CHILDREN

The Dangers Of Overprotecting Children

In this short clip, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, argues that children require less protection from the physical world and more shielding from the virtual world. Children should be encouraged to play, to explore the natural world, and to be exposed to healthy degrees of threat, disorder, and chaos. This allows the development of resilience.

Can Babies Detect Emotions In Others?

The Still-Face experiment illustrates that infants are able to perceive and respond to social cues. The level of intense involvement required by the primary caregiver is clearly apparent, and sub-failures are inevitable. For example, an infant may become distressed if they are hungry and the mother is unable to immediately respond. The central mitigating factor involves the idea of reparation. In short, the child will over-come the distress if they are attended to, albeit belatedly. The real danger resides in permanent neglect and the failure to repair.

If I Can’t See Something Then It Doesn’t Exist

Object permanence is a central concept in psychology and applies not only to childhood. The central tenet involves the ability to retain a mental representation of a physical object/person in its/their absence. Separation anxiety illustrates a limited degree of object permanence – the young child becomes visibly distressed after a parent leaves their sight. Simply put, the parent does not exist if they cannot be seen. Compromised object permanence may result in adults distrusting their bonds with others when they are not physically present. 

Do Children Use Logical Thought Between 2-7 years?

Jean Piaget pioneered a theory of cognitive development which includes four distinct developmental phases. The clip illustrates a shift in mental reasoning ability between the pre-operational (2 – 7 years) and concrete operational stages (7-11 years). 

The first segment demonstrates the concrete nature of thinking and a limited reasoning ability (not that this is good or bad; it is simply a developmental stage which we all undergo). In the second segment, we observe the nascent ability to reason from specific information to a general principle. 

Delaying Gratification Isn’t Always That Easy

The Marshmallow Test illustrates the difficulty of regulating our impulses in the interests of delayed gratification. Simply speaking, the child faces the following quandary: you can have one marshmallow now, or if you wait 10 minutes, then you can have two. Delayed gratification should be apparent by 4 years of age and corresponds with conscientiousness. In turn, conscientiousness is a key factor in determining  positive long-term outcomes.

How Do Young Children Think?

Children younger than four years demonstrate a largely egocentric view of the world. This means that they consider everyone else to think exactly as they do. Developmental processes gradually generate an awareness that things are not always as they seem, and that others may hold differing views to their own.

One Of The Effects Of Child Abuse

A horrifying illustration of the effects of child abuse and its cyclical perpetration. The young girl’s underlying motivation to murder her younger brother and parents reflects in the following: “I was hurt so bad and I don’t want to be around people.” Viewed in this way, the young girl’s wish to hurt and murder can be understood as protective in nature. At the same time, a sadistic pleasure can also be noted in the descriptions of hurting her brother and the killing of animals.