Task Summary

To consolidate your knowledge of the impact of childhood experience and to evaluate the impact of lifelong experience on personality and human development, you are required to reflect on your own childhood experience. You will be required to identify and reflect upon two (2) of your own developmental milestones (one from childhood and one from adulthood), and provide a critical reflection that describes your experiences, then write about them in light of developmental theories studied. Please see the Task Instructions for more details.

Context

This assessment will facilitate your application of lifespan theories to the practical situations you may encounter in your role as a counsellor. It will assist you in developing the capacity to be self-reflexive around your childhood experiences and to appreciate your own lifespan development.

Task Instructions

For this assessment, you are required to write a reflective essay about the way your own childhood experiences have affected your personal development.

1. First, you must identify and describe two (1) significant personal developmental milestones. One from your early childhood and another from adulthood.
2. Next, consider an important event from your adult life for which you have an adequate explicit memory: finding and holding a long-term job, having children, raising children through a key developmental period (such as adolescence), developing a committed relationship, embracing a mid-life change, coming out as a sexual minority, and so forth. Equally, overcoming some trauma or adversity (including significant loss) with the outcome of greater selfempowerment would be relevant.
3. Then, using evidence, critically analyse how the milestones you experienced in your early years affected your development in later stages of life, with relation to the event you considered in step2. Each milestone is to be analysed with reference to bio‐psycho-social, political and cultural influences, how they impacted your life-course and how you have learnt from them. This should include the decisions faced, changes that occurred, chances you did or did not have and choices you made. Please make reference of the developmental theories discussed during the subject as part of your reflection.