Entering the field of Child Development doesn’t include  education on how to deal with adult co-workers or parents. It is unfortunate that the type of caregivers found in the Preschool environment range from students with anywhere from 6 units in Child Development (3 classes) to a Bachelor’s of Science Degree (20 classes).  What the undereducated do not realize is that the developing mind of children is a well-researched neural science.  Instead of the field attracting women and men with enthusiasm for the future of humanity through early education, it is often an arena of very immature people, often blind to the true needs of children, inclusive of parents who are also underdeveloped and remain in denial or are emotionally inept in dealing with a young mind’s developing needs, since their own emotional and academic acheivements are lacking. It may not be a huge corporate fortune 500 industry, but it should be given more credit, attention, pay, and education due to the fact that this core time of open neural windows in the mind sets up patterns for the child’s thinking, emotional abilities and self-esteem.   The future is literally in the hands of Early Educators and Parents. It is not an environment of merely academic teachings. Emotional and social development is a necessary aspect in a caregivers creative thinking such as new and surprising ways of conflict resolution, critical thinking skills and inventive/creative potential.

One can easily see why conflict resolution is not often utilized. Many adults cannot solve their own problems of projection and one-upmanship, ego needs and insecurities.  In staying with my theme of this blog, associating children’s needs with adult metaphoric application, we can see that adults are no better off in learning these skills then children are.  Humanity is becoming more conscious of such things as controlling thoughts, meditation, enlightenment, and positive thinking. Yet, how many hypocrites are still among the so-called enlightened practitioners? People arnow using cruelty and mind games as a method of enlightenment. Funny, when you really take a moment to consider this phenomena. What is the way to respond to an outright emotional attack through mind games? Is the future one where we are to be skilled gamers? I think we might be better off as skilled mind dancers. But how?

The difference between a mind dancer and a skilled gamer is clear. One is volatile, war monger activity, be a person nija or pirate. The other is sweet movement with impressionable repose.  Some parents just don’t see dancing as a powerful tool. They prefer to tell their children to punch another child in the nose if he bothers them.  Dancing has a stigma of weakness and feminine-like associations. Only in America. So many other countries have power dancing in their cultural heritage.  I am taking it a step further when I suggest mind dancing. Small children often reply in the following ways to academic thinking in early childhood:

“It makes my brain hurt.”

“My back is hurting.”

Where do they get commentary like this in association to learning? It is because we respond to learning through play. They like creativity and body challenges. If that is the case, then these are the areas we should work with. What does this say for adult development? It says we don’t like to think and make excuses for critical thinking. We are still using childlike responses to learning. The child says, “He’s not sharing. He took my toy.” The adult says, “I’ve been robbed.” Are we any different then we were at age 4? I will continue this thought at another time. For now I will end with a question. It boils down to ownership and robbery on all levels, whether possession of toys or possession of rights. Each cause an emotional reaction. We are generally a people at war with emotions and ownership ideals. How can you dance in your mind to win this battle in a new way? We tell the children to share.

The name of the child I am observing has been changed for respect of privacy.

The child I am observing appears to be what Howard Gardner calls a “bodily kinesthetic” type of intelligence according the description in his theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI). He likes to run, climb, body slam, and touch
everything he can. This will appear over and over in his actions. The teacher’s
think he is possibly Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Although
he performs well in many areas, this predominant display of
intelligence type that he exudes, appears to be a dilemma only in his skills
with obedience to authority and controlled group settings. He
interacts on a daily basis with children, and is socially adaptive in that
area. He shares well. It is only with adults that he doesn’t seem to
conform. Could it merely be a lack of development in the child’s first
stage of life, and the control of the environment that a child must feel, taste,
hear and see the world around him to learn about it. I wanted to
observe this child to see if there was anything to learn that could aide a
teacher in handling a tactile mind with rebellion to authority, such as
this child displays, keeping in mind that maybe what science so readily calls ADHD is truly a developmental issue that wasn’t conquered in earlier stages of growth. I can only hope that an unbiased observation might be revelatory in this
regard.

