Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational, offer a helpful roadmap for understanding how human thought unfolds from infancy to adulthood. In the sensorimotor stage, children discover the world through movement and senses, laying the foundation of curiosity and problem-solving. During the preoperational stage, imagination blossoms, language expands, and symbolic thinking emerges, even though logic is still limited. The concrete operational stage brings the ability to reason systematically about tangible realities, giving children the tools to understand fairness, responsibility, and cause-and-effect. Finally, the formal operational stage allows for abstract reasoning, critical reflection, and the capacity to envision futures not yet lived. This framework has shaped how we teach, parent, and nurture health, reminding us that growth is a journey with distinct milestones, each worthy of respect and support. For educators, it inspires methods that meet children where they are, fostering confidence and intellectual risk-taking. For parents and caregivers, it emphasises patience and empathy, understanding that children’s reasoning is not flawed but simply developing. And for society, it underscores the value of investing in human potential across every stage of life, cultivating resilience, creativity, and wellbeing that ripple outward into stronger communities. Those who lack an eternal perspective will see the formal operations stage as the last, but there is a further stage that awaits us beyond the grave. It is described by Saint Paul thus: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known" (1 Corinthians 13:11,12). I guess we might call it the comprehensive operations stage.