NU145 Unit 3 Erikson Initiative vs Guilt Application Example

Breakfast She Planned Alone: A Theory Application of Erikson's Initiative Versus Guilt to a Composite Five-Year-Old Found Hiding Behind the Couch, and Where the Theory Stops Fitting

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

NU145: Psychology Across the Lifespan

Unit 3 Theory Application

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The child and family are composite; the paper applies theory to a single event and makes no judgment about the child's development or the parent's care.

Introduction

Erikson described eight psychosocial stages, each organized around a conflict that a person resolves more or less favorably. The third, in the preschool years, sets initiative against guilt. This paper applies that stage to one morning in the life of a five-year-old and asks three questions: where the stage explains her behavior, what her mother's response adds, and where the theory reaches its limit.

The Case

At bedtime on Friday, [Maya], 5, announced that she would make breakfast for her mother in the morning "all by myself." At about 6:00 on Saturday she pushed a kitchen chair to the counter, climbed up, took down the cereal box and a bowl, and poured. The box tipped and cereal spread across the counter and floor. She was trying to carry the milk when her mother came in, saw the mess and said sharply, "What are you doing? Look at this!" Maya ran and hid behind the couch, saying, "I'm bad. I'm bad."

Erikson's Third Stage

In Childhood and Society, Erikson placed initiative versus guilt in the years from about three to six. Initiative is the drive to plan and undertake tasks for their own sake, to make things happen rather than only to do them. Guilt arises when the child feels that these plans and actions have overstepped or harmed others. A favorable resolution leaves the child with the virtue Erikson called purpose, the courage to pursue goals despite the risk of failure (Erikson, 1963).

Applying the Stage

Initiative is plain in the case. The bedtime announcement is the strongest evidence: Maya did not simply wake up and play with the cereal; she formed a plan the night before, held it overnight and carried it out. Pushing the chair to the counter shows planning to overcome an obstacle. The goal, a gift for her mother, shows the outward direction of initiative at this age, when children begin to imagine adult roles and try them out.

The bedtime announcement is the heart of the case: initiative is not doing something, it is deciding in advance to do it.

Her response to the spill and her mother's words fits Erikson's guilt. She did not merely feel embarrassed at a mess; she judged that her action had gone wrong in a way that hurt her mother's morning, and she withdrew. Erikson warned that when initiative is met often with harsh responses, the child may come to feel that wanting to do things is itself wrong.

What the Mother's Words Add

Erikson's theory places the outcome of each stage partly in the social world, and the mother's sharp response is part of this case. One morning does not decide a stage; what matters is the pattern of responses over years. If her mother later acknowledges the plan, "You wanted to make me breakfast, that was kind; next time, wake me and we'll do it together," the initiative is supported while the limits are taught. Research on young children's guilt suggests that parents who respond with warmth and clear explanation tend to have children whose guilt helps them repair harm rather than collapse under it (Kochanska et al., 2002).

Where the Theory Stops Fitting

Two points strain the theory. First, Maya's words, "I'm bad," describe her whole self, not her action. Contemporary research distinguishes guilt, which focuses on a behavior ("I did a bad thing") and tends to prompt repair, from shame, which focuses on the self ("I am bad") and tends to prompt hiding (Tangney et al., 2007). By that distinction, her hiding and self-label look more like shame than guilt. Erikson placed shame in the previous stage, autonomy versus shame and doubt, in the toddler years, so the case suggests that his stages separate feelings that real children mix.

Second, the stage looks one stage ahead as well. A five-year-old who plans, works with tools and wants to produce something useful is already showing the beginnings of industry, the focus of Erikson's fourth stage. The boundaries are less sharp in a real child than on the chart.

A Counterreading

A reader might object that Maya simply did not know how to pour cereal and that the morning shows a gap in skill, not a psychosocial conflict. The objection has some force: five-year-olds do misjudge weight and balance, and the spill itself says nothing about initiative. But the theory is not applied to the spill. It is applied to the plan made the night before and to her reaction afterward, and neither is explained by motor skill. A child with poor pouring skill who felt no guilt would have called her mother to help clean up. Maya hid.

Conclusion

Erikson's third stage explains Maya's morning well: a planned, outward-directed initiative and a painful response when it failed. Its limits appear in the details: the self-focused language of shame, and an initiative already turning toward industry. For a nurse or clinician meeting children and parents, the most useful part of the theory may be the reminder that the adult's response, repeated over time, shapes what the child learns from moments like this one.

References

Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). Norton.

Kochanska, G., Gross, J. N., Lin, M.-H., & Nichols, K. E. (2002). Guilt in young children: Development, determinants, and relations with a broader system of standards. Child Development, 73(2), 461-482. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00418

Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345-372. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070145