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As a helper, it is important to identify why the client is seeking your services and how you can support them in achieving their short and/or long term goals. In middle and late adulthood, many parts of an individual's identity are established. Some adults will have already started and been working in a career for sometime. Some adults may have already started a family. At this point in life, people may also experience many transitions. The divorce rate is high in the United States. They may be unsatisfied with their current job or job opportunities. Some mothers or fathers may be returning into the work force after spending some time out and raising their children. Understand that each individual life will have background and experiences that bring them into our office. Meet them where they are and work hard to establish a strong relationship. Offer client centered treatment, be empathetic, and continue to learn about your profession and development so you can best support your clients.

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A valuable and important part of life is establishing and maintaining close personal relationships. In adulthood, the number of these relationships as well as the diversity of them typically increases.
Marriage and families are one example of close personal relationships. Friendships also start to form with coworkers, neighbors, and other individuals from clubs, churches, and through mutual friends.

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Physical health peaks for individuals  in their 20s. Middle and late adulthood can still be a healthy time for individuals and they can continue to enjoy life.

As adults continue to age, hearing and vision undergo a gradual decline. Health problems may surface such as high blood pressure. Muscle strength and stamina may start to decline.

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As adults collect more life experiences, their crystallized intelligence increases. Middle and late adulthood marks a time of knowledge accumulation. This accumulation is typically less formal, as opposed to the formal education set out in youth. Cognitive abilities such as working memory, storage, and retrieval still work well and individuals contribute to their work, families, and communities.

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Personality characteristics are relatively stable but life presents many experiences and changes that require adults to adapt.

Age-graded Change: Change that results as a function of time. This included physical changes (skin wrinkles, decline in sensory ability (hearing/vision)

Cognitive Change: Crystallized intelligence is knowledge that typically accumulates overtime. Fluid intelligence include processing speeds and this type of intelligence is more likely to decline as individuals age.

Life Course Changes: Many theorists have published works on the predictable sequences of change throughout life. While life introduces many different experiences to adults, there is still some consistency in development.

History-graded changes: These are changes that impact an entire group, or cohort and their development.

Nonnormative changes: unexpected events; including accidents or unexpected death of a loved one. This is a change that can alter development significantly.

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The Family Life Cycle is a stake-like sequence in development. Early works are based on traditional marital and family life cycles and include marriage or significant relationships. The cycle is reflective of the changes of the family over time, as the demand “ebb and flow”.

Intimate relationships include the “mutual sharing of joys and sorrows, reaching compromises, and working out problems”

Family Life Cycle Marriages/Relationships “change as partners age and the demands of family life ebb and flow”

The visual include the approximate number of year spent in each stage.

1. Married Couples (without children).

2. Childbearing Families (Oldest child, birth–30 months).

3. Families with Preschool Children (Oldest child 30 months–6 years).

4. Families with Schoolchildren (Oldest child 6–13 years).

5. Families with Teenagers (Oldest child 13–20 years).

6. Families as Launching Centers (First child gone to last child leaving home).

7. Middle-aged Parents (Empty nest to retirement).

8. Aging Family Members (Retirement to death of both spouses).

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Life span theories focus on nature and nurture. Adult development is complex and a multidimensional model is needed to try and understand the processes of change. The cognitive and socioemotional functioning of adults continues as they age and adapting is important throughout an entire lifespan. Development is essentially the process of adapting to the influences in life.

Examples of Adapting components
1. Growth

2. Maintenance/Resiliency

3. Regulation of loss

Life span development theories identify that each of the three processes are a component of development.