The whole story?

I believe that Piaget’s stage theory created a strong foundation for cognitive development research. The notion that infants are born with innate capabilities for association in addition to meaningful perceptual and motor skills is well founded. I consider the idea that children increase their understanding and begin to form multifaceted concepts through exploration of their environment to be critical to this theory. What disturbs me most about this theory and frankly all theories of cognitive development is that little credence is given to a child’s individual differences and/or differences in their environment.

Whether we believe that children are born with innate capabilities or not, any theory agrees that most children are born on an equal scale. What these theories don’t make allowances for is the learning environment to which each child will be exposed. Piaget hypothesizes that children will develop cognitively through interacting with their environment. What if their interactions are limited? Will the child continue to develop through some innate mechanisms or will they experience a stalling of the process? Piaget’s theory, like others, does not take into account birth order, gender, family of origin, language acquisition, parent’s age and educational level, or whether they have a stay at home parent. These are only a few of the variables that significantly impact a child’s cognitive development.

I agree with Piaget that children develop in qualitative stages, but defining the stages by a child’s age is not realistic. I have seven children, two of which are biological; and five adopted through the foster care system. Although each of my children has developed at different rates, they have all inevitable traveled through stages much like those described by Piaget. My oldest child who is talented and gifted crawled and did not speak until he was two. My second child walked at seven months and spoke in three word sentences at twelve months. I am curious how Piaget would explain this. Because one child was delayed in language acquisition, does that mean that he could make less sense of his environment than my second child could? Are the differences individual or due to birth order and the influence of an older sibling?

Cognitive development theories seem to ignore the impact of the environment to which each individual child is exposed. Cognitive development theories begin to answer the questions about thinking, but I don’t believe we are anywhere near the whole story.