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Several
of the developmental psychologists whose articles I cited in my lectures on
early childhood development summarized that during their first six years
children developed the 'blueprints' that would shape much of their behavior and
thought patterns into and through adulthood. These 'blueprints' are developed
by two primary methods: modeling and instruction. Adults teach children by
precept and example, example being by far the most powerful.
Little
children are 'knowledge sinks’; they absorb almost everything in their
environment of which they are conscious, even things they do not initially
understand. These pieces of knowledge are incorporated into their brains along
with motor and language skills, and are just as permanent. As children develop,
these basic structures are modified by age and experience but seldom discarded.
(One never forgets how to ride a bicycle no matter how many years pass between
the initial learning experience in childhood and getting on a bike again after
a long hiatus.)
Imitation,
it has been said, is the highest form of praise. Toddlers are great mimics,
often surprising their observers with their 'adult-like' gestures and as they
become more socially adroit, by their speech inflections, gestures, and
actions. They learn very quickly and make the assumption as they do that
everything they model is right and proper because they as yet have no standards
for evaluation. Later when they act out an inappropriate behavior modeled from
an adult, are stricken when chastised. They do not understand the clichéd
parental admonition, "Do as I say, not as I do!" Everything that a
child sees a parent do is fact, little modified by explanation. (How often as
an adult have you said or done something that you regretted because you
recognized you are sounding or acting like one of your parent's whose behavior
you resented or disliked? "I sound just like my father—and I don't want
to!" "I am acting just like my mother always did under similar
circumstances—and it always angered me!"
We
often try to teach (tell) children in this age group right from wrong, good
from bad. But these 'lessons' have little relevance unless they are tied to
concrete experience. Take for example teaching a child something is hot and
therefore not to be touched. In one of my former incarnations, I hosted a
social action radio program. During an episode, one of my guests was Russell
Means, at that time head of AIM, the American Indian Movement. During a heated
discussion with a Catholic nun about the differences in the way Native
Americans and the majority of non-natives instructed their children, he used
this example. Positing a fire in a fireplace, he said that when a non-native
child approached the fire, an object of fascination, the caregiver grabbed the
child before it could get too close and sternly told the child that the fire
was hot and therefore dangerous. The native caregiver allowed the child to get
much closer to the fire realizing that a normal child's reflex to the
increasing heat (discomfort) would stop the child before the child could be
burned. As the child reacted in fear, the native caregiver comforted the child
and delivered the message of hot at the same time. The non-native caregiver
frustrated and angered the child by taking it away from the object of its
fascination, the 'hot' message having little meaning without the experience.
The native child learned to respect the fire, the non-native child learned to
resent the caregiver.
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