It is 9:00 AM when I start observing. He is a young 4 year old, his
birthday being in late November. Many of the other children have already
turned five or are near to becoming 5. Several children have jars of bubbles and Andrew is one of them. He is playing with another boy. “I got it. I got it,” he says as he is running after blown bubbles to catch them. Then he says, “Dumb, dumb, ka, ka.” He runs over to a group of children standing around the teacher. He gives his bottle to another girl waiting and then wants bubbles, but doesn’t try to take them back from her. He looks to the teacher and says he wants bubbles. This appears to be a well-defined moment of Piaget’s symbolic thinking for this age group. Andrew gave his bubbles away without
reasoning that he wouldn’t have any if he did such an act. The only reason
this is obvious beyond a simple act of sharing was his reaction right after
the fact. His hands were now empty of bubbles and he acquired a
surprised look on his face and immediately asked the teacher for
bubbles.His action was without reason of consequence, that in giving
away he would be without. To continue with the observation, the teacher
tells him he will have to wait. He waits patiently. He tries to catch the
bubbles the girl is blowing and says to her, “Do you like to paint? They
are big bubbles.” It is interesting to note in his comment that, again, he
got this look on his face after saying ‘paint,’ which wasn’t relative to the moment, before throwing in a second relative sentence in after the look.
Finally he gets another jar of bubbles. He blows them and then tries to
kick them, but runs out of bubbles and comes to tell me. I tell him to ask
Miss Diana, and he goes to her and asks.

When he returned, I was leaning over to ask him a question with my book
in my arms and he asks me if I am cold. I asked him if he thought I was
cold because I had a sweater on and my arms folded. He said, yes. I then
asked him if he knew what bubbles were made of. He said, “a cup.” Then
he laughed and said, “I was making a bubble and it went up my nose.”
He then blew bubbles into the library house and the girls inside got mad.
He blew them two more times and one girl yelled very loudly, “Nooooo.”
He stopped and then began playing with 2 boys. One had bubbles. He told
them to kick the bubbles.

He is now playing alone again and attempting to catch the blown bubbles
back onto the blower. Another boy comes and he says to him, “Why
don’t we blow them.” He then caught one on the blower and touched it
to his nose. It got in his mouth and he spit on the ground. He then blew
bubbles on the boy who didn’t have any, then tries to stomp on the
bubbles as they fall to the ground. The bubbles stopped blowing and he
came toward me. We checked it, but it was fine. He then tried to placed
the caught bubbles on my pants. No harm done. He then told me he was going
to put it on his nose. He turned and went into the library. I went in there
also. Another boy told me I couldn’t be in there. He said my pillow was
the TV and I was sitting on it and broke it. The child I was observing told me I had to buy a new one and left. He went off alone. He tried to put a bubble in another boy’s ear. The boy got mad and told the teacher. The teacher said to go tell him that wasn’t cool. The boy did and the boy I was observing said, “It was cool.” They argued and the teacher took his bubbles away.

He became very upset. He threw the bottle and stomped his feet and
cried. She picked him up and consoled him. She explained it could have
gotten in the other boy’s eyes. But, he cried really hard and she had to tell him to take a deep breath. Then she gave him his bubbles back. She asked him if he knew how to blow bubbles. He said, “I blew some bubbles.” He went
running off with his bubbles and followed a bubble up to the top of some
block shelves. Another teacher told him to get down. He sang Humpty
Dumpty as he came down. But then forgot the rest of the words and
looked at me for help. I sang the song and he sang it with me. His facial
expression changed as we sang the words with a seeming questioning ‘in
thought’ type look. He climbed the shelf again and I told him to come
down, that I didn’t want him to break. He then told me he wasn’t an egg.
(Is this Piaget’s logical thinking or linguistic/symbolic association? He
knew he was a boy and not an egg?)

Another boy was playing at the water fountain and water was running
down the sidewalk and Andrew said, “Pee pee coming out.” Then opened
his bubble bottle and said, “Mama mia, papa via.” It is here I take note of
Erikson’s second stage of growth possibly having been deterred. The
article, “Analyzing Behavior to Promote self-Control,” suggests that
problems can arise when adults overact to fecal matter. Andrew likes to
say ka, ka, and pee, pee. These are some younger childhood behaviours
that he seems to still struggle with, once again. But, is it ADHD?

to be continued…

I will be writing a series of articles on hyper-active and seemingly
underdeveloped children since I have been currently observing a child
who is thought to maybe have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD). According the Child Development Theorist, Erik Erikson, there
are certain stages a child must conquer for behavioral issues in the future
to unfold in proper timing. Certain actions in earlier years seem to effect
this ability. It was predominantly obvious in the child of my studies.

