Tamzy Hopwood's Life

1. INFANCY & TODDLERHOOD

1.1. Physical Development: Birthweight has doubled by the age of 5 months. By 12 months, birth weight has tripled. By age of 2 the head is only 1/5 of the babies body length. I was shorter and smaller than the avg. baby boy but this is normal in females.

1.2. Cognitive Development: Born with many more neurons than are required, unneccesary ones are "pruned down". Enriched environments are vital in brain development and necessary in infants. Sensorimotor stage with six substages under are the earliest form of cognitive development. These are all invloving coordination and actions earlier in dvelopment.

1.3. Personality Development: As babies begin to age, they develop their personalities based upon their surroundings and those who they are surrounded with. They begin to smile and laugh, you can make funny faces at them and they will try to mimick you. Very obsessed with their reflection and mirrors, don't understand that it is them they are looking at. At the age of 12 they begin to develop a sense of self-awareness and also a good or bad temperment. At this age I was very animated and loved to play peek-a-boo with my older siblings. I liked to walk all around the house with my siblings hands.

2. PRESCHOOL YEARS

2.1. Physical Development: Between the ages of 2 and 6, growth varies greatly across the boards. In order to ensure proper growth and health they are putting a big emphasis on proper nutrition. This is also to ensure that all those little colds which are inevitable to avoid in public schools remain just that, colds. Living out in the middle of nowhere, we didn't get the luxary of being able to eat out lots. We always had my mothers homecooked meals, my favorite being meat and potatos. She did ensure though that us kids and my father all had our fair share of veggies and never kept junk food around the house. Only the delicious homemade goods that she would make, ensuring that we had adaquate nutrition.

2.2. Cognitive Development: The brain is the fastest growing part of the body, the brain spurts which we see are directly linked to advances in cognitive development and fine motor skills. At this age I was the little girl on the playground who was eating dirt and worms. Growing up with three older brothers I was a major tom boy.

2.3. Personality Development: Children are starting to branch out and form relationships with other peers. They have developed a vocabulary now and depending on their adult influences in their lives can bring great humor to teachers and other. This is where teaching the behavior in which you desire comes into play. The way in which they change there play on a day to day even hourly basis relies on there understanding of themselves. I loved to dance around the kitchen on top of my daddy's toes, and also clinging on to everyones leg and having them walk with me.

3. MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

3.1. Physical Development: In elementary school children grow approximately 2-3 inches per year. Nutrition is still of the upmost importance, it not only affects physical growth but social and emotional functioning. Childhood obesity is a big deal right now and adult obesity even worse. It all start when they are young though. There have been studies done that say you can prevent childhood obesity by breast feeding as the nutrients are delivered in a smaller and lower amount.

3.2. Cognitive Development: This is all about promoting active participation through classroom practices. Activities should involve interaction with others, whether it be peers, or adult supervisors which can all promote cognitive growth. This is also where operational thought comes into play, for example the amount of liquid between two glasses of water and how changing the size of the glass confuses them. Gifted and talented is a huge program in this age of development. I was actually in gifted and talented for one year of school and i'm not sure how much more enrichment I got out of it. We mainly worked on crafts.

3.3. Personality Development: This is when we start to develop a psychological part of our self. We tend to describe ourselves in terms of internal skills which we posess instead of motor skills of which younger children do. Self-esteem is at its huge height right now and starts to decline around the age of 12. Girls start to view morality as willingness to sacrifice themselves for others which they care about and gain a sense of responsibility toward others. In my middle childhood I was very social and loved making crafts for other people.

4. NEWBORN

4.1. Physical Development: 7 lbs. 8 Ounces; 20 inch. Reflexes develop, ex: coughing, rooting, blinking; Passed meconium; didn't have to endure circumcision!!!

4.2. Cognitive Development: Operant conditioning is huge right now and adults get a kick out of it; babies are developing full hearing; sensitive to touch; start to understand if they cry they get attention

4.3. Personality Development: Since babies sleep alot right now they don't have a ton of personality, parents usually refer to them as easy/hard babies; I was an angel and let anyone hold me!

5. Personality Development: This is when most peoples midlife crisis happens, which I am not looking forward to in the least. This is also when you go through the big five changes in personality traits. The major ups and downs in marriage occur in this area and the highest rate of divorce occurs in middle adulthood. I hope that once I get married divorce will never even come into question. This is also why I am tentative in relationships now because I don't want to make a huge mistake. A huge impact on personality in this area can stem from having to deal with a sandwhich generation or possible spouse abuse in your relationship. I want to have hobbies at this point in time, also have a good herd of cattle established and a nice chunk of land.

6. DEATH

6.1. Physical Development: At this point your body has reached the maximum reduction which it is going to face and no matter what you do you can't change the current situation. Brain death will happen if you are intutionalized in a hospital. When I get to this point I am hoping that I will die at home in my sleep and not under a microscope with a bunch of machines hooked up to me surrounded by mourning family. Obviously you would know it was coming which would make you less anxious and bring your stress level down allowing you to enjoy the rest of your time wonderfully.

6.2. Cognitive Development: None, since your dead.

6.3. Personality Development: As I talked about before I want to have the luxary of dying in my own home and of nothing other than old age. I hope to have enough money saved up so that I have done all of the things I have wanted to and have no regrets.

