Baltes' Characteristics of Life Span Development

Okay.

So, Baltus, this is from an article in 1987, and I'm sure you've been exposed to it quite a bit relative to the text that you're using.

But I think that it bears just kind of covering again as it relates to thinking about the people that you work with.

We have a tendency to kind of conceptualize human development in a kind of narrow way.

For example, Freud's perception was, you know, by the time you were, you know, a boy, just prior to adolescence, a lot of the important emotional development would have occurred already.

And if you look even at Piaget's model, when you're looking at adolescence and the adolescent goes into that formal operation, which is the capacity for abstract thought, the idea is there's not a whole lot more growth that happens cognitively.

Baltus was trying to challenge some of those perspectives that said that most of the major growth happens early on and brought a lifespan perspective, the idea that we grow and change throughout our entire lives.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we grow and change in the same kinds of ways, but that that's a different way to think about who we are as people and human beings.

So that's the first characteristic is that it's lifelong, it's lifelong, the second is that it's multidimensional.

It includes cognitive, emotional, social, physical, all sorts of different ways to frame it, and you've got, of course, the medical field pursuing the physical end of things, you've got the psychologists pursuing the the emotional, socio-emotional, you've got the professional counselors, the social workers, the marriage and family therapist pursuing the relational piece, the social piece in terms of the kinds of therapeutic services that they provide.

So you've you've got a broad range of disciplines that also investigate or look at these different dimensions.

Lifespan growth and development is also multi-directional.

Early on, you've got a huge growth taking place, physical growth, cognitive growth, if you take a look at those six sub-stages of an infant's cognitive development in Piaget, it's pretty dramatic how they go from one stage to the next, just in infancy alone.

But the point here is that growth and development is multi-directional.

I'm standing here before you, a 60-something old fella, right?

Well, I used to be able to bench press 300 pounds.

In my heyday, right?

I'm not even going to guess what I could bench press.

I haven't seen a bench press in a long time.

Right, I hit 40 and what happens to my eyes?

I got to get reading glasses.

So, down some some loss, if you will, of capabilities as you continue to get older.

So, there's lots of ways that you could frame this notion of multi-directional.

We typically think as the person ages and moves beyond young adulthood, usually.

You hit your physical peak somewhere around 30.

Is what they say.

And I realize, you know, 60 is the new 40.

But it sure doesn't feel like that to me.

Right, so multi-directional.

Now, if I have any issue with Baltus, it's the choice of the word plastic to refer to human development.

Why he would choose that word to describe the processes that go on because it's it's not.

It just feels not human, right?

I don't know about you.

I think there would have, you know, I don't know what the term is that you should use to describe it, but the the point here is that he's trying to talk about how you can have gradual and continuous change and sometimes have dramatic discontinuous change.

The way to think about that is let's let's contrast the later portion of childhood when they're they're growing.

But it's typically not that dramatic, in fact, that's probably when they first begin to get a a sense of their own body image.

Fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade.

There's a coordination that takes hold.

They have kind of a perspective kids do about who they are.

Physically.

But then puberty kicks in.

And I don't know about you, but looking at adolescence is like going to the circus, I mean, you've got kids with their five foot six with a size 22 shoe, I mean, or you've got the the girls with the big long legs and this itty-bitty short trunk.

But there's this this just explosion of growth that takes place.

And I didn't mean any disrespect by referencing the circus, but I think you know what I mean in terms of how, you know, how tough that is, and that's part of the reason I think for adolescence, it's such a challenge.

Because all of a sudden, who they knew themselves to be as a child in the fourth, fifth, sixth grade is beginning to change in ways that challenge their own identity or their own perspective about who they are.

But I'll be doggone if I would frame that as plastic.

I don't think that I would conceptualize it that way.

But hey, we're going to give Baltus his due.

And that's the the word that he uses to describe this continuous kind of gradual growth versus dramatic growth and change in a short, relatively short period of time.

The area that I probably want to spend the most time is on the contextual influences in terms of lifespan development.

He breaks it down into age-graded influences, history-graded influences, and non-normative life events.

Age-graded influences, you've already heard some examples of that when I talked about turning 40.

Right?

And you'll hear a lot of people say that when they turn 40.

For whatever reason, there seems to be some loss as it relates to their visual acuity.

Same thing as I continue to get older.

And I don't think I can blame this on listening to loud music.

Although maybe a little bit in my younger years.

But my hearing is not as great.

Right?

Age-graded.

Age-graded, you could talk about as it relates to kids in art culture.

All are in preschool around the same age.

They're in kindergarten around the same age.

They go through first holy communion around the same age.

There are areas of development that happen in a context relative to their age.

Same thing if we talk about the high school.

Graduating from high school, right around 17, 18.

Graduating from college, 21, 22.

Right?

Now, in fact, we we have to rework some of those contexts because things change.

