Calvary Church

During this week’s Mother’s Day sermon, I referred to Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist, whose study of the developmental stages of human life is widely recognized. Erikson viewed a person’s life span as passing through eight stages, with each stage having a major “developmental task” to be successfully learned. The developmental task to be learned at each stage prepares the person for learning the next stage successfully. Failing to learn the developmental task at any stage will hinder a person’s ability to progress on to the future stages in a healthy way. Here are the 8 developmental stages…

Infancy: Birth to 18 Months --- Trust vs. Mistrust. Depending upon the people and care in the environment a baby’s first life-lesson is either to trust or mistrust.

Early Childhood: 18 Months to 3 Years --- Autonomy vs. Shame. If the child’s environment is positive as he/she learns to walk, talk, feed himself/herself, toilet training, etc., then a healthy sense of esteem and confidence is learned. If the environment is negative and non-affirming, the child will leave this stage with a sense of personal shame.

Play Age: 3 to 5 Years --- Initiative v. Guilt. Initiative continues to develop in this stage in playing, experimenting, discovering the world, and asking “why” questions. If this is encouraged and affirmed, the child’s creativity, curiosity, and desire to learn blossoms, but if the child is neglected, or put down, a sense of guilt is imbedded deep inside that will color the view of himself/herself for the future and will affect his/her desire for learning and socializing.

School Age: 6 to 12 Years --- Industry vs. Inferiority. The child’s world expands to school and more social interactions. If the environment in which the child has grown has been affirming, he/she will learn new knowledge and skills, and will have confidence to form relationships with other kids. If affirmation has been lacking, he/she will lack confidence to learn new skills and will isolate from others because of a growing sense of inferiority.

Adolescence: 12 to 18 Years --- Identity Formation vs. Identity Confusion. A healthy environment prepares a teenager to develop a positive view of who they are as a person. If the environment leading up to the teen-age years has been unhealthy, he/she will be ill-prepared to pull together the different pieces of their personality, will struggle with a poor self-image, and will lack confidence and ability to form healthy relationships.

Young Adulthood: 18 to 25 Years --- Intimacy vs. Isolation. This is the stage for companionship and love, as well as getting launched in career and life. If the past stages have been positive, a person is ready to form healthy relationships, and has confidence to move into career. If the previous stages have been negative, this person will enter young adulthood feeling isolated and finding it very difficult to form lasting relationships. There will be lack of confidence in career development.

Middle Adulthood: 35 to 55 or 65 --- Generativity vs. Stagnation. A person whose previous life stages from childhood and forward have been positive will enter this stage of life being proactive, energetic and productive in relationships, approach to work, and to life in general. If previous developmental tasks have been not been successfully experienced, middle age will be a time of isolation (even if married), self-absorption, and a loss of purpose.

Late Adulthood: 55 or 65 to Death --- Integrity vs. Despair. If previous developmental tasks have been positive a senior adult will have a sense of contentment, fulfillment, purpose, and of a legacy to leave behind. If those stages reaching back to childhood have been negative, a person’s closing years will be a time of despair.

Things to note:
That these stages are cumulative in either a positive or negative pattern of preparing a person for the stages to come. A positive or negative environment in infancy sets the stage for the future all the way down to late adulthood. A positive home in infancy in the first 18 months of life has huge impact for who a person will be in senior adulthood!

That the first 5 stages that shape a person’s whole life during occur during childhood and adolescence. The first 18 years of life in the home set the pace for the next 50, 60, or 70 years. The implications of this for parenting and for providing a healthy family environment are huge.

That the correlation between Erikson’s Life Stages and what God says about parenting and family environment in our text from this Sunday’s sermon in Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 is amazing. In one sense, Erikson simply fills in the details of what the Lord said centuries ago in the scriptures about family environment!

That though a person’s past life stage experiences may have been damaged due to an unhealthy or destructive environment or family life, there is power in Jesus Christ to break the patterns of the past, heal the damage, and bring a new beginning to a person’s life.

If you would like to explore this further go to www.learningplaceonline.com and click of “stages of life”.

**Update - The Learning Place Online link has been updated to the correct place.