Child and Adolescent Development

1. Child and Adolescent Development

2. Our personal past • Oldest memory • Teenager • Young child

3. Foundations of C & YP development

4. Challenges for C & YP development

5. Physiological changes • Sexual Changes • Emotional changes Biological challenges

6. Cognitive challenges • Abstract thinking • Egocentric thinking • Ability to think about other people • New ways of processing information • Ability to think critically • Ability to think creatively

7. Psychological challenges • Forming a new identity • New/emerging functions of personal identity • Individuation • Emotional responses • Ethnic /cultural identity

8. Social challenges • Society expectations • Parental expectations • Adolescent expectations

9. Moral and spiritual challenges • Moral development • Spiritual beliefs

10. Human Development Theories Erikson Psychosocial development Klein Object Relations Theory Winnicott Transitional object Bowlby Attachment Theory

11. Erikson (1902 – 1994) • Born to a Jewish mum and a Danish dad (not her husband), he grew up as a tall, blond, blue eyed boy with a Jewish mum (the details of his birth were a secret from him) – His mum having fled to Germany during her pregnancy. • In Temple he was labelled ‘Nordic’, in school he was labelled as a ‘Jew’. • He was not that academic, in late adolescence, he struggled with identity (ethnic/religious/national) • When he was 25, he came into contact with Freud in Vienna. Encouraged by daughter, Anna Freud (who noticed his sensitivity toward children) he began to study Psychoanalysis. • He studied Child Analysis alongside the Montessori method of Education (looking at child development and sexual stages) • He left Germany in 1938 because of the Nazi rise to power, ending up in the US with his wife and 2 sons. • 1stPsychoanalysist in Boston. Worked at Mass General, Harvard Med School & Yale University. • 1938 invited to observe education of native Sioux children in South Dakota. This was to prove significant in the development of his thinking.

12. Erikson: Psychosocial development

13. Donald Winnicott(1896-1971) • To the outside world, Winnicott appeared to have a happy childhood, but the reality was that he was oppressed by his mother’s depression. His father encouraged his creativity. • During adolescence, he showed considerable self awareness, and described himself as a ‘disturbed adolescent’ • That insight formed the basis of his interest in troubled children & young people. • He trained in Medicine and became a paediatrician/psychoanalysist • He was a contemporary of Anna Freud & Melanie Klein • Became a member of the ‘middle’ group rather than a ‘Kleinian’ or a ‘Freudian’ of the BPS • He worked extensively with evacuees in WW2 as a consultant Psychaitrist • Key concepts ‘holding environment’ ‘transitional object’ • Defined ‘Play’ as crucial for emotional/psychological wellbeing not just for children but for adults too – Art/Hobbies/Sport etc

14. Winnicott’s Transitional Object • Winnicott’s concept of the ‘transitional object’ is important and the transitional object, or security blanket, “acts as a bridge which connects the inner world of phantasy to the outer world of reality” • The transitional object thus represents the mother ‘out there’ and the ‘inner world’ of self • Winnicott’s theory (1965) of the ‘good enough’ mother concluded that ‘the mother is the place that all other relationships develop from’. Winnicott observed that therapists recreate a ‘holding’ environment which resembles the mother and infant/child. • Pre or delinquent behaviour may be related to a sense of loss/ or a cry for help. A search for holding not previously found within the family itself.

15. What does Transitional Object mean to a child? • Mother substitute: When a mother (or primary carer) leaves an infant, they can easily become upset by the disappearance of their primary care-giver. To compensate and comfort for this sense of loss, they imbue some object with the attributes of the mother. • Not-me: The transition object also supports the development of the self, as it is used to represent 'not me'. By looking at the object, the child knows that it is not the object and hence something individual and separate. In this way, it helps the child develop its sense of 'other' things (and self).

16. Transitional Object: Key attributes Key attributes of the transition object include: • The infant has total rights over it. • The object may be cuddled, loved and mutilated (by the infant). • It must never be changed, except by the infant. • It has warmth or some vitality that indicates it has a reality of its own. • It exists independently of 'inside' or 'outside' and is not a hallucination. • Over time, it loses meaning and becomes relegated to a kind of limbo where it is neither forgotten nor mourned.

17. Melanie Klein (1882 – 1960) Object Relations Theory • Born in Vienna, of Jewish parentage – invited to London in 1926 by British psychoanalyst Ernest Jones • 1st person to use psychoanalysis with children, she observed troubled children play with objects – dolls, animals etc and attempted to interpret specific meaning of play. Like FREUD, she emphasised the significant role parents play in children’s fantasy life, but unlike Freud, she felt the SUPEREGO was present from birth. • Klein felt that babies has no sense of ‘self’, that they are utterly dependant on their mother for sense of ‘self’ – that the mother is the baby’s ego. • Klein had a difference of opinion with Anna Freud in London in 1938 which led to many controversies – referred to as CONTROVERSIAL DISCUSSIONS which split the British Psycho – Analytic society into 3.

18. Freud’s stages of development

19. John Bowlby(1907 – 1990) • Born to an upper class British family, Bowlby rarely saw his mother and was cared for by a nanny who left him when he was 4, at 7 he went way to ‘board’ at school, which Bowlby observed was ‘emotionally impoverished’ • During WW2, after qualifying as psychoanalysist, he worked extensively with children who had been separated from their parents. This gained him significant evidence on which to base his theory. • While working for the WHO in 1951, he wrote widely on maternal deprivation, in 1956, he began his defining work on ‘Attachment’. This 3 volume body of work was published between 1969 and 1974. • Bowlby felt that the theory of Attachment is essentially an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect the vulnerable infant from predators. • Along with Mary Ainsworth, he created the theory of the ‘secure base’ – a position of safety from which the infant can explore their world and return to their secure base ( generally their mother) for reassurance. • Much of Bowlby’s work looked at the effects of poor Attachment, which is particularly noticeable when in crisis.

20. Bowlby’s cycle of arousal • In order to promote good attachment, the significant carer needs to be: • Accessible • Responsive • Consistent

21. Cycle of despair

22. Types of Attachment • Type A – Insecure Avoidant (casually avoids, nonchalantly ignores caregiver on return) • Type B – Secure (displays secure behaviour on return of parent) • Type C – Insecure Ambivalent (distressed & inconsolable upon return of parent) • Type D – Disorganised – Disorientated (conflicting, approach/flee, dazed, freezing on parent’s return – ‘frozen watchfulness’) (Fahlberg 1980)

23. Positive working model • About him/herself: • I am worthwhile/wanted • I am safe • I am capable • About his/her caregiver: • They are available • They are responsive • They meet my needs

24. Negative working model • About him/herself: • I am worthless • I am unsafe • I am impotent • About his/her caregiver: • He/she is unresponsive • He/she is unreliable • He/she is threatening/dangerous/rejecting