For example, the age of first marriage now is in the late 20s.

It used to be much, much younger.

But people are are waiting.

But that's the context.

That's what's happening now.

And there are influences when you are out of that context.

If you go to school a little sooner or you go a little later.

There's a certain amount of strain that you feel when you are out of what the norm is supposed to be for your age.

And people are nodding, so.

I'm on.

We also have history-graded influences in terms of of growth and development.

First, we could talk about generational, right?

You guys are probably a little too young to have people in your life that went through the depression.

But when I was coming up, I mean, my grandparents and my friends' grandparents and my parents were kids during the depression.

And there's a certain kind of mentality.

I saw a lot of hoarding on the part of some of the the people that I was familiar with.

And hoarding things that you wouldn't typically think of hoard.

I mean, it could be boxes and newspapers and containers.

And the the comment would be, you never know when you might need something.

And so people would keep those things.

Same thing with stuffing money in a mattress or doing some things that we would think of is very strange.

But there's a historical basis for it.

And you can move forward with that.

You could talk about the Cold War.

You could talk about the Vietnam War.

You know, the kids in my generation, when when I was that age, we became very mistrustful of government.

Right or wrong, we we thought that government was making decisions that weren't necessarily in our best interest.

Right, there was a context that influenced the the perspective that people had.

We can move forward to 9/11.

And the the notion of how security that we took for granted relative to our country was impacted.

I can remember I was teaching a class when.

Not right at when it happened, I was actually in Harrisburg at the time, but when I got back, went into the classroom and people were they were stunned.

Remember we were talking about Satir's stages of change and the chaos that can come when a foreign element happens.

Well, in this instance, the foreign element was the notion of bringing the towers down with those planes, we we couldn't understand that.

And that has impacted this generation in the way that you approach life.

Much more security conscious than we had been prior to that.

And now, on top of that, we've got all of these shootings going on.

Granted, the the most recent one in San Bernardino looks to be the the first that's really terrorist related, although you could talk about the others as terrorists.

Our sense of safety and security is very different in in the present.

That's a history-graded influence.

When when things are going on that way.

And then finally, we've got non-normative life events.

Things that can happen that really impact.

Things that you typically don't think of.

We could, I remember in Albion, we had the tornadoes come through in 1985.

I was a part of a disaster response team that got sent out that night.

And I mean, there were deaths, we had 11 deaths.

The place was absolutely destroyed.

Non-normative life event.

For six months afterward, we provided some counseling services to those residents.

Because they were really impacted and the kids were struggling anytime there was a storm or the threat of a storm.

They were worried that the tornado was coming back.

It impacted not only the community, but their their sense of who they were.

Non-normative life events.

I I remember having a referral of a truck driver.

Had a a big burly guy, the typical truck driver.

Really was only there because his company sent him.

He was concerned that he might lose his job.

But he had just been in an accident.

Wasn't his fault.

It was a windy road up in New York.

And what ended up happening is he was on, you know, coming home from a long haul.

And was foggy.

Teenagers were out partying and drinking.

Was in a pickup truck.

And they hit head-on.

And it was a very vivid experience for him because when they hit head-on, his truck sat up high.

The pickup was kind of a low rider, been kind of redone.

And it actually went over top of the pickup truck.

And he could not get the sound of shearing metal out of his head, nor the screams or cries of the teenagers that were in the vehicle.

And I mean, this guy was.

I mean, he's he was just big, burly, kind of a lumberjack looking fella.

And sitting there.

An absolute mess, I mean, in distress, tearful.

Couldn't put two sentences together without tearing up.

And that's a non-normative life event.

In this instance, even though he knew it was not his fault.

He was cleared.

He could not get back into his truck.

It took us a number of months of doing some at that time, it was critical incident stress debriefing.

Although now we know that doesn't work.

But that's the way that we were trained to handle those sorts of experiences.

And we would work together.

He would tell and retell the story, we would try to help him to give meaning to it that honored the lives of those that had been lost.

His role in it, not that he was necessarily responsible.

But it happened relative to his rig.

So we we talked about it.

But here's an example of a non-normative life event.

A traumatic one.

You can make them smaller and still be non-normative.

We were talking about bullying.

Right?

I don't know.

I don't I don't think I want to frame bullying as normal, even though to a certain extent, I think most people have experienced being targeted by someone.

But I think that it is it has that kind of feel to it that this isn't the way that we should be experiencing relationships with other people.

So, and it'll it'll have long-term consequences.

In terms of there being anxiety, depression, and a certain kind of social distance, social withdrawal that'll happen for for folks.

So, non-normative life events.

This is helpful just in terms of thinking about when your clients come in.

Another template, right?

Where where are they?

You know?

How are they doing?

Do you think that they're managing and growing in and are kind of within whatever context you want to put it where they should be?