Parenting Advice for New Parents
Raising a child can be quite overwhelming and frightening especially to those who
recently become parents. As a new parent, there are many challenges and difficulties that
you will encounter from conception, mainly after your child is born and as they grow. The
stage where the top in your priority list is yourself is long gone. This is not about you
anymore. Remember, you are now responsible for another human life.
Because of this major life event, professionals from different fields of specialization
lend a hand on giving advice and tips for new parents such as yourselves. You can seek
assistance from helping professionals like the psychologists, guidance counsellors, or
social service workers. This essay will discuss some theories of child development, and
each of them will concentrate on the different aspects of development. These theories
can help you better understand your child. Also, you can treat this as a foundation to
eliminate confusion and lessen your worries on how to be a parent.
Developmental psychologists anchored their guidance to parenting on various
theories of child development such as the nature and nurture debate, Freud’s
psychosexual development, Piaget’s cognitive theory of development, and Erikson’s
psychosocial development. These are a lot to consider and we’ll take a look on the
perspectives of each theory from the birth of your child until before they reach
adolescence. Fundamentally, developmental psychology underlines the changes
happening to infants and children. Psychologists intend to investigate and explain the
changes in their behaviors, thoughts, and emotions.
The ultimate debate on a person’s development revolves around the dichotomy of
nature and nurture. Have you ever asked yourself why we are who are? What influenced
us to be who you are at the moment? Is it because of nature pertaining to the genetic
factors, the traits that you inherit from your parents? Do you want to pass onto your child
the same traits that you acquire when you were born? Or do you lean more towards the
nurture aspect meaning we are shaped by our environment? We are who we are because
of what happened to us as we are growing up. Is it maybe one of these two elements or
maybe a combination of both? These are the principal questions asked by researchers
and psychologists. Many researchers are fascinated by the interactions of what is innate
to us and the influence that the environment has on us. One of the areas supporting the
notion of nature is demonstrated in research regarding language acquisition. Linguist
Noam Chomsky argued that language is the result of innate cognitive structures in our
minds. Therefore, our children are predisposed to utter sounds and understand words
and grammars. However, B.F. Skinner, a renowned behaviourist believed that children
learn their behavior through imitating adults especially their parents. Developmental
psychologists, in particular rejected the idea that children’s behavior is the result of just
one or the other.
Psychoanalytic theory is one of Sigmund Freud’s contributions in the realm of child
development. Through experiments, observations, and research with his patients, he
proposed the childhood is the most crucial stage of human development. He stressed
that what happened to us during our childhood was the primary reason why and how we
are shaped as individuals. Also, he came to believe that childhood experiences and
unconscious yearnings impact the behavior. Therefore, it is vital that you are there for
your child when experiencing happy moments and not so favorable situations in their
lives. Freud proposed the psychosexual theory which has five universal stages of
development characterized by erogenous zones considered us the source of a child’s
pleasure or gratification. Freud added that conflicts and traumatic experiences occurred
during each of stage can have a lifelong influence on your child’s personality and
behavior. Freud believed that each stage should be completed successfully, otherwise
fixation in a specific stage will occur. It has five stages including oral stage, anal stage,
phallic stage, latency stage, and genital stage. During oral stage (from birth to 1 year),
your baby’s erogenous zone or pleasurable are is the mouth. Therefore, your baby finds
satisfaction when he/she puts something in his mouth. So he/she enjoys sucking or
swallowing. While anal stage (from 1 to 3 years old), the erogenous zone of your child is
the anus. Toilet training happens during this stage. You can observe that your child is
fascinated or gratified when they defecate. It’s like a proud moment for them. Be careful
to reward if you think that they are doing a good job during toilet training period. Phallic
stage (3 to 5 years old) location of the erogenous zone is the genitals. During this period,
your child is aware of their sexual organs. This is also the time where you can observe
that your children tried to resolve Oedipus or Electra complex. Latency period (5 until
puberty) is the stage where your child’s sexual interests are repressed. They tend to focus
more on playmates and gaining new friends of their age. This is the principal source of
their pleasure. Lastly, the genital stage is from puberty to adulthood. According to Freud,
successfully completing each stage results to the development of a healthy adult
personality while failing to resolve the issues of a specific stage can lead to fixations
influencing adult behavior.
