Socialization

So far this unit we have been talking about socialization. One lesson that really intrigued me was the one about isolated children. I already knew that we are shaped by our environment, since that was the main focus of most of our lessons so far this year, but this lesson stuck out to me. I didn’t think that without nurturing children could come out to be mentally disabled; never did it cross my mind that a child could be born normal, and due to not being given proper attention would change mentally. If asked before I would have said that these children are probably handicapped socially, but I would think that they are fully capable mentally. Environmental factors, in all our lessons, seemed to only affect social behavior (like that lady that left her baby outside in a stroller in a restaurant in New York). That is why this whole idea of idea of isolated children stuck to me so much. It’s a scary fact to think that there are people out there horrible enough to ignore the basic needs of their children, much less that these people could end any hope their child could ever have of leading a normal life. It’s horrifying that because they are who they are, they can ruin the lives of what would be normal, healthy human beings. I babysit a lot and I’ve never been ion a house where a child didn’t have heaps of toys and books; everything possible for the child to develop into a healthy member of society. Obviously I knew that abuse existed but this is so far beyond child abuse it’s almost sickening.