Childhood Memory

Memories from my childhood life made me what I have become today. There are many different childhood memories that I can remember but there were two that really made an impact to how my personality is today. I never thought that these events would have any effect in shaping my personality now because they happened so long ago, but I can see that it has. Eriksons 4th stage of psychosocial theory is industry vs. inferiority. It says that children who are encouraged by their parents develop of feeling of competence and belief in their skills. My favorite sport growing up was playing basketball. I love watching basketball. My favorite team when I was little was the Chicago bulls because of the one and only Michael Jordan. My parents bought me a basketball court when I was 6 years old and I have been playing basketball ever since. I joined a little tournament when I was 7 years old for children around my age. I remember scoring zero points for almost the whole game. I was never really good at the sport when I was little because I didn’t know how to shoot well. My parents never cared and would always make me feel like I was the best one out there. They made me believe that I was the Michael Jordan of my team. I felt that I could do it all on the courts. In the final minute of the game, we were losing by 2 points and we had a chance to tie the game up. Somehow the ball came to me and I took the shot and made a three point basketball to give us the lead by 1. I came running to my teammates in joy because that was the only basket I ever made in the game but it was the most important one. My parents never doubted me and they always cheered for me. With their encouragement, I began to work hard and played every day. My skills got better and I ended up making the basketball team when I was in 7th grade. Now I have been playing in tournaments with my friends and winning trophies every now and then. Eriksons theory proved that with my parents encouragement, I was able to believe in my skills and strive.
When I was five years old, I was living in an apartment with my parents. My cousins would always come over on the weekends and they were about the same ages as me. There was Cathy who was 8 months older than me, and there was Henry who was about 5 months older. We would always run around in my apartment playing hide and seek or something. One day my mother was ironing her clothes and she left the iron to cool down on the ironing board that was about 3 feet high. When I ran into the room, I saw the iron and I wanted to iron her clothes because I thought it was a fun thing to do even though my mom would never let me go near it. It was too dangerous but I wanted to do it anyways. The mishandled the iron and it fell from the ironing board and landed right onto my left foot. I remember screaming and crying very loud. We went to the hospital to get help. My foot is left with a burn mark that will be there for the rest of my life. This is the biggest scar I have on my body.
Piaget has a theory on how the childhood mind works. His theory is about the cognitive development of children. He says that the way children think does not develop entirely smoothly so there are certain points where the mind just takes off into another direction. Children act and try things out in order to learn. In my childhood, I guess I wasn’t clearly thinking about what could go wrong when I picked up the iron. I wanted to try it out for myself and that wasn’t so smart after all. Also, in Piaget’s preoperational stage, he mentions that children like to role play and that is pretty much what I did. I tried to act like my mom and iron the clothes.
Bibliography
The New York Times Company (2009) website:http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/Piagets_Stages_of_Cognitive_Development.htm Erik Erikson. Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. Oct 1st, 2009. website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psycho social_development

Bibliography: The New York Times Company (2009) website:http://psychology.about.com/od/piagetstheory/Piagets_Stages_of_Cognitive_Development.htm Erik Erikson. Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. Oct 1st, 2009. website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erikson%27s_stages_of_psycho social_development