Growing Up Human (Preview)

Growing Up Human Sybella Ng Siew Ju Li

Growing Up Human A Guide to Navigating and Understanding Our Lifespan

Sybella Ng Siew Ju Li

Copyright © 2022 by Sunway University Sdn Bhd Published by Sunway University Press An imprint of Sunway University Sdn Bhd No. 5, Jalan Universiti Bandar Sunway 47500 Selangor Darul Ehsan Malaysia press.sunway.edu.my All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, now known or hereafter invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-967-5492-22-8 Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Ng, Sybella Growing Up Human : A Guide to Navigating and Understanding Our Lifespan / Sybella Ng, Siew Ju Li. ISBN 978-967-5492-22-8 1. Developmental psychology.

2. Developmental psychobiology.

I. Siew, Ju Li. II. Title.

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Edited by Nicholas Hoe Designed and typeset by Rachel Goh Printed by Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd, Malaysia Cover image: Lera Efremova/Shutterstock.com Image used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Contents Foreword

iv

Preface

vi

Introduction 1 Building the Foundation of Life

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2 Paving the Way for Preschool

19

3 Understanding the Growing Child

29

4 Refining the Teenage Years

44

5 Pursuing Life in Early Adulthood

63

6 Owning Adulthood

78

7 Shifting Perspectives in Midlife

91

8 Establishing a Legacy

106

Glossary

117

Further Reading

121

Acknowledgements

123

Index

124

Foreword As a health psychologist and an advocate of mental wellbeing, I have witnessed the many benefits of increasing mental health literacy in the community. A greater understanding and a deeper insight into human behaviour can be liberating, empowering, and healing not only for the person concerned but also for the whole community this person engages with.

There is a familiar saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Indeed, it takes a community to achieve wellness. I am deeply convicted that we need one another to flourish in life with all its beauty, messiness, and mysteries. We need to recognise that each of us has a significant role in this collective responsibility to keep one another well. Understanding the basics of human development and how we as individuals and as a community can contribute to someone’s optimal development will go a long way in fostering well-being.

There has been a great deal of advancement in human developmental sciences. While this indicates knowledge progression, there is still a chasm in ensuring that this knowledge is “usable”, i.e., accessible and applicable at the community level. In Growing Up Human, Sybella Ng and Siew Ju Li adopted a user-friendly language to highlight some key evidence-based developmental milestones throughout life.

Any reader who would like a taster in the field of human development can use this book as a stepping stone towards more in-depth research.

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Foreword

Throughout this book, you will come across relatable scenarios illustrating typical developmental challenges that are particularly insightful in helping you navigate unchartered experiences. The practical recommendations Sybella and Ju Li have provided bridge the gap between knowing and doing.

This facilitation of “usable knowledge” is needful because the purpose of acquiring knowledge should be much more than a mere intellectual exercise. Knowledge should transform us to live well as persons and as communities.

I believe that if we as grandparents, parents, siblings, spouses, teachers, mentors, colleagues, and friends have a greater “usable knowledge” of human development, we will build communities with collective empathy and communal support—where people will thrive even in times of crisis.

Hera Lukman, PhD, CPsychol Health Psychologist and Mental Health Advocate

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Growing Up Human

Preface Have you ever looked at a baby and wondered how this tiny, innocent being will grow into a much more complex person? Why do our world views change as we grow older?

Do our genes influence the way we think, act and behave?

Or is it our environment that nurtures us to become who we are? Scientists believe that it is a combination of both nature and nurture. From a developmental psychology viewpoint, we learn from social interactions which shape our unique character, perspectives, values, and belief system.

We are former lecturers at a private university, teaching Developmental Psychology as a subject. We realised that most resources—especially the textbooks—are often heavily inundated with theories and frameworks, making the subject unappealing to many students. With this book, we hope to increase accessibility to the fundamentals of human development by making the subject more captivating for readers.

This book aims to explain change and growth from womb to tomb through a scientific approach but without too much jargon, so that this process is easily understood by readers from all walks of life. The book is centred around the various developmental stages that we all experience growing up, with a particular focus on one of the most influential developmental theories—Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development. Erikson’s theory emphasises the impact of social experience on human development and

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Preface

provides us with a broad framework by which we can view and measure our development across the lifespan.

