From birth to old age, there are different stages of development and transitions. Supporting people well through each new stage is important.
Human development continues throughout our lives. We grow, and we change. It’s a normal process that’s reasonably predictable, because overall, most people tend to grow and develop at similar rates.
The average human life span falls into nine stages:
- prenatal development
- infancy and toddlerhood
- early childhood
- middle childhood
- adolescence
- early adulthood
- middle adulthood
- late adulthood
- dying and death.
We all go through some extraordinary transitions which affect our bodies, behaviour, emotions, and social interactions. Our brain re-wires itself several times throughout a life time. We keep on changing, even if we like to think we’re always just the same.
Learning about the different ages and stages helps us to understand ourselves better, and others too. We can see how people’s needs change at different points in their life. We can also become more attuned and responsive to the needs of any children, teens, or elders in our care. We can begin to see things from their point of view more. The stages, in other words, give us some helpful points of reference, as we observe people maturing, and to give them support along the way.
The transitions between any of these stages can be difficult and challenging for the individual and for their whānau and friends. For example, navigating from middle childhood to adolescence, with the accompanying physical, hormonal, emotional, mental and social changes, is confusing for the individual and those around them.
Understanding the different stages can also help us to recognise signs of concern. If developmental problems are detected early, intervention can begin sooner, which makes for better outcomes. For example, there may be some developmental delay in a young child who needs support to speak. A teenager may struggle to relate with peers and need some socialising skills, or an older person might emotionally struggle when all their children leave the home and they need a new sense of purpose to ward off depression.
Through every age and stage there are some things we will all always need. We need to have our basic physical requirements met, be safe from harm, have good connections with others, love and belonging, and be able to develop our personal and cultural identities and strengths. We also need support from others when we are in distress.
Our families, whānau and communities are the most resilient when people can support each other’s needs well, through every age and stage.
FAQs
However, there are four main types of resilience that we must cultivate in order to support ourselves during difficult times. These include physical resilience, mental resilience, emotional resilience, and social resilience.
What are the 5 C's of resilience? ›
My review produced “5 Cs of resilience”: confidence/control, connections, commitment, calmness, and care for self. As a psychiatrist, I have worked with physicians in distress for 25 years. For most of that time, I focused interventions primarily on pathology: recognizing, responding to, and solving problems.
What are the 4 pillars of resilience? ›
Resilience is the ability to function well in the face of adversity. The DLA resilience model has four pillars: mental, physical, social and spiritual; balancing these four components help strengthen your life. Mental: The ability to effectively cope with mental stressors and challenges.
What are the 5 points of resilience? ›
I discussed the five factors that are important to develop resilience: connection to others, communication, confidence, competence and commitment, and control.
What are the 4 steps of resilience? ›
What is the Thrive Cycle of Resilience? There are four stages we transition through in coping with adversity, and the Thrive Cycle of Resilience, drawn from humanistic psychology, outlines four psychological stages of coping with change and adversity: Survive, Adapt, Recover, and Thrive.
What are the 4 types of resilience and examples? ›
There are four types of resilience: physical resilience, mental resilience, emotional resilience and social resilience. These types arise when we face major life problems, situational problems and daily problems. Major life problems are what most people think of when they think of resilience. Death of a loved one.
What are the 4 R's of resilience? ›
Resilience has been described in several ways, such as the 'four Rs' (Robustness, Redundancy, Rapidity and Resourcefulness) (Bruneau et al., 2003), which primarily reflect capabilities of a system to absorb and recover from disturbances (Minsker et al., 2015) .
What are the 4 C's of resilience? ›
The “4Cs model” of mental toughness was developed by my colleagues and I, and is the most widely used model for defining and measuring mental toughness. It comprises four components: confidence, control, commitment and challenge.
What are the 4 Ps of resilience? ›
You'll learn about the evidence underpinning the approach and how the 4Ps of parents, peers, problem-solving and passion can be used as a framework for promoting resilience in the children in your care using a very simple action planning template which focuses on both risk and protective factors.
What are the 3 categories of resilience? ›
There are three general classes of resilience models — compensatory, protective, and challenge — that explain how resilience factors operate to alter the trajectory from risk exposure to negative outcome (Fergus and Zimmerman, 2005).
Tips to improve your resilience
- Get connected. Building strong, healthy relationships with loved ones and friends can give you needed support and help guide you in good and bad times. ...
- Make every day have meaning. ...
- Learn from the past. ...
- Stay hopeful. ...
- Take care of yourself. ...
- Take action.
Resilience is related to self-management and efficient utilization of energy resources across four domains; physical, emotional, mental and spiritual (Fig. 3).
