Passing Thoughts

01.12.2011

- What makes up a person’s personality? How much of it is parental influence and how much is innate?

- Why and how do some children grow up to have a different set of values from their parents?

- It never ceases to amaze me that siblings can grow up under the same roof with the same parents and yet grow up to be completely different.

- What makes a child more sociable than another? How much of a child’s hesitancy to be social because of a parent’s fears and how much is it because it’s innate?

- Why could a parent have a more challenging relationship with one child than another?

Child Psychology: A Necessary Education

04.13.2010

Back in the fall of 2001, I was taking a child psychology class because I was considering going into teaching and thought I’d get some credential pre-reqs out of the way at the local JC.

This class transformed a lot in my way of thinking about children and the approach to their development. I passionately felt (and still do) that the class should be introduced to high school freshman and built upon for the next four years. There is so much information out there about the (psychological) development of a child starting from in utero through young adulthood. This particular class went up to the age of about 12, I think, and then later I took an adolescent psychology class which was an eye opener, as well.

I think that if teens are introduced to the basic knowledge of child psychology at a young age, a lot of questions would be answered because biology only covers a part of it and even though parents should be discussing sex with their children, let’s get real. That doesn’t really happen. I mean, I had “the talk” at age 7 with my mom when she was pregnant with my sister and even though I found it interesting, the last thing I wanted to discuss with my mother as a teen was the topic of sex.

But child psychology takes away the uncomfortable parts of “the talk” and approaches it from a developmental standpoint and offers discussions about how important a parent’s health is (mentally, physically and emotionally) and what happens to a newborn and how that changes in each subsequent month.

So many teenaged girls get pregnant not just out of ignorance but many of them choose to have and keep the baby because of religious reason and they have no idea what to expect. And, I’m sorry, their parents usually don’t know much themselves and so, a vicious cycle continues of not being properly educated with what is physiologically happening or going to happen.

For example, there are studies that show that a newborn can feel whether or not a mother wants him/her. Other studies show that the lack of being held as a newborn can lead to an attachment disorder later in life. The there’s other information about how a baby that is crawling has no concept of depth of space and danger and, if allowed to crawl on a table, will not realize that if he/she reaches the edge of a table, he/she will fall. Understanding where a child is developmentally at each stage, I think, can only make you a better, more understanding parent.

I’ve seen so many parents get angry at their children for doing basic things like grab items from a mom’s purse or off the shelf at a supermarket. Without properly knowing that a child figures out his/her world by grabbing, by touching, and even tasting, you just see a child doing an annoying act and, being stressed out, it’s easy to lose patience and call the child “stupid” for not knowing better. Now the child has been shamed and is learning that mom thinks he/she is stupid transferring all of this information into "fear." Fear of mom fear of not trying anything so as not to "look stupid."

So many people are afraid of education but it really is power and it really expands your understanding of the world around us. I wish more people would see that.

Innocence Lost

04.12.2010

I often think about the innocence that’s lost when we become adults. As children, we’re entitled to dream big, often encouraged by adults, and we believe in endless possibilities and in the goodness of people. At what point does that all evaporate? At some point, our hearts become hardened and we become more cynical than when we were younger. We also tend to lose our ability to dream. We become so focused on what’s “practical," so focused on how much money we don’t have or lamenting decisions that we made or didn’t make. It seems that getting older should make us wiser but it seems that it often makes us sadder or more cold-hearted. I suppose having kids would make someone’s heart softer or allow the adult to act silly again for the sake of the child. But what about the ability to dream? Or the notion that there’s good in all people regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion? Children are born innocent and learn certain behavior and beliefs from the adults that raise them or around them. Our own lives and how they shape out, and where we are at the particular point in our lives when we start having children, dictates how we’re going to raise our children.

In other words, if a woman is greatly unhappy with her life when she starts having kids, that unhappiness is going to dictate how she raises her kids. She might take out her anger at herself and her life on her children that, in turn, it will shape the kinds of people they become. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the mother (or parents) who are in a relatively good place in their lives (emotionally, financially, mentally, etc.) and the support they’re able to give their child will shape the person that child becomes. I mean, this isn’t news and is part of basic child psychology. But it seems to me that we think so little of this part of child development and, yet, it’s one of the biggest deciding factors to aid in a child’s development. It’s a little detail that has huge repercussions either way you look at it. I wish people paid more attention to it.