HEALTH PLUS:Children develop a sense of themselves as a unique being through various childhood games, writes MARIE MURRAY.
SELF-CONCEPT is complex. A significant developmental task in childhood is that of gaining a sense of self and understanding oneself as an individual, as a separate person from other people, and to develop a sense of personal existence in space and time. It is the beginning of the development of a personal identity.
Sigmund Freud emphasised what he called the symbiotic union between mother and child. By this he meant that the baby does not really differentiate itself from the mother, that in the baby’s experience mother and baby are joined together as if they are one person.
Other thinkers, such as developmental theorist Jean Piaget, thought that a child could not understand its separateness, its ‘self’, until it had the capacity to understand what he called “object permanence”, which is that when objects disappear from sight they still exist.
This concept of permanence is evident in the fun infants have in throwing toys from the pram to be retrieved, repeatedly, by parents. And when children look for toys they have lost, it shows that they understand that things have an existence independent of them.
When parents momentarily hide their faces behind their hands and then remove them to laughter, it is a valuable interaction between parents and babies that helps babies to understand “permanence”.
It is a game of “now you see me, now you don’t” with the message that “I am still there even when you can’t see my face”.
And when a child reciprocates by playing the game back with a parent, rather than just being the recipient of the ritual: when the child covers its face with its hands and then removes them to see parents’ reaction, then he or she is experimenting with the concept of permanence.
The baby is also engaging in turn taking which is one of the most crucial interactive activities of infancy, the foundation of language, social relationships and identity. All play is learning, and learning is achieved best in the early years through play.
Further theories on the development of a sense of ‘self’ say that there are two related tasks involved: to understand the ‘subjective self’, that is, the awareness that ‘I exist’ but also to understand what is called an ‘objective self’.
This means knowing about yourself from the perspective of other people: that you are a particular size, shape, age and gender and that you have a personal name that other people use when referring to you.
Understanding who we are in the world occurs over time and one’s sense of self also changes with time. This is why even many adults will say that they are still trying to ‘find themselves’. This is an evolving, life-long process.
Experiments to see if children are self-aware are often done by watching the child respond to its image in the mirror.
Research using ‘mirror tests’ shows that, up to about 12 months, while a child may enjoy and interact playfully with the moving, smiling reflection in a mirror, it is not until the child is about 20 months to two years old that he or she perceives that mirror image to be a reflection of themselves.
This is why parents often hold their children in front of mirrors, in the hope that the child may recognise its parents and then begin to recognise itself.
Other tests of self-awareness show that when children identify (unprompted) pictures of themselves, as themselves, they have a self-concept.
This is why one good way of teaching children about objects, their permanence, separateness, their names, characteristics and identities is through large colourful pictures.
The complexity of the child’s world is reduced if it has time to learn about it in short manageable pieces and begin to understand itself in this complex world.
But the acid test that a child has acquired a personal identity is when it screams “mine” in response to a toy someone tries to take away, or “me, me, me” to the sight of something it wants.
Proprietary demonstrations of this most voluble kind are notable in what are called the terrible twos. They are, perhaps, the best demonstration that a child has acquired a sense of self and can reassure parents, if confirmation is needed, that their child knows exactly that he or she is a person, with property, that others may not take away!
Marie Murray is a clinical psychologist, director of psychology and director of the Student Counselling Services in UCD.