Analysis Of My Childhood Negative Experiences Using Scientific Theories
During my childhood, I faced two significant issues that affected me negatively, especially in my attitude and the way I behaved. With the use of the Systems Theory, Ecological Theory and the Social Learning Theory, I will be examining and explaining for the reasons behind my attitude and behaviour.
When I was in the early childhood stage, my Father had a traumatic head injury after a fall. He went into a coma and had a few operations. It was a miracle that he survived but because he became disabled, he was not able to work. This brought about an increase in my Mother’s responsibilities as she became the sole bread winner for our family of three. This life event affected our family dynamics in terms of transaction. I was upset with my Father for not being able to provide for our family and give me the care and attention I wanted. Our parent-child relationship was thus strained when I started to become hot tempered, making communications tough. The use of the Person-In-Environment Approach can give an insight into my temperament.
Applying the Systems Theory, it can be said that when my Father became disabled, the homeostasis in our family was disrupted. This was because the shared responsibility of providing for the family changed when my Father was not able to work. In addition, he could not carry out his fatherly role in caring for me since he spent most of his time at the hospital. With the instability in our family functioning, I started to adopt an aggressive attitude towards my parents as a way to vent out my frustrations. Building on to this, I will be applying the concepts of adaptation and coping under the Ecological Theory.
This theory explains that homeostasis is affected by how people cope with their problems and adapt to their environment. Being used to the daily routine of my parents sending me to the childcare centre and spending time with me at home; I was unable to adjust to the changes when my Mother’s friend took over the role of sending me to the childcare centre and that I had to spend my time at my grandparent’s house whenever my Mother was too busy to take care of me. With that, I was unable to cope with the problems of decreased quality time spent with my parents and having my desires for attention and care unmet. This explains that my aggressive attitude back then was a result of my inability to deal with the negative changes that occurred in my life. However, as time passes, I started to become used to the new routine and changes. To add, I began to understand that it was not my Father’s wish to become disabled and unable to provide for our family. So, my attitude towards my parents improved gradually and significantly, generating better and longer-lasting conversations with my parents. Bringing in the Systems Theory once again, this positive change in my attitude created new transactions and established a new level of homeostasis in our family.
The second problem that I faced was peer pressure during my middle childhood phase. As a child, my peers would always laugh about how they managed to get away with lying to their parents. Wanting to be included into the conversations, I tried lying to my parents as well. For example, I would request to be fetched home from school at a later timing due to school activities. In actual fact, I stayed back in school to play with my friends. To examine my behaviour, I will be using the Social Learning Theory. The concept of modelling can be seen in which I picked up the act of lying to my parents from my peers in school. Knowing that my peers did not receive punishment for their act of lying, it encouraged me to imitate their behaviour. Additionally, being able to join in the conversations reinforced my act of lying since I felt accepted among my peers. However, this did not last long because I was caught and punished for lying to my parents.
The Social Learning Theory acknowledges that people obtain insights into their conduct and eventually make an effort to changing it based on the knowledge gained (Rogers, 2016). Since I was punished for my act, it made me rethink about lying in the future as I did not want to experience similar consequences. So, the punishment I received became a negative reinforcement, putting a stop to my bad conduct of lying.
To conclude, the two issues that occurred in my life brought about poor attitude and conduct in me. However, as I grew, I began to understand things better and learnt from my mistakes, allowing me to improve my attitude and behaviour.