We hope that this book will help you understand how to learn, grow, and overcome the developmental challenges of your life stage—no matter which ones they may be—and reach your full potential. Suggestions and tips have been peppered throughout the book, as well as some of our own personal experiences as caregivers, along with case studies from our respective roles as play and family therapists.

As psychologists, we are often asked if we can read minds. We wish we could, but ‘reading minds’ is really about understanding behaviour, and we can draw from our background in child development, work as consultants, and experience as mothers to help with this understanding. We feel there is a gap between evidence-based knowledge and the intricacies of the practical aspects of life, and we hope to help you understand these intricacies.

As you enter adulthood, navigate the ropes of parenting, embrace middle age, and face the onset of the golden years, we hope that by reading this book, you will gain a better appreciation of your development and find it easier to manage all the different stages in your life.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

- Erik Erikson

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Growing Up Human

Introduction To begin our journey in learning the how and why of lifespan development, we introduce you to one of the most popular and influential theories of development: the stages of psychosocial development. The term “psychosocial” is just a fancier name to describe how our mental (“psycho-”; stemming from the Greek word psykhe which means “soul”) and behavioural needs fit together within the demands of society (“-social”).

The stages of psychosocial development will be the book’s anchor as we cruise through the human lifespan, from the birth of a child to the eventual end. If you have leafed through parenting books or magazines, you may have come across the name Erik Erikson. A renowned developmental psychologist, Erikson is the man behind this theory. His name and theory have become household names in psychology.

In developmental psychology, the often-discussed aspects of human development are physical and cognitive—how our body grows, how our mind develops, how we learn, etc. For a fuller picture of human development, however, understanding the socioemotional aspect of development is as important. After all, our environment and social settings shape us throughout our lives and influence the way we interact with society.

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Introduction

Erikson’s theory provides an overview of our psychosocial development in a series of eight stages that build on each other. We will experience a psychosocial crisis unique to each stage and whether or not we resolve each crisis will impact our subsequent development. In other words, how we grow (or fail to grow) at each stage will shape who we will become.

According to Erikson, resolving each crisis will help us develop psychological strengths or traits that will build our confidence and self-worth. We ultimately become healthy, functioning people in society (or as healthy and functioning as we can be). A summary of the eight stages is presented in Figure I. In the book’s first chapter, we seek to explore the first year of life and address questions related to infant development.

Why do babies cry often? Do babies already understand emotions? We examine how trust is developed in babies through the consistent actions of a caregiver or parent.

In fact, the first four chapters of this book will address the key role caregivers play in expanding a child’s trust and helping children to subsequently develop independence, the desire to take initiative, feelings of accomplishment, and identity formation during the teenage years.

As adults, the way we respond to our environment is—more often than not—shaped by our experiences from childhood. In the next half of the book, we turn our attention to transitions that occur during adulthood, when our social world expands and our psychosocial development gets further moulded through interactions with family, friends, and colleagues.

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Stage 6 Intimacy vs Isolation

Stage 7 Generativity vs Stagnation

Despair

Integrity vs

Stage 8

Stage 5 Identity vs Role Confusion

Stages of Psychosocial Development

Stage 1 Trust vs Mistrust

Stage 4 Industry vs Inferiority

Stage 3 Initiative vs Guilt

Stage 2 Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt

Growing Up Human

Birth–18 months

18 months–3 years

3–5 years

5–12 years

12–18 years

18–40 years

40–65 years

Over 65 years

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Integrity vs Despair

Generativity vs Stagnation

Intimacy vs Isolation

Identity vs Role Confusion

Industry vs Inferiority

Initiative vs Guilt

Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt

Trust vs Mistrust

Crisis

Feelings of satisfaction and the desire to leave a legacy

The desire to give back to family and community and feelings of achievement

Secure relationships filled with commitment and love

A sense of identity and a clearer picture of the future

Feelings of accomplishment

Self-confidence and the ability to take the initiative to make decisions

Feelings of independence and belief in own abilities

A sense of trust and security

Desired Outcome

Figure I A summary of Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development. The desired outcome represents what we hope to achieve by resolving the crisis presented at each stage of Erikson’s psychosocial development theory.

Age

Stage

Introduction

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Growing Up Human

These final four chapters will address the influence of our social expansion on the way we think and behave as we strive to develop secure relationships and a sense of generativity.

We think about the legacies we want to leave behind when we enter late adulthood.