Have you ever wondered why your child is able to think or perceive things in a
certain age? For instance, why is a 3-year old able to group red blocks together regardless
of shape, in which case a 2-year old is having a difficult time to do so? It is because there
are particular stages where your child is able to develop cognitive skills. Jean Piaget
proposed the cognitive theory of development. He emphasized that children learn by
actively constructing knowledge through hands-on experience. And the role that you play
as parents are very critical as you can help them by providing the materials they can
interact with and utilize these tools to construct information. This theory is composed of
four stages: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
Sensorimotor (from birth to 2 years old), your child begins to identify object permanence.
This means that they can comprehend that a person still exists even when it is out of their
sight. For instance, try showing your child a ball then hide it behind your back, and they
will try to look for it because they know that the ball is still there even if they cannot see
it. Peekaboo is a good way to build object permanence. When they reached the preoperational stage (2 to 7 years old), they started learning words and they begin to use
language to communicate. This is also the stage where they can classify objects by a
single feature. Your 4-year old child can now separate blocks in terms of colors. Logical
thinking is the key feature of the next stage which is the concrete operational stage (7 to
11 years old). Your child can now recognize conservation of numbers (age 6), mass (age
7), or weight (age 9). They can now also classify objects according to various features
and arrange them in serial order with a single dimension. The difference between
concrete operational and formal operational (11 years old onwards) is that in concrete
operational, your children can apply logical thinking, but, in formal operation, they can
employ logical thinking about abstract propositions. They are more concerned with
hypothetical situations as well as the future. Therefore, it is more effective to explain
things symbolically and verbally to help your children better understand the rules and
principles that you give to them. Don’t be upset or frustrated if your 8-year old child don’t
understand what you’re trying to teach or explain to them, it’s just that they are not yet on
the right age to absorb it as what cognitive psychologists proposed.
Erik Erikson conceptualized eight stages of psychosocial development
encompassing infancy to adulthood, but, we will only focus on the first four stages. He
theorized that a person experienced a psychosocial crisis that needs to be resolved for
each stage. If successfully completed, a basic virtue will be developed. During birth to 18
months, your baby is struggling to trust other people. Infants developed trust to people
when these people provide them their basic needs. If you as a parent, or the primary
caregivers are inconsistent on meeting their needs, they may view the world as a
dangerous place filled with unreliable and untrustworthy people. The mother is the
primary key to fulfill this part. When you’ve done this positively, your child will develop the
virtue of hope, an enduring belief that a person’s wish can be attained. Toddlerhood (1 to
2 years old), the next stage has the issue of autonomy vs. shame and doubt. This is the
period where children discover their capabilities and they start to be independent. The
best virtue learned during this stage is will. If they succeed they will have feelings of
autonomy while failure results to shame and doubt which eventually leads to having a low
self-esteem. Allow your child to be independent and develop their physical skills such as
learning to walk on their own. It is important that you trust and support them. The next
stage is pre-school period where your child is battling the initiative vs. guilt crisis. The
influential figures here are you, the parents, and their teachers. Your children need to
begin asserting control and power over their surroundings. Success on this stage leads
to a sense of purpose. However, if your children tried to control too much or overpower,
they can experience disapproval or rejection resulting to a sense of guilt. Other kids who
they considered as their playmates are also essential in this period. The last stage before
your child reached adolescence, is the school age. Industry vs. inferiority is the
psychosocial crisis to be addressed during this age. Your child need to cope with new
and academic standards. The basic virtue of this stage is competence. Your child will try
to win not only your admiration, but also the approval of others by trying to fit in. The value
of their accomplishments will also be emphasized. Essentially, concentrate on how to
balance things to thrive in solving each psychosocial crisis.
These are only some of the many existing theories to help you in raising your
children. Becoming parents is not a job or an occupation like what most of us classified
them to be. You can hear it on the radio, watch it on televisions, and read in newspapers
or magazines that being a parent is the most difficult job that one can us. But, it is far from
being true. A job, you can quit, but being a parent goes on every day for the rest of your
lives. Once you become a parent, you’ll be a parent forever. A love of a parent is the
testament that unconditional love exists. Some of us may be doubtful of someone’s
capacity or even our own of loving someone unconditionally, but we can never know the
true essence of a parent’s love until we become parents ourselves. And this is what is
happening to all of you right now. It is a bit scary, but don’t fret, a lot of people are here
to support you and guide you as you embark on this journey. You can take the advice,
guides, or tips on how to raise your children or how to become good parents, but you may
be overwhelmed on the information of who to follow. Don’t be worried, when in doubt, just
remember to follow your hearts because parents know best. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to seek
assistance from the helping professionals who have devoted their time and effort on
studying and observing children with the intention of developing a psychologically healthy
adult. A good partnership between two parties who have the same purpose in mind would
be beneficial for the child.