There is a major belief that during the developmental process of a child they tend to asks more questions and are more inquisitive about almost everything they see and hear. At this stage it is always best, if as a parent or guardian you can figure the best way to reply. In the process of their growing up they encounter a lot of life experiences. Some they might understand adequately while some they might not. Children therefore have the general believe that their parents know it all thereby not hesitating to ask them any question they find too complex for them to relate to. The purpose of this paper therefore is to take a brief look into some of the most reputable researches in the history of child development and the theories on how our responses to children’s questions affect their growing process and philosophy of life. I will focus on answering children’s questions about alcohol or alcoholism
“Piaget was one of the most influential developmental psychologists and under the cognitive theory explained that assimilation and accommodation are the two complementary process of adaptation. He explained that the way we perceive the outside world affects our behaviors and attitude thereby making it internalized” (ATHERTON). A child can ask complex questions that you as an adult might become puzzled and wonder how he or she got to think of such. Imagine a five year old girl asking her mom if she can smoke a cigarette just the way her dad does. If you answer “no you can’t” she will ask you “why” because at this age, children become naturally inquisitive about almost everything they see and hear. Through this essay I want to trash out issues related to answering strange and complex questions asked by children in their best interest. Answering this many complex questions require balancing as you are very conscious that your ward does not get the wrong perception. Having a prior understanding of developmental psychology helps you choose and select the right word to utter when faced with any complex question. Why is it essential to have a good understanding of how your answers as a guardian can affect the developmental psychology of the kid? It is that words spoken can not be erased. Once spoken, it either gives the wrong or right impression on the kid’s mind.
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In the course of this study I consulted with a friend of mine who went through a lot while growing up as a kid, to hear his story. He said when he was growing up as a kid his parents were separated, so he and two of his siblings had to go and live with their paternal grand mother while their remaining two girls stayed with his mom. As the years pass by he became very eager to know the incident that made them separated as a family and the true person that his mom was. As a true kid growing up he began to ask questions about what actually made his dad leave his mom for another woman who he had no prior intimacy with. He was ready to accept any answer given to him at that period, so he was curious to know why their parents all of a sudden decided to abandon them. Each time he directed the complex question to his grandmother, she never even thought twice about the implication of the answers she was gave him or may be she was just not knowledgeable on the effect her answer would have on his growing up. My friend simply said she always painted the whole picture as if his mom was a bad person who loved drinking alcohol more than water. She named her as an alcoholic nuisance who drinks to the point of disgracing the poor boy’s father in public. She explained how one day his dad came back from work with his long time buddy, only to see his mom on the floor with many empty bottles of beer. She had been drinking all day instead of staying at work that day. He said his grand mother told him how his dad felt so embarrassed that day in front of his friend; and that when his friend left he had to beat his mom up to the point of coma. His grandmother also explained how immoral it is to drink and how much he should hate alcoholics. As if that was not bad enough, his grandmother told him that the day his dad found out that his mommy had been relieved of her work in the office due to her drunken habit, he sent her packing from the house that night. She concluded that was how they started living with her.
This answer did a lot of harm to my friend while growing up. He and his siblings thought their mom to be very uncaring about them and they started having deep distastes for their mom to the point that they never wanted to see her again and I told her that. He said it was not like his grand mother just gave the answer that day and that was it but she kept on discussing about his mom’s bad attitude and why she is a bad mom every night with his uncle. According to him the hatred lasted for years and affected his relationship with his mom. He also admitted that his mom used to drink but felt the story was exaggerated in an attempt to steer them away from the habit of drinking. He said his grandmother had a good heart and did not want the kids to imbibe the habit that their mom had but the answer she gave him made him hate people who drank alcohol. He said he hated them to the point that he felt they were evil, outcast and should not be associated with. Altogether he felt like they should be punished for their behavior. But does it really mean that drinking as an entity is bad or is it the quantity that matters?
Before he was told the story, he said he did not have any form of dislike toward people who drank alcohol. In short, he cared less until his granny painted a whole new picture to him. It was hard for him to accept that people with drinking habit should be forbidden because they are nuisance, he had to accommodate such. “In accommodating external information like this, the child’s internal world has to accommodate itself to the evidence with which it is confronted with and adapt to it, which can be a more difficult and painful process.”(ATHERTON)
This life experience related by my friend has kept me on my toes during this research and has been the drive toward me writing this paper. It has given me a deeper knowledge on how our answers to little kids affect their psychology and their growing up altogether. In this essay we shall be handling a couple of tough questions that children ask and the best way to answer them so as not to create the wrong impression and perception toward life. Below are the responses that I have given to children of different ages on a complex question.