For those of you who are parents or caregivers to young children, this book will hopefully help you understand the psychosocial skills children need to become functioning individuals. For those of you who are on a more personal journey of self discovery, Growing Up Human shines light on the various challenges and obstacles one would face, along with how to overcome and thrive no matter what life stage you are at.

It is important to note that Erikson’s eight stages should not be regarded as law. They are primarily useful points of reference as we observe our own development and that of those around us.

Birth is where it all begins.

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Building the Foundation of Life

CHAPTER 1

Building the Foundation of Life

Babies are adorable, tiny human beings that make many of us smile at the sight of them. We marvel at their growth as they start to crawl, take their first step, and say their first word. (If we are the parent, we might even marvel at ourselves for producing the little bundle of joy.) Babyhood or infancy is a wonderful time for many parents, but it is not always sunshine and rainbows.

Ask any parent and most will tell you that despite the intense love they have for their baby, raising a baby can be a rollercoaster ride. Caring for babies is never easy— as much as we fawn over them, we also spend an equal amount of time worrying about them. The early stages of life are particularly crucial developing periods for children.

We begin our journey through a typical human lifespan with the first stage in Erik Erikson’s theory. (For those of you who may have skipped the Introduction, we suggest taking a quick detour there now to read it.)

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The first stage, or infancy, starts at birth and continues to about 18 months of age. During this period, babies depend heavily on their caregivers not just for basic needs but also for comfort and stability. This is why Erikson believes the crisis faced at this stage is of trust versus mistrust.

When their needs are met consistently, babies will learn to trust and develop a bond with their caregivers.

However, failure to develop trust at this stage can result in fear, anxiety, and the skewed belief that the world is hostile and unpredictable. The trust or mistrust developed at this stage will carry over to the subsequent life stages.

In this chapter, we will explore the infancy stage and how caregivers play a vital role in a baby’s development.

Every caregiver’s journey is different, but we hope to offer some insights into a baby’s first year of life.

Development of Emotions All my baby does is feed, sleep, poo … I wonder when we will have a chance to enjoy our bonding time!

- First-time mother Susan, two weeks after her child was born

The early days in caring for a newborn seem to revolve around feeding, cleaning, getting them to sleep, and watching over their physical development. As babies experience physical changes over the next few months, they are also slowly adjusting to and learning about the world around them.

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Building the Foundation of Life

Figure 1 As babies adjust to living outside the warmth and comfort of the womb, parents and primary caregivers can help them by meeting their needs regularly. (Image by Alex Hockett/Unsplash)

When charting a baby’s growth, we are familiar with the physical and cognitive developmental milestones.

According to famous researcher Jean Piaget, babies use their senses and actions to learn about their surroundings.

From basic reflexes, babies will learn to use their hands to explore the environment and gradually develop more complex skills such as sorting and crawling.

When they are close to 18 months of age, babies will also learn to develop mental representations (schema) of the world around them. This means that they are able to visualise in their mind objects they have seen even

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Growing Up Human

if the objects are not physically present. According to Piaget, developing schema is an important precursor to developing object permanence—the idea that an object will continue to exist even if it is not seen.

Like physical and cognitive developments, socioemotional development begins at the very start of life too. Every act of care provides babies with the foundation of building trust with their caregivers (who, in most cases, are their parents). Feeding babies when they are hungry, cuddling them when they cry, and changing their soiled diapers are all acts that contribute to the building blocks of healthy attachment: the emotional bond they have with their caregivers.

I remember feeling the same way as Susan when I first became a mother. As a psychology major with great interest in the area of child development, I felt ready and equipped with all the necessary knowledge and skills to bond well with my baby. Yet, lo and behold, my firstborn was a tiny human with his own needs. He slept and fed at odd hours, cried for apparently no reason, and by the end of the first week I threw out all my hopes, plans, and ideals of parenting. I had experienced confusion, wondering if my knowledge of theories made sense and if there were any ideal picture-perfect moments like how I had initially envisioned motherhood to be. As I reflected and continued tuning in to my firstborn, I realised that babies do what they need to do for survival: they cry to be cuddled, fed, changed, and soothed.

- A new mother’s struggles

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Building the Foundation of Life

Babies have the basic needs to be seen, safe, and soothed. As their physical needs are met with care and sensitivity, caregivers are laying the grounds for healthy attachment and bonding as well as socioemotional development.

