Children constantly grow and evolve with time, and relevant communication, emotional, social, and cognitive changes are experienced. Social and emotional changes are how children start perceiving things around them and respond accordingly. These perceptions can build from the closest relations, like parents and friends. This paper analyzes three developmental domains, cognitive, social, and emotional, of the selected developmental period in my life in relevance to the theories. The practical applications would help gain a deep understanding of the identified stage and theories in the real world.
I interviewed my mother for this paper to get an in-depth analysis of my early childhood stage. She told me that I was kind and empathetic from the beginning, which formed the basis of my upbringing. I was a quick friend-maker during early childhood since I liked to be around people. Making friends gave me confidence that I could adjust to any type of person easily. My mother also told me that I was friends with neighbors and used to visit their home frequently. I liked to invite them over for playing and used to ask my mother to make French fries for all of my group members. I mostly invited my school and neighborhood friends for my birthday gatherings since I liked to be social. I liked having hearty conversations with my friends and waited for them eagerly over the weekend for sleepovers and playing video games. As mentioned earlier, my mother stated I was kind and empathetic initially; she added that I did not like it when any of my friends were in trouble. The same stood true for my family members. She told me an incident when my mother had cut herself with a knife while working in the kitchen, and I was six years old then. I was about to take a glass from the shelf and pour some water for myself when I saw the cut and ran to her with a worried expression. I could not settle down until I was sure that she was no more in pain. I sat with her for 20 minutes or more; although it was a simple knife cut, I could not get over the pain my mother was in. This depicted that I was sensitive to my close ones.

A personal exploration of early childhood (from childbirth to 8 years) is interesting for me as I have many memories from those years. This is the stage when the child is opening his eyes and cognitive abilities to worldly things. Each day, there is a new experience and new things to learn in the class; for example, the digestive system and heart system were new adventures. It was very hard for me to digest in the beginning that our heart can pump blood, take impure blood and purify it, take oxygenated blood to the rest of the body with one inhale or exhale of breath. Complex features of life gave me new horizons to contemplate upon. I started to observe things deeply and felt emotional about them. As far as my relations are concerned, it is true that I was deeply connected with them since some of the childhood friends, who are still here with me today, say that I am kind and empathetic. They comment that it is my upbringing that made me what I am today. I can certify this with an example of my childhood friend who was poor when I was eight years old. He did not come to school for a week, and when I inquired, I...…was more egotistic and wanted things my way. For example, when I wanted to oversleep, and my mother came in to wake me up, I used harsh words to her to have what I wanted. Piaget's concrete operational stage was following my personal life since I wanted to be more aware of the outside world, and I played outside with my friends rather than sitting at home and enjoying video games. I liked to talk about worldly matters like movies and new eating places in the area. Piaget's formal operational stage reflected some areas of my life but negated some others. For instance, Piaget believes that during this stage, an individual makes hypotheses and clenches abstract concepts. Conversely, I was sure about my direction in life, my attitude towards my parents and friends, my career, and my plan for settling down with a family.

Piaget's theory helps developmental psychology since it highlights how children acquire knowledge and use it in every life stage. Educational practitioners can use this information to devise teaching plans according to the interpretation of each developmental stage of children (Cherry, 2019). New information acquisition, such as I mentioned, I acquired about the digestive system, provides new perspectives of life. This theory's weakness is that it is emphasized on a group of children, a small research sample of his own three kids, whereas each child is individually different from one another and can learn new slower or faster according to his cognitive skill speed.

I want to conclude my paper by stating that each developmental stage brings cognitive, emotional, and behavioral changes. These changes had an effect on his social and personal relations, which I underwent too. Experiencing and expressing emotions is vital for forming and sustaining life-long positive relationships, along with cognitive exploration.…