In particular, I shall be looking at answering children’s questions about alcohol or alcoholism. Check out each scenario and the following answers I gave each kid to their complex questions below.
Scenario 1: As a health education teacher in one of the schools in the city. I was in my office one day when one of my pupils walked into my office, feeling troubled. I asked him what the problem was and he narrated how his father had scolded him the day before for drinking his father’s beer from his cup. I was stunned at his question but then I knew I just had to go about it in the right approach. I understood that development is in stages and that some answers only make sense to you when you are old enough to understand. I wanted to give the poor boy not just an answer that will deter him from drinking but also one that he would understand at his age. He did not understand why he could not drink the liquid his father was drinking after all they ate the same food. He simply asked, ‘Uncle, why did daddy beat me’. The first thing I did was ask him how old he was and he said five years old. I then asked if his daddy gave him any explanation and he said “He said I will die if I took it”. Since then he had been scared of dying.
I drew the boy closer and assured him that neither he nor his dad will die. I then told him that the reason why his daddy scolded him for drinking was because he was that the police would arrest and beat him up for drinking because of his age. Accommodating that simple answer was easy for him. The answer I gave him can be justified by Piaget’s theory which focused on how what we hear affects our behavior children. Telling your child that he will die someday for drinking alcohol is bad enough to scare him, therefore instead of correcting a behavior, you are giving your ward the nightmare of his life which could hunt him for a very long time and directly affect his mood. I did not make the mistake of making him feel alcohol is good because he would not understand why something good should be avoided.
As justified by Language theory I painted a bad picture for him but not an extreme case like that of his dad. I had to break my answer to his complex question in the simplest possible language I could. When faced by a similar question from a 9 year old boy the answer I gave was not far fetched from the previous one. I simply told the little nine year old boy that daddy was only trying to protect him from destroying himself. He asked further, “If taking alcohol will destroy me then why is daddy destroying himself”. I simply told him that his daddy was not destroying himself because his dad was very much stronger than him. Saying the police will arrest him and beat him up will not make much sense to him because he is more intelligent than the five year old boy I analyzed earlier. He knew there is no way the policemen will find out he drank from his father’s cup except someone told them.
Lastly, for the 13 year old boy I could afford to explain further in details because of his maturity stage and level of understanding. I couldn’t just say the police will arrest you and beat you up as in the first case or that merely because his daddy was stronger, because I would get a lot of ‘Why?’ and ‘Why not?’ questions from him so I decided to explain in full details why his daddy had to beat him up- the health implications and how his fathers immunity is far greater than his own. Besides the immunity, I had to explain to him that because of his father’s age and maturity he could still have control over his drinking attitude while he is too young to control such hysteria which could lead to possession of far more damaging drugs. I made him understand that his father knew the spirit behind drinking and was only preventing his loving boy from starting what he can’t have the power to control now due to his inexperience. All these answers are fully supported by “Piaget’s theory which related philosophically the external responses we get with our internal perception about our questions” (ATHERTON). He attributed external responses to the behavior and development of a young child.
Also the choice of language was also very essential according to the language theory. As stated earlier I had to give the full explanation to the 13 year old boy to erase any iota of doubt in him. But if I had given the same explanation I gave to the 13 year old boy to the five year old boy I would only be doing more harm than good. The language theory supports that the choice of language used when answering a small boy’s complex questions should be considered for the proper development of the child. The right languages need to be selected to adequately represent the event that you want to paint to the children according to their age and more importantly the level of their language understanding. “Chomsky theory characterizes the growth of language as analogous to physical growth and maturation” (Clibbens).
From the third theory which is Information Processing, it is obvious that you can not answer a young five year old child’s complex question about alcoholism with a complex because of the level of his information processing. “This theory introduces the concept of chunk which could refer to data, digits, words, faces of people and presented that the short term memory could only hold between 5-9 chunks of information for processing” (Miller).
From my own basic knowledge of how a child develops I will simply say it was very essential for me to answer little kids in ways that would fulfill the following: Must be logical for their ages: Age is a factor when answering complex questions and your answers given to children must be logical enough for them to relate to. Due to their information processing unit it was necessary to weigh the answers I gave. It’s of no use given a perfect answer to someone if he or she doesn’t understand. That was the main reason why I decided not to give a full explanation to the five year old boy. I only gave a short one that would be easily remembered and I also made sure that as short and precise as my answer was, it did not project the wrong perception of drinking to the small boy. Must not give the wrong perception: You don’t want to tell the little children that drinking alcohol is totally bad but that they are not in the right position to take part. You also don’t want to do more harm to the development of the young kids by scaring or threatening their tender heart.