In stage one of Erikson’s theory, if a child is taunted with toys and never
given the toy, there is a great likelihood that the child will stop reaching
and this robs the child of learning to control his environment, gaining a
confidence in that area. Some examples of this are that possibly the keys
were jingled, but held back because they were dirty and the parent didn’t
want the child to put them in his or her mouth. Maybe the teddy bear
tickled, but it was always pulled away and hidden behind the back as a
game, but the child wanted to touch it, taste it, shake it and didn’t have
that opportunity.

The second theory is one of autonomy and gaining confidence over motor
skills. The playpen is the biggest deterrent here. The lack of exploration
can cause overt shyness, timidity, or fear to experiment in life. Or, the
child may begin to fight against any kind of limits and become shameless
in attempting to do the opposite of what an adult expects or wants,
especially regarding motor restrictions. The same effects can occur with
an unrestrained child who has not developed any boundaries or
self-control. In these cases just mentioned, the parent has no idea that
such actions will cause developmental issues. In a way, they are innocent.
They are very busy and to allow the child to explore and spot team him in
the meanwhile, just doesn’t fit into the schedule. This is the general tempo
of the world today, and our actions are often unconsciously directed by
circumstance.

It should be mentioned here that there is a certain amount of struggle with
behavior that is normal when a child first enters the pre-school
environment. The well developed child will adapt quickly. But when we
encounter a child who is developmentally behind in Early Education
Environments, these considerations could be noted. When a child touches
everything he may simply be acquiring skills he didn’t yet have the
opportunity to acquire in earlier growth stages. The caregiver can ask
themselves, if this child could possibly only now be having an
opportunity to learn this, rather then label it a lack of adaptation. It can be
very enlightening to look for a positive in every experience. When a child
runs away from an adult on a consistent basis, maybe this child was
simply corralled in a playpen and now he, fights against any kind of limits
and becomes shameless in attempting to do the opposite of what an adult
expects or wants, especially regarding motor restrictions, due to his
playpen days, and needs a chance to be that — free and self-exploratory.

It is a hard lesson for the parent who has had to utilize the playpen or has
played tickle and jingle with keys, consistently taking them from their
child, not knowing the need for sensational learning. The solutions are
easy but not publisized. Use a toy which is mouthable. Eventually turn
over the teddy bear. When self-confidence still needs to be developed,
Child Development Theory and Caregiving can reveal some handy techniques for the parent.

Observations in Child Development are performed correctly when they are free of any opinion or bias. This is a very interesting task that oozes with learning experience.

This blog is focused on child development tools and techniques as a metaphoric philosophy for adult application and the possibility for consciousness expansion and transformation. Sometimes ideas such as “a child shall lead them” aren’t always a literal manifestation, such as, ‘a cart being pulled by a horse.’ The potential here bares a taste of the simply profound if a philosophy or theory is born from it. For now, it is observation and application. This blog will journal any findings that might be applicable.

The following list offers an overview of some of the initial questioning I wish to pursue.

-Has human insight evolved enough to grasp that the journey of a child could exist as a metaphor for an awareness that brings transformation techniques applicable in adult life?
-Will the merger of this dichotomy bring an exspansion of human consciousness?
-Should Child Development classes then be taught in High School as a benefit to society, in the sense of a more public collective pool of awareness to pull from.

Now that I am actually involved in real-time experiences with children, I have realized that I shall never stop learning. Each child has something new within them for the world to discover if the observer would but look at the wonders of small beings and their mind’s workings. It can be a fabulous journey depending on the observer’s perspective. For example: Is that child really mischeivious, or a scientist in the making? The perceptional sight line changes.

I will share my current experiences with children from the perspective of their inner gifts and struggles to find self. Freud’s idea of ego will be advanced to Eastern Concepts of philosophy and the ego development.

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