Digging Deep Into Orphanages

The Key to Our Humanity 

Sites: 

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/02/20/280237833/orphans-lonely-beginnings-reveal-how-parents-shape-a-childs-brain

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/style/2014/01/30/a-lost-boy-finds-his-calling/

When reading about a child developing their personality in Chapter 5 it made me start thinking about the teaching classes that I am currently in.  In my class we watched many different videos about children that grew up in an orphanage. In this video it showed how many of these kids had behavior problems on top of having other problems in their head. When these kids were adopted to a loving family they weren’t sure how to let someone love them. Some of the kids would never talk, others acted out, and others thought it was impossible for someone to love them and for them to love anyone.  In the class we didn’t discuss in depth why these children acted how they did once they got into loving homes. But now in Chapter 5 it really helped me break it down and realize why these kids were acting like they did. They weren’t just doing it because they were bad kids. Erikson’s eight stages was one way that helped me break down why the kids acted out. The first stage is Trust vs. Mistrust. If a child never learns that someone is out there that they can trust they will never move on to the next stages. They will continue to live thinking about they are on their own and can't trust the people that they should. They grew up without that one person or one family that they could trust, so when they finally had that they weren't sure how to react. This then made them act out the rest of their life.  I also learned about behaviorism that states that behavior is not instinctive but it is something kids learn. If these kids were in this orphanage and didn’t have much supervision and were living very close to the other kids, they could have never learned about how to act and behave or learned wrong behaviors that aren’t appropriate in the family they now have. I recently just read a follow-up article on these children in the video, which talked about  how they grew up their brain is missing many different parts, which will make their life very difficult. Harlow’s experiment also proves that months of complete isolation caused inversible emotional and behavior damage to children. Which is exactly what these children in the orphanage go through. Overall Chapter 5 not only helped me relate to my major and the classes that are very important to me.  I really hope I can make more connections like this throughout the class.