Piaget's Concrete Operation Stage In Cognitive Development

Although I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb in my younger years, I loved to help out. In school, I would act out prosocial behaviors by always volunteering to help out my fellow classmates if they needed help. I made friends with many of my classmates and would always be there for them. I felt much empathy at this age, and would always try my best to be a good friend. My parents and their parenting style played a huge role in the reason why I believe I am the way I am. I would describe them as very authoritative parents. They were high in warmth with moderate discipline, high in communication and negotiating and they would always explain certain rules to me. They were warm and sensitive to my needs, but also firm in their expectations
I experienced gains in knowledge, perspective taking, executive functioning and efficiency change. I have now reached Piaget’s Concrete Operation Stage in cognitive development. This stage is characterized by the correct use of logic and conservation. I have now passed the conservation tasks, but I was not necessarily ready to think abstractly. At this point in my life I was able to mentally reverse things. I had increases in memory ability which allowed for increases in executive functioning. I had more knowledge and awareness of how my cognitive system worked, and I had the ability to control and manipulate my own cognitive
I made a few friends around this age that remained close to me and became life-long friendships. One girl in particular was named Alex. Her and I became inseparable from the moment we met. She was kind and funny, she taught me to never be anyone other than me and that it is okay to have flaws. She provided information and comparisons about the world outside of my family. She gave me knowledge about things I had never known about. In middle school, I had a hard time understanding who I was as a person. I tried several different looks and images I wanted to be like, but that didn’t help me understand who I was. One thing I was never in middle school was popular. I did not mind that much; my friends were the best to have around. It started to discourage me though, I was never the one to be invited to the parties, I never had a boy have a crush on me. Those kind of things back that at that age diminished my self-esteem. I remember feeling hatred towards myself and I always compared myself to the other girls. In middle school, I was more so a controversial child than anything else. I was not necessarily liked as a fellow peer, but I was not hated either. I had some people such as my friends like me, and other classmates disliked me, but in my opinion that’s just because they never got to know me. Although I was not the most popular girl in middle