Essay on Personal Growth and Development

Introduction

Personal Growth and Development refers to a predictable and an orderly process that human beings throw as they mature from being children to adults. These are various transformations that human go through, they may take either physical, cognitive, social, moral, psychosexual, and psycho-social or faith base.

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Infancy: The First Stage of Personal Growth and Development

As a human being, I have gone through various growth and development stages. Infancy is the first stage. In this stage the infant rely on others to meet their needs, they learn to trust others, and they have a quench for security to develop both physically and emotionally. (Cameron, N. 2002) They need to be loved and nurtured. For example, when I was an infant, my mother chose what I could eat or dress.

Childhood: Developing Independence and Self-Identity

Childhood is the second stage of development, and in this, the child learns to develop a sense of independence as well as start to explore the environment. Through this, they discover that the actions have consequences. As they grow, they gain the sense of self, self-confidence, self-esteem issues. The child needs guidance as they learn their experiences. For example, I knew stealing money would get me punished.

Adolescence: Discovering Identity and Navigating Change

Adolescence is the next stage and in this one is concerned more with finding out who they are and expressing who they are in the world. This is the puberty stage which is accompanied by physical change. The adolescent should learn to appreciate their bodies and cope with change. In this one tries many things to try and figure out where they fit and what makes them happy. For example, I decided to shave my hair in different styles and painted different colors.

Adulthood: Making Major Life Decisions

There is the adulthood. This is a more difficult stage that calls for major decisions about school, career and home life. In this, there is the early, middle and late adulthood. Am in the early adulthood where I have the chance to choose my school, career, and life I aspire to future.

Factors Influencing Growth and Development

Various factors influence growth and development. During my event, I was affected by heredity. This plays a major in the transmission of both physical and social characteristics from the parents to the children. For example intelligence, aptitudes, the color of the hair, eyes, weight, and height. Reflecting this to me I inherited my mother's hair that grows. First, I inherited body structure from my have.

The environmental factor is also an influential factor in growth and development. Conditions such as inadequate housing, surroundings prone to diseases, affect the process. The environment may also change whereby the people in it have weak morals and engage in things such as drug abuse. The kind of situation that people are in determine all other providers such as school attainment. For example, as I was growing my environment affected my process since my parents provided a secure environment it facilitated my school attainment enabling me to go through all education stages till where I am now.

Socialization and cultural factors also influence the process. Cultures practices such as the prohibition from engaging in some action, eating and not eating some foods. For examples not feeding on some food may cause a deficiency, and this may affect the growth and development process. (Taylor, H. 2009)

Conclusion

Since I was young till now, there is something that has changed, and others have remained. Some that have stayed are like my hair color, my eyes color, the personality of an individual who is slow to anger and likes to laugh. Things that have changed include my body size, have seen myself grow and increase my size physically, have matured into a more independent person with goals and ambitions, something I never possessed while young. My height has also increased, I had grown taller compared to when I was young. As child decisions were made for me for example what to dress, eat, when to sleep but now I choose what I want for myself.

Reference

Wolfe, D. M., & Kolb, D. A. (1984). Career development, personal growth, and experiential learning. Organizational Psychology: Readings on human behavior, 4th edition, eds D. Kolb, I. Rubin and J. Macintyre, Prentice-Ha.

Daiter, S., Larson, R. A., Weddington, W. W., & Ultmann, J. E. (1988). Psychosocial symptomatology, personal growth, and development among young adult patients following the diagnosis of leukemia or lymphoma. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 6(4), 613-617.