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    A Practical Guide to Child Psychology: Understand Your Kids and Enjoy Parenting
    A Practical Guide to Child Psychology: Understand Your Kids and Enjoy Parenting
    A Practical Guide to Child Psychology: Understand Your Kids and Enjoy Parenting
    Ebook213 pages2 hours

    A Practical Guide to Child Psychology: Understand Your Kids and Enjoy Parenting

    By Kairen Cullen

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    About this ebook

    Embrace the ups and downs of parenting.

    Guided by experts in children's development, explore new approaches to parenting, understand how they can benefit your family and learn how to put them into practice straight away.

    Accepting that every child is unique, and that parenting is a continuous learning process, educational psychologist and parenting expert Dr Kairen Cullen explains how best to understand your child and respond to their needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIcon Books
    Release dateApr 8, 2011
    ISBN9781848313293

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      Book preview

      A Practical Guide to Child Psychology - Kairen Cullen

      INTRODUCTION

      1. The reasons behind this book

      Everyone needs to understand children better, and so most people will find the ideas in this book useful.

      A policy which gives priority to investment in children would give practical recognition to the fact that they are the seed-corn of the future. Their development determines the fabric of tomorrow’s society.

      Mia Kellmer-Pringle

      You may be wondering: ‘Will this book help me to psychologize my child?’

      The answer is a definite no. We live in very psychological times. Turn on the television, the internet, the radio, or open a magazine or newspaper, and I guarantee you will read, see or hear something of a psychological nature very quickly. Most people use some amateur psychology, but this is very different to the work of a professional psychologist who, along with many years of study and supervised professional practice, must always try to work with objectivity, neutrality and scientific rigour. Actually, there are many areas of psychological theory that use the idea that we are all psychologists in our own lives, and I will be explaining more about that later.

      In the following pages there are many activities and exercises to help you get a firm grasp of the ideas presented. Some of them may be fun and safe to try out with your own children, and if this is the case the book will make this clear. One of the major complications of studying and researching children is that it’s not acceptable to do anything that could in any way harm the child’s well-being, and so it’s always important to err on the side of caution. For this reason, many of the activities must be done with an imaginary child. It might help to start reading this book with your imaginary child in mind, and perhaps the one you can create most easily will be the one that was once you!

      This book will offer some ideas that will help you to understand children better. People are complex and children are perhaps even more so, as they by definition are learning, developing and changing constantly and rapidly. Add to this the fact that each child’s situation and history is unique, and it’s obvious that the better equipped you are to understand, the more likely you are to be able to contribute something useful and to help support the child’s learning and development. Fortunately – or maybe unfortunately, depending on your perspective – there’s no recipe book or manual for helping a child become a healthy, functional and happy adult person, but there are many well-theorized and well-researched ideas that psychology can offer in doing the best job possible – and most are ones you will recognize from everyday life, as the renowned paediatrician Benjamin Spock acknowledges in his book on child development and parenting: ‘You know more than you think you do.’

      One word of caution, though: there are certain problematic issues that can arise in a child’s learning, development and/or behaviour, which require the input of appropriately qualified professionals. If the child’s overall development, well-being and/or health is significantly different to that of the majority of other children in their age group, and is causing concern, it’s important to seek advice. The family doctor and/or the child’s teacher are generally good starting points for getting this help. Even the best-equipped and most knowledgeable parents and carers need professional support at times.

      I think that, as for most aspects of the complex human world, supporting the development, learning and behaviour of children is best viewed as a continuous, everyday problem-solving or solution-producing process. To take part in this process with vitality and realistic optimism requires considerable energy and stamina, to say nothing of confidence. When I was a parent of four young children I would have liked to have heard this perspective rather than the usual ‘this is the approach/method/package that will answer all of your questions and solve any problems regardless of your situation, resources or history’. I am hoping that this small book on child psychology will offer something different: some fresh, accessible and useful ideas that readers can draw upon in their involvement with their unique children.

      2. What is a child?

      The main aim of child psychology is to help us know how best to raise and care for our children. This is an ambitious aim, as so many factors and processes have to be taken into account and there is so much individual variation in the rate at which children develop and mature. The logical starting point is to define what is meant by the term ‘child’. Try this for yourself and just jot down your definition of a child. Ask others you meet today the same question. By the end of the day you will probably have noted quite a few different points. Some of these may reflect the view that a child is simply a miniature adult, a prevalent view until relatively recent times. Others may relate to children’s early stage in human development, highlighting the things a child cannot do. Then you may have other viewpoints that children have some special, albeit temporary gifts and strengths, quite distinct from those of adults.

