They feel that everyone else has a handle on how to raise a child. Everyone else's children are well behaved. Everyone else's children listen to them. Everyone else's children don't drive them crazy. Why do mine drive me crazy? It is my experience, after visiting with thousands of parents, that we all feel inadequate as parents. Some may appear to have things more organized and together than others, but we all suffer from a lack of confidence when it comes to parenting.

Jean Piaget was a Swiss philosopher that lived from 1896 to 1980. He had an expansive career researching the human development. His theory is one of constructivist. This means that he felt we (humans) construct our ability through self motivated action in the world. We are driven to explore and by doing so we learn. If we progress through all 4 stages we become fully functional and happy adults. If we get stuck in one stage or regress we lose our ability to function at the highest level inherent to us as humans.

There are numerous theories of development. Several schools of thought pervade western culture. These include Jean Piaget, Eric Erikson, nativist theory, and empirist theory. We will discuss these briefly to give you a background in development. I think Piaget and Erikson make the most sense. This is not to say that there are not numerous other schools of thought regarding the development of a human being.