Learning Portfolio Part Three

Part One:

Erik Erikson’s stage of initiative vs. guilt happens during the preschool years.  This is when children begin to develop a conscience and start to feel guilt for their actions.  They also discover that they can use all their skills to actually accomplish tasks and that sometimes these tasks lead to praise and sometimes they lead to punishment.

                                                          Quinton Baking

Quinton discovers he can help mom bake a cake and he pours the flour into the mixer but misses and ends up spilling most of the flour on the counter and on himself while mom isn’t looking. In excitement he looks at mom and exclaims, “ Look mom! I did it!”  Mom see’s nothing but the mess and gets mad at him for making a mess. This leads to Quinton feeling guilty for making the mess when all he really wanted to do was help make a cake.

In the video above, although hesitant, the mother does not stop the child from making a mess, yet allows him to continue to do what he is doing.

Parental/caregiver understanding is important in this stage, if the child doesn’t have an understanding parent and caregiver it will do mostly harm in their development. Children at this stage need an abundant amount of opportunities for exploration and caregivers who support their exploration as well to better them developmentally.

Without this exploration and support this can lead to a child’s lowered self- esteem and a feeling that they are not good enough and will lead to a lot of experiences in life being squished by two words, “I can’t.”  Without the belief in themselves they will give up before they even start, and this is what Erikson was trying to get us to realize when he introduced the stage of initiative vs. guilt.