Piaget's stage of preoperational thought occurs between the ages of two and seven. During this stage, children have begun to use language as a means of communicating. This language, however, tends to be egocentric, showing how the children assume that everything is how they see it. Children at the beginning of this stage learn to use symbols as representation of everyday things, and soon develop the ability to symbolize with people through role playing. Although children at this stage are a long way away from being as advanced as adults, they are fairly intelligent considering they are merely a few years old. I saw first hand how children at this stage think and act by observing them in the classroom setting.
             In observing my niece Aliyah, age three, and her classmates James, almost three, and Lindsay, just two, I was able to truly understand how a child in the beginning of Piaget's preoperational stage thinks and acts. I was able to observe many examples of how children at this age are egocentric. Egocentrism explains how the child assumes that everyone else sees the world around them as they do. They don't understand other perspectives. For example, when the group was tracing the letters of their names, I noticed that Aliyah told the child next to her that she was doing it wrong and that she has to do it the way she was. Aliyah doesn't understand that there are other ways to do things and that just because the girl traced differently than her, doesn't mean that it was wrong. I also noticed egocentrism in the sense that the children don't understand that another person has feelings that are just as important as their own. They tend to be selfish in that they don't understand when they hurt someone else's feelings, that as long as they are alright everyone else is okay with the situation as well. For example, Lindsay took a blue crayon from James not caring that he had it first and that he wa...