Babies have the capability to express emotions and even understand them. Newborns typically display two types of emotional response: attraction and withdrawal.

They are attracted to pleasant situations associated with comfort, pleasure, and stimulation, and will “withdraw” from unpleasant situations such as physical discomfort.

They often express their feelings of withdrawal by crying.

At around two to three months of age, babies will learn to display “social smiles”, which are intentional or reciprocal smiles. In other words, smiling at a baby of this age will result in the baby smiling back.

At around four months of age, babies will begin to laugh spontaneously when they experience pleasant situations. Between two and six months, babies can also express other basic emotions such as anger/frustration, fear, and sadness when they experience displeasure.

It is not all that surprising to know that babies typically express their emotions through crying or smiling and the occasional laughter, but what about emotional understanding? How can they understand emotions when they cannot decipher that their parent or caregiver is tired or upset?

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Growing Up Human

Decades of research indicate that the perception of emotional expressions is fundamental to social and emotional development. In the first half-year of life, babies are sensitive to emotional information through facial and vocal expressions, which are central to the development of emotions and emotional regulation in guiding infant exploratory behaviour. Research has shown that babies begin to discriminate facial expressions between 1.5 and 2 months of age. They respond to adults’ emotions by “matching” the responses they see. For example, a baby responds with a smile (socially smiling) when a parent smiles and if the parent shows distress, the baby may look confused and upset.

This “matching” could be due to mirror neurons, which are cells in the brain that are activated when we see someone else do the same thing. Mirror neurons, as discovered by neuroscientists, allow babies to imitate another person’s emotional expression spontaneously and may also contribute to the development of empathy in babies. Facial expressions and matching ultimately contribute to the development of a baby’s sense of being loved and nurtured. Even if they do not fully understand emotions yet, babies will learn to grasp the meaning behind the expressions (e.g., smiling indicates a positive feeling) and use them as social cues. This early understanding of emotions will help babies to master the basic psychosocial goal at this stage: to develop trust and security to explore the larger world.

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Building the Foundation of Life

Self-Regulation and Temperament

Facial expressions are important regulators of social interaction between young infants and caregivers. We could also say that babies are born social creatures who obtain information from their caregivers to get a sense of the world. This concept is known as social referencing.

The very first study on social referencing is the visual cliff experiment by Joseph Campos and colleagues in the 1970s. In this study, babies were placed on a table where one half of it has a glass surface creating the illusion of depth (the visual cliff). The mothers stood on the other end of the visual cliff, placing a toy on the glass surface to attract the babies. The babies were expected to crawl towards their mother/toy until they arrive at the table’s centre, where the mother would display an expression of anger, fear, sadness, interest, or joy. These various facial expressions produced different results. No babies crossed the table onto the glass surface when their mother showed fear and only 6% did so when their mother showed anger.

About 33% of babies crossed the table when their mother exhibited sadness, and approximately 75% crossed the table when their mother showed joy or interest.

Another aspect of emotional development is emotional self-regulation, often referred to as strategies we use to manage our emotional states. Babies between one and three months of age require assistance from their caregivers in adjusting their emotional states and soothing

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Growing Up Human

themselves. Some people think that cuddling a crying baby might spoil the baby, but cuddles and physical touch provide comfort and reduce the baby’s emotional distress.

As babies grow, so will their prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain that enables decision-making and other complex functions will expand the babies’ capacity to tolerate more stimulation. Typically, at around four to six months of age, babies are able to shift their attention away from upsetting stimuli. They will eventually learn to crawl or walk towards or away from various situations.

Understanding when to move towards or away from a situation contributes to emotional self-regulation.

That said, numerous studies have reported individual differences among babies in their ability to control their emotional states. One factor that plays a role in emotional self-regulation is the baby’s temperament.

Temperament is a relatively stable disposition of personality traits that could be shaped over the course of development. In babies, temperament refers to how they respond emotionally to situations. The temperamental trait that reflects a baby’s tendency to respond with positive affect (emotion) is termed surgency. Babies with high surgency seem more sociable—they tend to smile and vocalise more often, exhibit higher activity levels, and are quicker in approaching novel objects.

On the other hand, the temperamental trait of negative affectivity is used to describe babies that tend to respond with unpleasant emotions such as frustration, sadness, and 8

Building the Foundation of Life

fear regardless of the situation. Research revealed that such babies are more likely to enjoy low-intensity activities and attend to objects for a longer period of time. These babies find comfort in cuddling with caregivers and will respond to soothing attempts.

