Two Notions from Child Psychology
These topics were not discussed by the students. Still, they obviously are closely related to our last conversation.
Child Greediness
There is a certain phenomenon in child behavior commonly regarded as “greediness.” Children have a hard time sharing things they are attached to. This attachment can appear suddenly, like love at first sight. Often parents regard this behavior as greediness, so they try hard to disapprove of and “fix” it. In reality, what happens is that adults damage the normal psychological development of the child. The phenomenon we are discussing herein is entirely different. It is not an ethical issue but one of the pure “construction” of the child psyche. In the early years, consciousness is not the same as that of an adult. It is constructed primarily from “one’s things”: habitual clothes, toys, furniture—all the familiar things surrounding the child. When adults try to remove something “accepted” by the child, they plainly damage the child’s consciousness. If the child gets used to letting go of things easily, he or she will never be a normal person capable of “attachment” to other people, ideas, and values. What results is a person with, in a sense, a reduced soul.
Child Aping
There is another phenomenon in child behavior regarded by some as “aping,” i.e. mimicking, repeating, mocking. Children tend to copy each other. This is often regarded as something not quite positive while in reality it is just another vital part of child development. It is a way of acquiring ideas, expressions, activities, skills, etc. There is no way for the psyche to develop normally without “aping.”
