Nursing is caring for someone at their most vulnerable time. It is being passionate and keen to care for someone. It requires a lot of skills to be able to competently provide a caring service for patients and clients. One of those skills is understanding the lifespan of your patients to be able to care competently and meet their needs according to their lifespan development.

What is “Lifespan Development”?

Lifespan development is the study of a person’s behaviour, rate of growth and other changes that occur throughout his/her entire life. It has many domains and stages.

Domains of lifespan development include physical, cognitive, emotional and social development, while stages of lifespan development are looking at the different age ranges. Feldman (2008) divide age ranges into the prenatal period (the period from conception to birth); infancy and toddler-hood (birth to age 3); the preschool period (ages 3 to 6); middle childhood (ages 6 to 12); adolescence (ages 12 to 20); young adulthood (ages 20 to 40); middle adulthood (ages 40 to 65); and late adulthood (age 65 to death). Domains of development (physical, cognitive, emotional and social) are closely linked to the stages of lifespan (division of age ranges).

Physical development is the physical makeup of body which include muscles, brain, nervous system, senses and also the need for sleep, food and drink. Burton (2005) regards the changes in the shape and size of the body as the most important change in physical development. Therefore as a person reaches the period of adulthood, physical growth is complete and if there is any growth it is very slow and steady. Adolescence is the time of onset of puberty to around late teenage years, most of the physical development occurs during adolescents and as a person reaches early adulthood and middle adulthood there is very slight changes in physical appearance. But it is slightly different with other domains of development such as cognitive and social or emotional. 

Cognitive development is the “way growth and change in intellectual capabilities influence a person’s behaviour”. It means that, it is the way adolescents or a young adult learn, think, and solve problem and the level of their intelligence. Piaget suggests that the process of learning and rational or intellectual development takes place during the time of interaction with the environment. According to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development when a child approaches at their early adolescents they reach “formal operational stage”. It is the stage when people develop the ability to think abstractly. It means that adolescents use the logic of reasoning. They hypothesise something, and put it to the test and thinks about its outcome. It is also stated in the literature that adolescents do think and reason about political and spiritual issues.

Additionally language and memory skills improve as well during adolescents, as mentioned by Salkind (2006). Piaget suggested that cognitive development continue throughout lifespan and as the transition from adolescence to young adulthood occurs the experience is diverse and broader. However there are some differences between adolescents and young adulthood. It is clearly stated that at stage of adulthood people use common sense and are faced with multiple issues compared to adolescence stage. When young adult is faced with an issue, a response of liking or not liking or pleasantness or unpleasantness arise which is an emotional response. It is why some researchers believe that emotion is revolved around cognition. 

Emotion is a feeling. It occurs when a person is in a relationship or interacting with someone which is very important for his or her well-being. It is how we express our behaviour with regards to something, whether we like or dislike, enjoy or not and fear or not. During period of adolescence people show more emotion compare to stages of adulthood, it is because adults are more mature and think logically.

Finally social development is how an ‘individual interact with others and the way their social relationship grow, change and or remain stable over the course of life’. It is simply how one interacts with his or her family, community and cultural groups. It is stated that during adolescents and young adulthood individuals tend to move from being a member of family to a full member of society. Erikson states that “identity crisis” occurs during adolescents. Erikson also believes that at young adulthood individuals deal with “the psychosocial conflict of intimacy versus isolation” and continues that at a later stage adults becomes “concerned with the issues of generativity versus stagnation”. Generativity means having concerns for next generation and interest in producing and stagnation is not achieving what was the goal or the promise at youth. It means that individual is very keen to have children at middle adulthood or later and wants to be in a relationship, otherwise they will be alienated.

I hope that this has deepened your understanding and broadened your knowledge of lifespan development and hope that you apply it your practice of caring for patient whom can be at different stages of their life.

References:

Feldman, R.S. 2008, Development across the life span, 5th edn, Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Gross, R.D. 2005, Psychology : the science of mind and behaviour, 5th edn, Hodder Arnold, London.

Hopkins, B. 2005, The Cambridge encyclopedia of child development, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK ; New York.

Kosslyn, S.M. & Rosenberg, R.S. 2007, Fundamentals of psychology in context, 3rd edn, Pearson Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA ; London.

Lerner, R.M. & Steinberg, L.D. 2004, Handbook of adolescent psychology, 2nd edn, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, N.J.

Moshman, D. 2005, Adolescent psychological development : rationality, morality, and identity, 2nd edn, L. Erlbaum, Mahwah, N.J.

Salkind, N.J. 2006, Encyclopedia of human development, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, Calif.

Santrock, J.W. 2008, Child development, 12th edn, McGraw-Hill, Boston.

Sigelman, C.K. & Rider, E.A. 2003, Life-span human development, 4th edn, Thomson/Wadsworth, Australia ; Belmont, CA.

Westen, D., Kowalski, R.M. & Burton, L. 2005, Psychology : Australian and New Zealand edition, John Wiley & Sons, Milton, Qld.