The psychology of children

On the need to focus on childhood events in conjunction with developmental theories for a comprehensive psychology of children

Child psychology is associated with the social and personal development of children and a child goes through several stages before entering the adult world. The psychology of children has been studied from various perspectives, including questions of nature and nurture and whether the child is a product of genes and heredity or a product of society and environment, as well as different stages of development. development of sensory perception and discrimination, emotional expression and learning through language and cognitive development, the development of intelligence and the socialization process. The study of infantile sexuality and sexual and moral development are also very important, especially from a psychoanalytic point of view.

Children are vulnerable and easily affected by all the events in their immediate environment. Events that are trivial or unimportant to adults can leave deep scars or memories in a child’s mind. A child’s mind is extremely impressionable and changeable and before a child reaches adolescence, certain very insignificant events can have great personal significance in a child’s life. So ‘childhood memories’ and ‘childhood events’ are primary factors in determining the personality pattern of the adult. Some important factors that can affect a child’s later development and have potential long-term effects are:

1. Loss or gain of a friend or friends
2. Memorable physical/body sensations
3. Separation in the family or divorce of the parents
4. Abuse or domestic violence
5. Sexual harassment or abuse
6. Learning experiences either in the game or during the study
7. Personal experiences/events that evoked strong emotions of fear, joy, sadness, etc.
8. Accidents or illnesses experienced or observed
9. Death of relatives, neighbors or relatives
10. Change of residence or relocation
11. Affective relationships with friends, teachers or relatives
12. Personal success or failure in school
13. Influence of movies, stories, books or news
14. War, terrorism, conflicts, bomb attacks, etc.
15. Natural calamities such as earthquakes, floods, famine, etc.

The factors here are very general and each child goes through some very specific events that affect them individually, although there are some very general theories in psychology that have been established through research studies and these theories have highlighted the links between success or failure. failure in later life. and childhood events. Some of the leading child development theorists include John Bowlby, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Lev Vygotsky. While Bowlby emphasized infantile relationships, Piaget focused on the child’s cognitive development through various stages, and Freud wrote extensively on the sexual development of children. Kohlberg studied the moral development of children while Vygotsky analyzed the process of socialization of children through social contextualism. All these theories about different aspects of child development only demonstrate the immense complexity and the varied number of factors that often play a role in the psychological development of children. There are many dimensions to the psychology of children, from social, emotional to cognitive, sexual, and moral. Here I will provide a brief overview of all of these different theories and finally provide a full discussion on how these theories might be used in conjunction with the general factors listed above in the study of child psychology.

John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, developed ‘attachment theory’ in which he emphasized the importance of a mother or primary caregiver in a child’s life. He demonstrated in his study that any baby must develop and maintain a warm and intimate relationship with the mother or surrogate mother and that any maternal deprivation can lead to serious mental health problems in the child later in life. Bowlby’s theory is very true and a mother must develop a strong physical and emotional intimacy with the child by being physically close to the child at least until the child is 2 years old. Doctors all over the world have recommended breastfeeding and an important part of this is the physical closeness between the child and the mother, which is extremely necessary once the child is outside the womb. When the child emerges from the mother’s womb, the first emotion is fear, and the continued physical closeness of the mother instills trust and a sense of security in the child. Orphaned children or children separated from their mothers at birth require a surrogate or may grow up mentally ill or maladjusted.

Freud, on the other hand, provided a complete psychosexual theory and emphasized what many of us do not like to believe: the sexual pleasure of children. Freud overturned the concept of childhood innocence and suggested that we are born with our basic unrepressed instincts that slowly temper with social adaptation. Freud believed that the inherent pleasure-seeking desires we are born with are centered in certain erogenous zones of the body, and consequently there are different stages of psychosexual development, from oral and anal to phallic, latent, and genital stages. In psychosexual development, the child’s pleasure-seeking behavior changes from the mouth, such as sucking and biting, to the anus, through toilet training, and finally to the genitals. Thus, according to psychoanalysis, the child derives complete sexual pleasure from sucking, biting, playing with the genitals, and releasing waste during defecation. I do not necessarily endorse Freud’s views on children’s sexual pleasure, and pleasure derived from bodily sensations could be explained in other ways, as I will discuss in another article.

Jean Piaget, a French-Swiss philosopher, established the theory of cognitive development in children and established four stages of development: the sensorimotor period, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. The first stage is when the child develops spatial skills and relates to the world through the senses during the first two years of life. The second stage is about developing and using concepts when children understand the meaning of things and this continues until the age of 7 years. From 7 to 11 years old, the child reaches a higher cognitive development through a concrete operational stage and can order and classify objects and can use logic to solve problems. The formal operational stage that begins around the age of 12 helps children understand abstract thoughts, hidden meanings, etc. Kohlberg provided a theory of children’s moral development through six stages of preconventional, conventional, and postconventional levels. These are related to the concern for punishment and self-interest, as well as the internal need for conformity and the struggle for social order, such as the maintenance of universal ethical principles. So moral development seems to move from a belief in ‘what is right and what is wrong’ and whether there is a punishment for wrong, to what is universally ethical and acceptable social behaviour. Another prominent psychologist, Vygotsky, highlighted the importance of socialization and interpersonal communication, and child development according to this theory is seen as an internalization of social and cultural knowledge.

Of course, all of these theories will have to be added together, and a complete or comprehensive theory that provides insight into the child’s mind and behavior will have components from all of these theories. Furthermore, the childhood experiences and events that have been highlighted in psychoanalytic theories are also extremely important and not only from a sexual point of view. All of the general factors that I mentioned at the beginning of the essay should be considered as factors that underlie the social, sexual, moral, emotional, physical, and cognitive development of children. Just as learning experiences lead to cognitive development, personal emotional experiences lead to later emotional development and maturity. Sexual harassment, abuse, or other bodily sensations in childhood affect later sexual development, and divorce or separation in the family can affect moral development. Thus, an individual who has been abused as a child may develop a fear of sexual activity or may display a complete lack of sexual control as an adult.

A child who has lived without a father may become extremely irresponsible or may grow into an adult with a very strong sense of parental responsibility. Experiencing childhood trauma through the death or accidents of family members or living in times of war, natural calamities have a profound impact on children and can leave children with a perennial sense of insecurity or a need for attachment. children that continues into adulthood and even old age or on the other hand, these events can cause a child to become isolated, schizophrenic or simply detached in later life. For a healthy life of children, it is important not only to rely on psychological theories to understand how a child grows and perceives the world, but it is also important to focus on the events or experiences of the child and use them together with the theories to obtain complete results. psychological understanding of children.

In contemporary child psychology, the focus on events is primarily psychoanalytic, and the impact of adverse events is considered especially significant. However, it is important that all events, positive and negative, are considered, and this should be used to complement psychological theories. To understand the child, it is important to understand the child’s world and memories, so an ‘event-based’ child psychology needs to be balanced with a ‘theory-based’ child psychology.