Parents Should Not Always Use Their Phones. Retrieved February 17, 2015, from http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/of-phones-and-parents-why-parents-should-not-always-use-their-phones-0570700

If this video doesn't convince you to put down your phones, Nothing probably will [Motion picture]. (2014). Youtube.com.

Pain and Brain

Ok so by the sound of this title, you probably are dreading even saying that you would read my blog for me! No no, don't fret; this is going to be interesting, I promise. So here's the thing. Everyone knows how much the brain controls and its functions and blah blah blah. Tonight, we're going to be talking about my experience with the brain and something that I have a long personal experience with: PAIN. This blog is not a “Please feel bad for me, look what I’ve been through” type blog, so understand that I’m not looking for pity and attention, but sharing the knowledge that I’ve learned.

            RSD. What in the world? Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. CRPS. Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. Did I lose you yet? Stay with me here. RSD (or CRPS, which it is now more commonly called) is a debilitating pain syndrome that broadly affects the pain receptors, nerves, and the brain. I’ll make this easier by giving an example first. A young 12-year-old girl fractures a growth plate in her ankle playing basketball. After being put in a cast for several weeks, the X-ray shows a healed bone. However, the girl still complains of excruciating pain in her ankle. The original injury happened on the lateral side of the ankle in the fibula bone. The girl was experiencing pain on the medial side of the ankle (on the tibia). After being told it should get better after physical therapy even though she couldn’t walk, the girl’s ankle bruised and bruised and swelled to a very abnormal size.

            Let me stop here for a moment. This girl is me. In sixth grade, this happened to me. What started as a simple injury developed into a huge “saga”, as my family and I like to refer to it as. To speed this up a bit, in seventh grade, after healing and re-injuring my ankle, I was diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. RSD is a pain syndrome in which the pain receptors and brain are stuck in a miscommunicating glitch. The pain receptors are like a switch. After a bone heals, with RSD, the pain remains and the brain and receptors think that there is still a broken bone. This can be extremely frustrating because there is no scientific evidence as to why there is still pain. You cannot see pain in an X-ray, MRI, or CT scan. The only way to diagnose RSD is a bone scan. There have been reports of RSD that did not show up in a bone scan, but for me, the bone scan is what solidified the diagnosis.

Since seventh grade, the RSD has appeared, disappeared, and reappeared in my body, either due to an injury or not. I’ve been referred to as “the mystery case” because my RSD case is not a “by-the-books” situation. I’ve had RSD appear (at different times) throughout my body: ankle, leg, hip, arm, and wrist. The most recent flare-up, both legs and ankles, was spring of 2014. What do all of these locations have in common? They’re all limbs/appendages. That is another common identifying factor of RSD. It most often happens in a limb and occurs more often in girls than boys.

There is no cure for RSD. Mainly it’s pain medications and physical (and sometimes occupational) therapy. Physical therapy for an RSD patient requires a “re-training” of the brain. I’ve completed many, many sessions of PT at Ranken-Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital as an outpatient. Many of the sessions at Ranken left me in tears because of the amount of pain it caused me. The therapists were determined to teach my brain that stepping on a “broken ankle” (that isn’t really broken) doesn’t hurt me at all. As one can imagine, it took a long time for my brain to learn, but eventually, it did. Today, I am completely pain free and couldn’t be happier.

I’m going to wrap this up shortly so thank you to those still reading! This was my insight as to how my brain got stuck and didn’t act like a normal brain regarding pain, but was still able to perform all other functions correctly. Luckily, for myself, my RSD has disappeared and I hope every day that it never returns. For some, RSD will forever remain a permanent part of their lives. I can define RSD any time any way, but RSD will never define me. If you would like to read more about it, honestly, go to Google and type CRPS, RSD, Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome, or Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. You will get a bit more of a scientific explanation. Thanks for reading!