The Pre-Operational Phase

Piaget (Botha et al., 1990: 265) calls this the pre-operational phase as operational thinking is not yet present. The brain of a child, an adolescent and an adult are all at difference stages of development. A child thinks differently from that of an adolescent and an adult will not display the same thinking patterns as an adolescent.

However, to bring it all together with what happens in the ADHD brain and the lagging in development up to 3 years with maturity only reach between the ages of 26 and 30. We will tell our adolescent child to stop acting as a child and our adult spouse to stop acting like an adolescent. We may be using this tone of voice because we are angry but we don’t know how close we are to speaking the truth.

Preconceptual thought (2 – 4 years)

(insert lesson)

Intuitive thought (4 – 7 years)