Child Development Case Study

Is it right to tell an adult if you know that a friend is about to commit a crime? While you ponder on this question about morality. Imagined that the child who’s willing to commit the crime is your child and the one person that might be the only witness to the crime is your child best friend. This is my case study about a nine year old boy who faces his own moral dilemma at the early stages of his cognitive and moral development. Should he tell on his best friend and be a labeled as “tattletale” by his peers or do the right thing and tell on his friend because someone is going to get hurt by his friend action. I am going to apply both Piaget and Kohlberg theory on the stages of moral development as it relates to my case study. Many theories have been developed over the years to explain the development of human beings and the manner in which both nature and nurture interact to influence the ways in which humans, think, and behave (zanden, Crandell & Crandell , 2007, pg 336). While Lawrence Kohlberg, focus his theories on the moral development of moral judgments proposed that as children mature they are able to think about right and wrong terms of reciprocal activities an then progresses to conventional thinking where they began to think in terms of important group members such as parents, teachers or friends before moving to a society-maintaining orientation of following laws and regulations(zanden, Crandell & Crandell , 2007, pg 337). Jean piaget, identified two stages of moral development typical in children in middle childhood. Piaget describes Children in this stage of development are in the stage of heteronomy (moral realism) and as the child matures on his/her thinking on moral issues this than changes to that of the autonomy stage (moral relativism) (zanden, Crandell & Crandell , 2007, pg 336). No one single theory can account for an explanation of the complexity of the human experience. Yet each one is important in helping us understand how human s grow and develop from infancy to adulthood. One of the best ways to help in understanding of these many theories is to apply them within the actual life experience of a person .This paper examines a fictional character named Marcus “aka B-baller” Richardson, a nine year old boy who is intelligent, respectful and obedient and has big dreams faces his own moral dilemma when his best friend, Tyrone, brought a gun to school. The incident took place on the school playground. Earlier that morning Tyrone was bragging to Marcus about a gun that he found hidden in his dad’s closet. During recess Tyrone, when no one was looking Tyrone showed Marcus the gun. Marcus, being both scared and excited wanted to hold the gun because he never held a real gun before and he started to point the gun at some kids on the playground while making gunshot noises. All the movies he watched started to play in his mind. While fantasizing about the gun he can also hear his parents telling me how guns are bad and they kill innocent people. He envisioned his school and community awareness on promoting stop the violence . During that same day something unexpected happened. After recess, while in the hallway Marcus, ran into Xavier, a bully that no one likes in school. They exchange some mean words and Tyrone was part of this