Personal Portfolio

I discovered some of the theories of my childhood in PSY120 according to my self-

description, and I will use some theories that I had learned in this paper to analyze my

developmental history.

To begin with, thanks to my mother’s good training, I have no any fixations like nail

biting when growing up. According to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory (1856-1939),

there are five stages of personality development. I am found that I performed well in

the first oral stage which is about an infant who derives enough satisfaction from the

mouth; otherwise, fixation could have a later result in like nail biting or oral

aggressive. When I was an infant, I could practice sucking well because my mother

insisted on giving me breastfeeding instead of giving me milk powder which I can

practice sucking. Therefore, comparing my experience with the theory of oral staging,

it shows the future developmental causality that I have no oral fixations from infancy.

According to the milestones of motor development, (Connolly & Dalgleish 1989,

Diagram Group, 1977, Fagard & Jacquet, 1989; Mathew & Cook. 1990; Thomas,
1990) children can skip on two feet, pedal and steer tricycle at age 3-4. In my early

childhood, I started to develop the gross motor skills and fine-motor skills well when I

was at about 3 to 4. For me, I love skipping, jumping, balancing and bicycling since I

was 4. It means I have started to develop the gross motor skills well and know how to

control a bicycle well. Furthermore, the milestones of motor development also stated

that the child can hold a pencil between thumb and fingers at age 3-4. For me, my

parents taught me how to write and draw something on a paper by holding a pencil

when I was 3. However, I could just write a top “o” and a below “o” only instead of

writing the number of “8” as i still remember. Although I could not write a perfect

letter and number, it stills shows that I could hold a pencil and mark perpendicular

and horizontally at age 2-3 which match the milestones of motor development.

In the age, I received my first birthday gift from my parents. I loved it very much

because it is one of the characters in my favorite cartoon of “DORAEMON”, so I

called him “Dora”. According to the cognitive. development theory of Piaget, in the

preoperational stage, children will believe that the inanimate object have lifelike

qualities and alive. I believed Dora had its own mind and it could know me well. I
always played with it and I fell in slept with it because I believed it was alive and it

could listen to me. However, it did not give me any responses and it was just a doll,

but not an animal and it was not alive. Speak for another sentence, I thought that Dora

was alive because I was misled by the cartoon of “DORAEMON”. In the cartoon,

Dora and his friends could talk and play with each other and also eat or drink.

Therefore, I thought Dora was alive in our reality world also. As my knowledge

enhanced, I know Dora was just a toy.

Step into the middle childhood stage, I was the school team members of different

teams like prefect, girl scout and Chinese club. According to Susan Harter (1000,

2006, 2012), self-esteem is strongly influenced by mental comparisons of children’s

ideal selves, actual experience with success or failure and the value affected by

children’s peers and parents. By comparing with others and playing pivotal roles in

different clubs, my self-esteem was increased since I was proud of myself as taking

essential roles in these teams. Moreover, I won in a badminton competition, so I was

labelled as a 'champion'. Thence, I had gained in self-esteem because my parents were

esteem was high.

On the other hand, I was very popular school and made many friends in my

childhood. At age 10, friendships depend on reciprocal trust (Chen, 1997). According

to this theory, senior students regard friends as special people. They are not only close

to each other, but also have desirable qualities, such as mutual help and mutual trust.

It is more likely to be based on the common interests of friendship. When I joined

different clubs, I shared the same hobbies with many of my classmates so that we

could become friends. In addition, friends helped solve problems and conflicts. When

I have some problems, my friends will provide different ways for me to solve them

which help me a lot. This theory can predict that I am an extroverted feature people

since I always rely on friends to do things.

In my adolescent, I have my different cliques and crowds. Dunphy (1963) said that

two important sub - varieties of groups. Clique is the first type which made up of four

to six young people who appear to be strongly attached to one another. They are

usually the same sex and engage in the same activities. For me, I have encountered a
group since the From4 of secondary school. Our group of eight girls regularly

conducts some girls’ activities with free time. In this group, all of us have similar

values and behaviors. Therefore, we were named "G8" because we did all the

activities together during high school. In addition, we have the same interest in

playing badminton. In addition, the group merged into a larger collection called the

crowd (Dunphy, 1963), which included men and women. The crowd is very popular

between the ages of 13 and 15, and then breaks down into heterosexual groups and

then becomes a loose couple to prepare for romantic relationships. It seems to be

inconsistent with the crowd of only six companions. Up to now, we have not

encountered a situation in which we have fallen into a heterosexual group and lost

contact with our husband and wife. Therefore, I disagree with this theory because it

does not fully explain the romantic relationship in the crowd group.

Now, I always ask myself "Who am I?" to build some identity. According to

Erilkson's identity theory. Identity shows the unique characteristics of a person and

how they are reflected in age, situation and social roles. Now, I am a university

student studying at Shue Yan University, a tutor who teaches primary school students,
a sister's sister and a parent's daughter. During adolescence, the possible reason for

my rapid changes in my physical and sexual life is that adolescents are at a standstill

between childhood and adulthood, so I have to consider too much in my career. I

think the theory fits my experience because I started to think about my career and

future. Being a counselor will be my dream. I want to help the underprivileged in our

society and try to influence life with life.

If I am asked to live again, I will not follow the suggested theory. Because in any

case, we can't control all the factors when we grow up. Moreover, relying on the

parenting style of my parent is enough for my growth.

References

Chen, X. P., Eberly, M. B., Chiang, T. J., Farh, J. L., & Cheng, B. S. (2014).

Affective trust in Chinese leaders: Linking paternalistic leadership to employee

performance. Journal of management, 40(3), 796-819.

groups. Sociometry, 230-246.

Goodway, J. D., Ozmun, J. C., & Gallahue, D. L. (2019). Understanding motor

development: Infants, children, adolescents, adults. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Harter, S., Waters, P., & Whitesell, N. R. (1998). Relational self‐worth: Differences

in perceived worth as a person across interpersonal contexts among

adolescents. Child development, 69(3), 756-766.

Huitt, W., & Hummel, J. (2003). Piaget's theory of cognitive

development. Educational psychology interactive, 3(2), 1-5.

Rapaport, D. (1960). The structure of psychoanalytic theory. Psychological issues.

Muuss, R. E. (1988). Theories of adolescence. Crown Publishing Group/Random

House.