In the late 1950s, researchers Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess started the New York Longitudinal Study which followed the lives of 133 babies up to 1988.

They assessed these babies across nine dimensions of temperament: activity level, rhythmicity (the regularity of the baby’s habits), approach/withdrawal in new situations, adaptability to situations, intensity of reactions, quality of mood, threshold of responsiveness, distractibility, and attention span and persistence.

Based on their findings, Thomas and Chess came up with three general types of temperament: easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm-up. Babies with easy temperament remain calm, are able to quickly adapt to changes in the environment (routine and new situations), are easy to soothe, and are usually in a pleasant mood.

Babies with difficult temperament tend to react unpleasantly to new situations and changes in the environment, have difficulty adapting to routine, cry frequently, and are usually in an unpleasant mood. Babies with slow-to-warm-up temperament typically display lowactivity level, take longer time to adapt to new situations, and are usually in an unpleasant mood.

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Growing Up Human

However, it is important to note that not all babies fall neatly into the three categories. In their study, the researchers reported only 40% of babies to be easy, 10% to be difficult, and 15% to be slow-to-warm-up. The remaining 35% of babies had a mix of characteristics (e.g., easy to soothe but react unpleasantly to new situations).

Recognising a baby’s temperament serves as a useful guide in how we interact with the baby and help the baby to develop a more adaptive functioning. For example, a baby with an easy temperament may not demand much attention from us, but one with a difficult temperament may need more time to burn off his or her excess energy. If we were to introduce two babies of different temperaments to someone they are unfamiliar with, the first baby might feel comfortable with this stranger immediately, but the second baby might avoid interacting with the stranger at all. We may need to remain close to the second baby and coax the baby into approaching the stranger. Matching our interaction style and behaviour to the baby’s temperament produces more effective caregiver-baby interactions.

Research has also found these interactions to be bidirectional. Psychologist Ruth Feldman examined the association between child emotional regulation and parental responsiveness among 125 babies across the first 10 years of their lives. She found that parents and children mutually influence each other’s behaviour as children mature. In terms of emotional regulation, children born

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Building the Foundation of Life

with a more regulated disposition (i.e., innate tendency to be better at controlling emotions) are more likely to develop mature forms of regulatory behaviour with less effort. In a way, these children face challenges with greater ease because they are more adept at using any new regulatory skills they acquire as they grow older.

Their inherent individual stability also motivates their parents to respond in kind, further refining the children’s regulatory outcomes. For example, parents might keep a tight rein on children who seem impulsive, but give more decision-making freedom to children who display better self-control. In the long run, children who have better emotional regulation naturally are predicted to be more skilled at being resilient.

The Role of Attachment I didn’t fall in love with my baby right away and I’ve been feeling so guilty!

- First-time mother Adrienne

Not every parent will form an immediate bond with their baby from the get-go (unlike in most films). This is not unusual as the parent-child bond is something that typically strengthens over time.

Babies derive a sense of security from their close bond with their caregivers, who are usually their parents. This bond, or attachment, also lays the foundation for curiosity,

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Growing Up Human

confidence, and the development of self-concept as the babies grow older. As such, this bond is critical to the babies’ biological, social, and emotional development.

Numerous research studies spanning decades have shown that the attachment established between baby and caregiver through interactions will shape the baby’s social relationship patterns in later life. Researchers have reported that children develop emotional regulatory skills that extend into adulthood when they have established a secure attachment with their parents. For example, children who are able to regulate their emotions can control their impulses despite feeling intense emotions, such as anger or excitement. This skill, if continually harnessed, can carry over into adulthood and be used when the same intense emotions are experienced.

In a 1958 classic research, Harry and Margaret Harlow, psychologists at the University of Wisconsin, examined the response of two infant monkeys who were separated from their biological mother at birth and later introduced to two inanimate surrogate mothers in their cages. One of the surrogate mothers was made out of a mesh of cold metal wires with a round wooden head, holding a bottle from which the infant monkey could drink. The other surrogate mother was made out of foam rubber and wrapped in a heated terry-cloth blanket.

The Harlows observed that the monkeys would go to the wired mother for food but spent significantly more time with the clothed mother who seemingly provided

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