In any institution I have visited, where children have lived for many years, in different countries across the world, I am told the same thing: ‘These children are badly behaved, rebellious, ungrateful, disrespectful and disobedient’. I am told this as if they are exceptional, particularly bad children. And I am asked to ‘make them behave better’.
It breaks my heart whenever I am told this, because the behaviour seen in these children is the natural and inevitable result of being raised without attention, affection, a chance to form attachments, proper stimulation and positive role models. As mentioned in the previous blog (which you find HERE), when essential basic needs are not met, brain development does not occur as it should and this causes problems. But also, very simply, there is no supervision or guidance for the children.
There is nothing inherently wrong with these children. It is a reaction to their circumstances. If you were to switch some children from your family with those from the institution at a young age and raise them in reversed positions, then the children from your family in the institution would be showing the problematic behaviour and the children who were taken into your family would be considered well-mannered and well-behaved. Any child put in an institution for years will either turn out the way described, or they will not survive.
Children whose essential basic needs are not met, will try to fight to have their needs met. Their brain is programmed to do this, because it is essential for survival and proper development. So, for example, if positive attention is not available, then the child will discover quite quickly that negative attention is much easier to get. And for brain development negative attention – even in the form of beatings – is considered preferable to no attention at all. Not meeting a child’s essential basic needs is inviting difficult behaviour.
Apart from that, however, there is also the fact that in most institutions there are very few caregivers taking care of very many children. This means that there is going to be a lack of supervision and guidance. When children are left to their own devices most of the time, they will become aware that they have to solve things for themselves and they will do so in their own way.
This is problematic, because children are still learning about rules for culturally and socially acceptable behaviour and are still struggling to understand them. This means that they do not yet have a proper sense of morality. They are not immoral (meaning to have a twisted sense of morality), but they are amoral (meaning they do not yet know what is morally right or wrong). Being amoral, their decision-making process is not based on what is culturally or socially acceptable. And in most children the urge to help those weaker than them is not well developed yet. Instead, their brain is programmed for one thing: survival. They are driven by the motivation of ‘what do I need or want?’
This is a healthy survival strategy that exists in all children, and that is usually tempered in its results by the supervision and guidance from adults. When the adult supervision is absent, it leads to a situation of ‘survival of the fittest’. Through physical fights and bullying children will determine who is the strongest and who has the biggest say. Children who end up at the bottom of this hierarchy can expect to be bullied, abused in various ways and generally lead a life of fear.
This is unfortunate and it is very painful to see in real life. But as mentioned before, it is not a sign of ‘badness’ in the children. The children are simply reacting to the situation they find themselves in. All they are trying to do is to stay alive.
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