Physical
By the end of my first year of life I had transformed from a small, 5 lb 14oz baby, to a round, plump, healthy baby; this is important for an infant to keep a constant body temperature (Berk, 2009). Throughout this first year I mastered the physical skills of holding my head up, grasping objects, sitting up on my own, crawling, and by the age of 12 months, I began to walk.
According to the dynamic systems theory of motor development, my ability to master these skills is the result of acquiring increasingly complex systems of action (Berk, 2009). I was able to effectively control and explore my environment because my motor skills developed into a working system, where individual movements combine and cooperate. This increased ability to explore my environment had a major influence on my cognitive, social, and emotional development.
Cognitive"The Christmas when Marjorie was around 2, we were all opening presents; when it was her turn to open a gift, she took the paper off and was so excited exclaiming ,'IT'S A BOX, IT'S A BOX!'. She was so wound up in the excitement of the moment that she found pure joy in a simple box."
According to Piaget's stages of cognitive development, at the age of 2 years old I would have been in the sensorimotor stage. This is where children have not grasped the idea of object permanence: physical objects exist even if they are out of sight (Mpofu, 2010). When I opened the present, I took it for what it was: a box, and did not think that something could be inside it. The fact that I was so excited to get a box for Christmas is a reflection of my happy nature as a child, which will be discussed later on.
Emotional
"Throughout infancy and childhood I sucked my thumb; it was comforting. I had my stuffed animal that I coddled as well and whenever I was home I would rarely let it out of my sight."
Thumb sucking is one behavior in which infants regulate their emotions, as it may be the only way they know how. The fact that I continued to suck my thumb past infancy may have been a sign that I was emotionally insecure and was not able to modify my methods of regulating emotions (Haxell, 2010). If this is related to Freud's psychosexual stages, I was stuck in the oral stage of development. This is termed oral because the infant's pleasure centers are in the mouth. According to Freud, my oral fixation may have been due to early or late weaning. However, since Freud presented this theory, there has been no research to unite weaning times with oral fixation (Berk, 2009). This can also be related to Bowlby's theory of attachment styles. My thumb sucking is a sign of insecure attachment of caregiver with infant. I personally do not agree with this; however, my mother did go back to work when I was 3 years old, and I do remember not liking the baby sitter that I was with. Therefore, thumb sucking was my way of dealing with these emotions of insecurity. 