Understanding behavior is never dull, because of the unlimited creativity, flexibility, and persistence we develop in trying to meet our basic human needs for acknowledgment, affection, affirmation, attention, and safety. By the time students reach school age, they have already had countless experiences and interactions with family, friends, peers, and adults. These interactions have continually shaped their world views, and simultaneously their views of themselves.
Our world views and our self views begin developing at birth and continue to build throughout our lives. Our earliest experiences of the outer world (world view) and of ourselves (self view) are based largely on the responses we receive from our parents and/or other significant caregivers. The parents' responses to the physical and emotional needs of their infant are the first feedback an infant receives. These responses and the infant's reactions to them precede both the infant's acquisition of language in which to describe the reactions, and his ability to think logically or analytically about them.
Yet our experiences as infants, and the beliefs about ourselves and the world that stem from them, are very powerful. They are deeply rooted, and as a result are often difficult to understand and to change.
Let's consider a child. Her basic physical needs are being met by her parents; however, they are emotionally distant and unavailable to her. She is rarely cuddled or held. Toys are provided for her, but her parents don't engage in play with her. The child is expected to provide her own entertainment. What might this child's world and self view be? Is she apt to trust that adults will meet her needs? Will she feel confident that she is a valued and likable person? What behavior patterns could she develop to try to meet her basic needs for attention, affection and affirmation?
This child's world and self view could be that she is undeserving of attention, and she might think that she did something to cause her parents' emotional distance from her. She might stop trying to reach out to her parents or other adults, and retreat into daydreams and fantasy to make up for the lack of real attention. However, there are other behavior patterns she could adopt based on how she is responded to by her family. If this little girl learns that when she is sick or injured she receives a brief increase in attention and nurturing, what behavior pattern is she likely to develop?
If you guessed a psychosomatic pattern of injuries or illnesses, you are correct!
The term "psychosomatic" is commonly used to refer to physical ailments that have no discernible physical cause, and is often confused with "malingering," or the manipulative use of illness to avoid an unpleasant situation or activity. The well-known complaint "I'm too sick to go to school today" is an example of malingering. The correct meaning of the term "psychosomatic," however, refers to an actual physical ailment or disorder that is caused by a mental or emotional disturbance. For example:
Perhaps a child learns that if he constantly asks for his parents' assistance, becoming more and more helpless, he manages to get a little more of their time and attention. In his world and self view, being dependent rather than becoming independent earns him emotional rewards.
Yet another possibility might be that a child learned that if he did things to displease and anger his parents, he received more attention. Since negative attention feels better than none at all, he would continue to become more negative and disruptive in his behavior to ensure that he received his parents' attention.
No matter which specific behaviors children develop, their self views are likely to be that they're unworthy of attention and affection, and their world views will probably be that adults do not provide emotional support unless there is a pressing reason to do so.
Their view that parents can't be depended on to meet emotional needs becomes the filter through which they see, evaluate, and judge other people and events. Though their world and self views are not rigidly fixed by school age, they are based on the predominant experiences in their early and important developmental years. They will therefore be slow to change.
When these children enter your classroom, they will be seeing and evaluating you through the same filters they developed in their interactions with their parents. They will expect you to react to them in the same ways, and therefore will try to cast you into roles that are known and predictable for them. We refer to this behavior as scripting, which is discussed in the next exercise.