7. LATE ADULTHOOD

7.1. Phyiscial Development: Primary and secondary aging occurs, but depedning on how you have lived your life previous to that you can adjust the amount of aging which occurs. Wrinkled skin, decreasing height, potential osteoporosis, which can be treated. Women face the norm of trying to hide their aging through dying their hair and excessive makeup, even go to the extent of plastic surgery and botox. The space between the brain and the skull has gradually increase from age 20-70. As the brain shrinks it uses less oxygen and reduces the blood flow. I hope that by the decisions which I make now will only help me when I get older to age easy and not too rough. I'd like to still look decently good and be a good looking grandmother. I also hope I don't have a humpback when I become old.

7.2. Cognitive Development: This also comes back to intelligence, some abilitys are definately going to decline with age, it's just the way the body works, normal wear and tear. Granted, the results of aging are not straight across the board, plasticity shows that changes that occur are not fixed. Environmental factors, information processing deficits, and biological factors all affect the slip of short term memory and also the lasting effect of long term memory.

7.3. Personality Development: Despair is one of the huge emotions which are expressed when relating to late adulthood. They get to thinking about what could have been and also about what they are going to miss out on in the future once they are gone, including grand/great grandkids. Gradual withdrawl can also happen in this stage since elders can feel that they are a burden and have nothing more to offer to those which they love. I hope that in this stage of my life I will still be at home with my husband and enjoying my grandkids and taking it all in. I would hope that in this point me and my husband have been enjoying our retirement to the fullest and seeing wonderful places all around the world.

8. ADOLESCENCE

8.1. Physical Development: Puberty ruined my childhood! Not really, but I absolutely loved being a little kid. I started my period in the 7th grade around the same time alot of my friends did. I was really afraid to use tampons and didn't use them for at least a year. More changes were body hair, acne, and boobs!! Also your hormones start going crazy and your self image becomes alot more concious. This is why alot of anorexia starts to appear in adolescence.

8.2. Cognitive Development: Neurons become more connected and pruning back continues making the adolescence more sophisticated although still immature. The prefrontal lobe, which doesn't develop until around the 20's which explains why impulse control is an issue at this age. I was a very impulsive teen and very outgoing, I think my motto at one point was, "try everything once!" It is important that teens get enough sleep, it is very hard though with all the excitement in high school going on. Lots of environmental and social factors can effect development at this point such as alcohol and tobacco abuse.

8.3. Personality Development: This is when teens start to try to figure out who they are and experimentaion begins, through expression of their clothes and hobbies. This can cause a change in friends, I changed friends groups three times throughout high school but still have at least one friend from each group. Also since their is so many changes goingn on and your hormones are trying to get back in balance adolescence attitudes are not always the best. I personally had a very strained relationship with my parents in high school due to alot of rebellion on my part. Adolescence's change their identity on a daily basis, gothic one day, cheerleader the next. This can all be due to who they are hanging out with or simply the boy they are merely crushing on.

9. MIDDLE ADULTHOOD

9.1. Physical Development: This is where the body starts to decline, not rapidly but there is definately some change. Around the age of 55 people start to gradually compress and their bone density begins to slowly decrease. Body fat does tend to increase, since height is not increasing this will increase the incidence of obesity. This is also when your senses start to decline such as vision and hearing. There is also the huge worry of that when people get older they begin to slow down, both physically and mentally. I hope that by trying to keep healthy and reasonably in shape right now I will be able to slow down my bone density destruction. This is also when many disease arise to the surface but by trying to stay healthy now hopefully I can decrese the occurance.

9.2. Cognitive Development: I hope that intelligence does not decrease with age. In my opinion, as you age you gain knowledge of life and elders whould be greatly respected and their knowledge highly sought after. This may also vary from ethnicity to ethnicity for example, in african american's the elders are thought very highly of, this is not so common in the U.S. Memory however has been proven to start to decrease with age. One of my biggest fears is that I will lose all my wonderful memories from my childhood throughout my life. Although even now some memories have faded and grown blurry, I still know my life and what I have been through.

10. EARLY ADULTHOOD

10.1. Physical Development: Physical development is now complete as well as maturation. Sadly, I have obtained my full height. The main concern at this point and age is maintaining a healthy weight, eating healthy in order to ensure overall health, and attempting to excersise a reasonable amount. Things that can take a toll are stress which goes hand in hand with college! The way in which you deal with stress is called coping and whether you cope in a negative or positive way. Sometimes after a hard week of classes I just need to blow off some steam and get a little wild which is fine, as long as it's not an everyday occurance!

10.2. Cognitive Development: As mentioned above, maturation is supposed to be complete at this point in life, but I think this stage is a huge age gap. I know that I am more towards the low end of this age group and I know some kids my age who haven't reached maturity yet.In early adulthood, there is two ways of intelligence, practical and emotional intelligence. College and marriage are a huge part of cognitive development in early adulthood one of which I am familiar with and marriage which I hope will happen in the next 5ish years.

10.3. Personality Development: Part of personality development is seeing intimacy whether it be through friendships or more serious relationships. It can involve choosing who you think is right for you, what kind of attachment styles you have in various relationships. What goes along with that is also after marriage and choosing to have a family after that, and also picking an occupation. I hope that in my future, I have a large family, 4-5 kids, and also be able to support them and have the ability to live the life I want to lead. Have a job working for a big cattle ranch and work my way up.