      Can we simply use the legal definition, i.e. number of years lived? If it’s merely a matter of being below or above the age of majority, then that’s relatively straightforward and definitions of the term ‘child’ should be consistent across time and also different parts of the world. However, we know, at a common sense level, that this is an inadequate definition that doesn’t take into account the wide variety of levels of maturity, independence and responsibility that some under-18-year-olds exhibit. Is it to do with the child’s ability, skills and knowledge, or maybe their level of understanding? Erik Erikson, a famous psychologist who has developed a theory of understanding human development over the entire life-span and whose work we will look at specifically in a later chapter, reminds us of the added complication of sexual maturity:

      With the establishment of a good relationship to the world of skills and tools, and with the advent of sexual maturity, childhood proper comes to an end.

      Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society, 1950

      Perhaps the key to defining childhood lies in the child’s role and place in the family and their degree of dependency on older family members? In the developed western world it’s relatively uncommon for under-18s to be supporting families through paid employment or to be caring for very young children or unwell and/or elderly relatives. In fact, it’s actually the case that financial dependency on parents carries on long past the late teens for an increasing number of families. This is not reflected in all parts of the world, though, and child psychology recognizes that social, cultural and environmental influences play a major part in the way in which we define a child and the way in which theory is developed and research on children is undertaken.

      What do you think of this idea?

      The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.

      W.R. Inge, The Observer, 21 July 1929

      Do you agree that historical and social factors are responsible for the way a child behaves, feels and thinks?

      And what about this idea:

      Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived life of their parents.

      Carl Jung (1875–1961), Paracelsus

      Are the hopes, wishes and expectations of the parents such a major factor in the child’s development, in your experience?

      The quiz that follows has been designed to show the importance of the ideas you hold about childhood in your parenting and work with children. Research across the world has identified some very different child-rearing practices of mothers with infants. These are listed in column 1. Try to match each example with the countries listed in column 2.

      1 – F In research with low-income Mexican mothers, the emphasis on work, i.e. the serious nature of life and the frivolous nature of play, was apparent in the mothers’ focus on useful instruction rather than play with their babies.

      2 – C Japanese babies are viewed as being separate, essentially unconnected beings at birth and the mother’s primary role is to socialize and create strong interpersonal connections between herself and the baby. The commonly perceived Japanese tendency to conformism and group membership is seen by some as another aspect of this view.

      3 – D In this example the social communication style of adult Americans is highlighted in the way in which mothers communicate with their infants.

      4 – B The effect of cultural traditions of a baby’s birthplace on the child’s development is demonstrated in the Maori daily ritual of massage.

      5 – A Indian parents tend to engage in games such as ‘Peek-a-Boo!’ rather than whole-body games. This may reflect different aims within early child-rearing practices, i.e. greater emphasis on cognitive development (perception, thinking and learning) than on physical development.

      6 – G The babies of New Guinea mothers are encouraged from the start to face away from their mothers and to interact with others. This is necessary as New Guinea families tend to live communally and the mother–child unit is viewed as secondary to the group membership.

      7 – E Kenyan mothers must return to their work in the fields as quickly as possible after the birth of their babies, and so the priority is to raise affable, placid babies, whom others can easily care for in the mother’s absence.

      An awareness of the many different views of what is normal for children and for parents and the influence of different cultures and living situations is important. It also contributes to an understanding of the nature/nurture debate: which factors and qualities are innate to the child, or genetic, and which come from their experience of the places and situations into which they are born and live? As you will discover, much child psychology theory and research has contributed to this debate, and neither side looks likely to win! Child psychology reflects a nature and nurture standpoint rather than nature or nurture, and it has influenced many government-funded national projects to support children’s development and well-being, for example the American ‘Headstart’ and the UK’s ‘Sure Start’ pre-school enrichment programmes.

      3. What is psychology?

      Psychology: the science that tells you what you already know in words you don’t understand and gives you ideas you wish you could have thought of on your own.

      Anon.

      Psychology is all about understanding and studying human minds and behaviour, and child psychology focuses on children and their development.

      Many theories and associated approaches and methods for the study of psychology have developed and continue to evolve, and it’s not unusual for a new theory to be proclaimed as the best and only theory worth using. History teaches us to be wary, for in the course of psychology’s relatively short existence, a number of claims of this type have been made for major psychological theories. These ‘grand theories’, as they are known, include behaviourism, psychoanalytical, humanist and cognitive approaches, and they can usually be detected in the theoretical frameworks available today. It would be true to say that each time a theoretical framework rises in popularity, another one develops and may be viewed as a more

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