In stage 3, crisis of initiative versus guilt is based on the belief of a child being active, energetic, into everything.

It requires the parent to offer the proper measure of force to further the child’s learning what they are practically capable of doing. “Restrain” in a sense of having limitation action, exists in the disabled condition and signals for proactive, instead of active responses from people to allow a disabled person to develop that sense of who they want to become. In stage 4 there were issues of control underlying the presentation of skills as a child’s world broadens into the school setting. In this stage, Erickson determines industry as the skill of culture as the action to be followed by achieving the goal in the bigger world, for example doing reading, writing, mathematics. In this kind of setting negative cultural beliefs about disability start to affect further in the development of skills required for upcoming roles in life.

A task that develops a sense of competence for disabled people has been concentrated by medical and rehabilitation on the removal of functional limitations that cannot be changed. The industry has aimed to recreate normal ways of doing things, besides achieving larger social goals.