Jersey Girl wrote:Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:Mak,
I’d strongly recommend developing a rearing strategy with your kid for your grandchild. You can ask Jersey Girl for clarification, but I’m convinced a person is pretty much who they are by the time they’re 6 y.o. You have a small window, friend. Smokey is an object lesson of the effects of undisciplined parenting and unfettered access to the world with no mentor and no purpose. The Internet and online communities have replaced normal socialization, but it comes with a cost as we’re witnessing. At worst, we’re creating connectivity-addicts who are retarded, asocial in the real world, narcissistic, and crippled with anxiousness. So, yeah. I’d be concerned, too.
- Doc
Whattaya want me to address exactly?
Mak I wanted to return to this for a moment. I saw that you wanted personality development.
Temperament and personality are partners. Temperament is believed to be something you are born with. There are competing theories with regard to personality development. Some say the window closes near the end of year 5. There are other theories that claim age 30--probably due to the development of the frontal lobe/executive function is believed to be in place on or around age 25-ish. There are even theories that posit that the personality continues to map through the 50's or so.
I tend to go with constructivist theorists and my own observations (which are extensive compared to many or most adults) with regard to to the window being closed by the end of 5 years old, just coming up on age 6. That aligns with what Cam has stated.
I think you want to know how to raise a well adjusted human being. My answer to that is simple though I can expand if you want me to.
Help the child make connections between themselves and other humans (of all ages) and nature. Water the child often. I mean that both
literally and sincerely. Cam knows exactly what he's saying with regard to social media and the Internet as a dominant form of communication as a major factor in the breakdown of healthy psycho-social development. It's glaringly obvious that digital remote communication has replaced face to face conversation.
Keep the child away from technology until they are say 6 years old and then use it to supplement their learning, not replace the human connections they need to make.
Think about what you are seeing on this and other threads right now. Do you see a self aware young person who has also developed a keen, intimate, or insightful awareness of others and their relationship to others? Do you see any sign of empathy? Compassion? Passion?
Empathy, compassion, and passion are driven (in my opinion) by sense of belonging and connectedness.
There's your best evidence for the needs of the child to develop a connection between themselves, others and nature, and to eventually learn that they belong to something greater than themselves. It begins with the first cry and response.
When the response comes from plastic objects, beeps, and digitally transmitted visuals, you get what you're seeing right now on these threads.
:-)