Erik Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

Oral Sensory Stage:


Basic Trust versus Mistrust

 During infancy, an anxious or an ineffective mother can bring mistrust to her child.

How? Imagine, a newborn babies, crying, helpless, has poor visual acuity, cannot move around, cannot sit down yet, all the signal the baby gives is his cry, and the mother would not get the baby immediately. That must be a scary experience.

 But if the baby cries, and there is help and assistance, there is a calming sound, "Baby..baby"", that would soothe the child and the child will learn to trust so the next time when he or she cries, the mother will be there. The child then learns hope. The infant's first social achievement is TRUST, there is a willingness to let the mother out of sight without due anxiety or rage because the mother consistently responds to her baby's hunger with appropriate and affectionate feeling. Some new mothers feels anxious because they do not know how to hold or calm their baby. But the more you let your newborn cry the more he will know that he or she should cry more.

 The Muscular-Anal Stage: Autonomy Versus Shame and Doubt.

 The next stage in your child's life would then deal about the child's wanting for autonomy. Because the child has developed his muscles and is capable of sitting, standing, running, climbing the stairs, jumping etc. The child more or less has some control over the environment. 

What can the parent do that can harm the child? During toilet training, a parent can be over-protective where they impose rigid and restrictive, they can be described as having rigid rules for toilet-training like making your child stay inside the comform room until he relieves himself or herself. "stay there until you finish poopoo". "Wait until we get home, before you popoo". If you are in a mall, the Rest Rooms are dirty here, "wait until we see a clean one". Parents can also be disgusted and extremely upset or overpermissive. "Why now? when we are eating?", why now when we are in waiting in line?" The best thing to do is to be reassuring and supportive, not overly permissive and retentive.

We bought a traveller potty-trainer which is always in the car, so whenever Kiara feels like wee wee or poo poo she can do it. We never had any problem with toilet-training since whenever she has to go to the bathroom, we stop whatever we are doing to support her and she already established a schedule for this activity which is around in the afternoon. Her cousin was not too successful because he has to wear a diaper and poo poo in the diaper, he never learns to sit in the toilet bowl..