Child Development: Sigmund Freud, Kohlberg, Erickson,

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The Theories of Child Development Raised in different cultures all over Europe and the United States, four theorists have become world renowned for their theories of child development. As we review and learn their methods, the hope is to be able to apply them to everyday life by recognizing and utilizing them in the classroom setting. Kohlberg, Erickson, Piaget, and Freud Freud, Piaget, Erickson, and Kohlberg; what do they all have in common? The common factor is their fantastic ideas about child development. While each theorists is from a different culture, their theories have crossed borders and helped many cultures to learn about child development. Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud lived in the late 1800 's in Austria, and per bio.com, he was a neurologist that is known for being the founder of psychoanalysis. He became known for many different theories, including one on child sexual development (Editors, 2016). Freud 's theory of child development is a 6-stage approach that starts at birth and continues into adulthood (Salkind, 2006). Freud?s Stages. In the Encyclopedia of Human Development, we see an explanation of Freud 's stages. The oral stage begins at birth and continues into the middle of the child?s second year. It is said that Freud thought there were two sub-phase to this stage, one that includes sucking …show more content…

Cherry (2016) suggest, Piaget believed that children, usually infants and toddlers developed their senses of the world through the manipulation of objects. In the first, sensorimotor stage, manipulation of objects is accomplished through "reflexes, sucking, reaching, and grasping" (Salkind, 2006, p. 276). Piaget believed that children became, "little scientist" (Salkind, 2006, p. 276) as they actively explored their world, with a trial-and-error approach (Salkind, 2006). "Combining more mature motor behavior with increased planning and reasoning capabilities, the external world becomes the infant 's laboratory (Salkind, 2006, p.

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