Jean Piaget's Stages Of Child Development

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who was interested in child development. He came up with the famous theory of the Cognitive Stages in children through adulthood. The stages include sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. The different stages apply to different age groups. For example, the first stage, sensorimotor, applies to children at birth through 2 years of age, so this would not apply to the concrete operational kids whose age level includes kids who are roughly 7-12 years old. He uses these stages to show how the kids grow and mature.
Jean Piaget was born and raised in Neuchatel, Switzerland. He was an only child that looked up to his father tremendously. His father, Frederic Piaget, spent a
lot of his time studying his work and coming up with different theories and ideas. Jean noticed this at a young age and became curious and wanted to know more in the science and history fields. Instead of a usual, playful life as a child, he spent time studying and learning more. He grew up a very intelligent kid and eventually went to college to become a teacher. The first school he taught at was called Grange-Aux-Belles Street School for Boys and it was ran by another famous psychologist, Alfred Binet. While working at that school, he discovered his theory for his cognitive stages. The first stage of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development is sensorimotor. This stage is for infants starting at birth to age two. Piaget thinks that at this time period, children base their understanding of the world on touching, sucking, chewing, shaking, observing and manipulating objects. Object permanence, or awareness of objects, people, and they continue to exist after it is out of sight, is also a factor they begin to learn at this age. They also develop motor skills as they move muscles and learn to work body parts they never have moved before. The next stage which is the second one out of the four of them, is the preoperational stage.
Children only two to seven years experience this. The kids develop an imagination where systems allow them to describe people, events, and feelings. This is typically the stage where little boys become more aggressive to their fathers as they have an attachment to their mother and just want to protect them. They are more passionate and learn to care about the little things to where they think that if one thing goes wrong, the world might end. Some techniques they develop during this stage is language and symbolic thinking, and egocentric thinking which is when one thinks the world operates from his or her own perspective. It is believed that this is where children begin to hope for crazy, unrealistic things and develop false hope, also known as an imagination that Piaget very well believed in while other philosophers did not get as well. The third stage is concrete operational. This is where the children think in a more logical manner and begin to overcome some of the egocentrism characteristics of the preoperational period. Ages seven to twelve years are the years that is believed to apply the most. Some developments that will come to are conservation and mastery of concept of
reversibility. Lastly, is the formal operational stage. This applies to ages twelve through adulthood. Formal operation produces a new kind of thinking such as abstract, formal, and logical. These children, teenagers, and adults, develop logical, or regular thoughts/common sense, and abstract thinking, or the “here and now” thinking. This certain stage helps people observe environments and make use of logical techniques to come up with solutions for problems. All of these stages and different levels of thinking are Piaget’s way for expressing how he feels on maturity levels and how they develop for different age groups. Jean Piaget married Valentine Chatenay and eventually had three children. Having kids for Piaget was a big deal because now he could put his studies to the test and experiment with his kids from infancy. Although, that sounds awful, times were different then and he wanted to know more. He continued to follow through with his theory throughout his kids life and in 1979, Piaget won the Balzan Prize for Political and Social Sciences. He was thought to be one of the most intelligent philosphers to ever live. Once he earned his name and his theory became known, he had people contradict his belief and argue that it is wrong. Lev Vygotsky was one. He along with other psychologists who are now famous, did not agree with Piaget but they respected his hard work. Piaget had lived a long, successful, and happy life. He died at age 84 on September 16, 1980 from unknown causes. He was in Geneva, Switzerland when this happened. He had accomplished and overcame many challenges and achieved many goals. Not only did he win the Balzan Prize, but also the Erasmus Prize as well. He never gave up on his studies and worked hard to prove to others that he could change the world in some way. Piaget quoted, “Intelligence organizes the world by organizing itself.” To me, that shows how even when he had so much going on, he still focused on pursuing his theories to get a main goal, and that he did.