Yes because that will be the only action you ever get.
If I was molested as a kid do I want those memories back?
- Thread starter Jayson
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Yes because that will be the only action you ever get.
Okay, bad form. Bad form.
Yeah, very bad form. There's no need of comments like that.
TheLonelySquire
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I remember doing that as well... there's a word for it, but I can't remember what it is right now.
Heck, sometimes I still wonder whether I'm stuck in some kind of real-life Truman Show...
I remember doing that as well... there's a word for it, but I can't remember what it is right now.
Heck, sometimes I still wonder whether I'm stuck in some kind of real-life Truman Show...
do people push you up against convieniently placed billboards during regular conversations?
Wow....qualifies for one of the most inconsiderate posts I have ever seen on this BBS. And that includes such luminaries as Dayton, Storm Rucker, Enterpriser, Tachy, etc.
Other than that tomfoolery though. Jayson I hope that you find the peace that you desire. Don't let the naysayers here get you down. Do what you need to do to make peace with yourself.
As for the other debate about childhood memories I can almost go back as far as 1 year for my first concrete memory. I do remember times after that of course but they are just fragments and not complete memories. Now to complicate this debate i do have distinct and absolute memories from when I was 4 years old. And i do distinctly remember knowing what death was (never coming back, ever. Gone, never to be seen or heard from again.)
The biological process of Death is of course beyond a 4 year old but the real world implications are very much understandable by a 4 year old. And those implications are also also something that a 4 year old can stress about. I remember worrying about a lot of things at that time.
I want to address again how children perceive death. A few people have recounted their own memories as evidence that a 4 year old truly understands death. Most 4 year olds do not. Some may, some people here may have at that age, but most don't. Case studies are interesting and can be scientifically viable, but a few case studies does not a theory confirm. Decades of scientific experimentation and observation have shown that children of that age do not fully understand the concept of time and do not fully understand the difference between "living" and "non-living." (In one experiment, children are given a number of items like a goldfish, a plant, a toy truck, a baby doll, etc, and asked to place the living items on one table and the non-living on another. Four year olds regularly make the mistake of placing the plant on the non-living table and the baby doll on the living table.) If one cannot grasp those concepts, one cannot fully comprehend death. It does sound counter-intuitive, epecially when we think back on our own experiences. (For another counter-intuitive example of childhood comprehension, take the classic experiment in which a 5 year old watches water being poured from a short, stout vessel into a tall, narrow vessel. Though the amount of water obviously doesn't change, and the child is witness to that, she will still stubbornly insist that there is more water in the tall vessel than was in the short!) However, the nature of memory is convoluded and imprecise; by the very processes by which information is percieved, processed, and stored in the brain, memories are flawed. Even savants with "picture-perfect" memories, have been shown to make errors. Therefore, case studies based on our own memories are the least scientific and most unreliable -- reliably unreliable, it could be said.
I worked counceling young children for a year (and still do, though unofficially -- it just goes with the territory of teaching), my statements are based not only in the courses I took for a degree in developmental psychology, but in 8 year's worth of experience working with children. Even kids who had been exposed to death directly and from an early age still sometimes exhibited difficulty understanding it (though they were better at it). It is very important that adults realize how limited most kids' understanding of death is, so that our responses to a child in mourning are appropriate. It is also important to recognize that often children up to age 10 do not fully comprehend the perminance of death because it is a valid argument for not trying children as adults in murder cases (as this country is frighteningly eager to do).
I worked counceling young children for a year (and still do, though unofficially -- it just goes with the territory of teaching), my statements are based not only in the courses I took for a degree in developmental psychology, but in 8 year's worth of experience working with children. Even kids who had been exposed to death directly and from an early age still sometimes exhibited difficulty understanding it (though they were better at it). It is very important that adults realize how limited most kids' understanding of death is, so that our responses to a child in mourning are appropriate. It is also important to recognize that often children up to age 10 do not fully comprehend the perminance of death because it is a valid argument for not trying children as adults in murder cases (as this country is frighteningly eager to do).
I wouldn't put much stock into what those shrinks say. My dad died when I was 7. I barely knew him and I didn't get give a shit or cry when he died.
Couple of years ago somehow I ended up talking to a Shrink and I mentioned to him I like to worry a lot. I always have to check the door when I leave in case it's open because I think a thief or a killer might come in and butcher my family and steal everything. I always check to see if the gas is one when I'm in the Kitchen incase it is on and the house explodes with me inside it. I told him about this and other stuff that usually involves me doing annoying ritual stuff because i think something horrible will happen.
Guy thinks for a minute and says that It's because my dad died really young that I do this stuff.
Yeah my dad who in all honesty wasn't the best father out there. The man who I barely saw because I stayed with my mum. When in those really rare moments I was with him. He would be a horrible father. Giving me a cigarette when I'm only 6.
All though to be fair on him. I heard that he changed the way he behaved and became very religous. Went on pilgrim for a year and came up with a business plan and got an investor .... and then he died.
Couple of years ago somehow I ended up talking to a Shrink and I mentioned to him I like to worry a lot. I always have to check the door when I leave in case it's open because I think a thief or a killer might come in and butcher my family and steal everything. I always check to see if the gas is one when I'm in the Kitchen incase it is on and the house explodes with me inside it. I told him about this and other stuff that usually involves me doing annoying ritual stuff because i think something horrible will happen.
Guy thinks for a minute and says that It's because my dad died really young that I do this stuff.
Yeah my dad who in all honesty wasn't the best father out there. The man who I barely saw because I stayed with my mum. When in those really rare moments I was with him. He would be a horrible father. Giving me a cigarette when I'm only 6.
All though to be fair on him. I heard that he changed the way he behaved and became very religous. Went on pilgrim for a year and came up with a business plan and got an investor .... and then he died.
Hey TSQ, I'm not fighting you on this as I'm sure that the vast majority of kids would fall into the not understand column just as we few who post on this board are not representative of the majority of people on most issues.
But, I have to ask how many of those kids don't understand the life/death issue well because parents, families, and schools don't actually teach, explain, or even talk about this stuff with children. That they would have the capacity to understand if it was actually taught to them?
^I know you're not arguing, I just get irked by bad science, and there ran the risk that people would generalize from their own experiences. Anyway, your's is a valid question and there is definite evidence that children who have more experience with death better understand the concept. Western culture has removed death as far as it can from the rest of everyday life, what with sending the sick and elderly away, kids don't often see death. The kids I've worked with who had lost someone before were usually much more aware of the reality of the situation, but that still wasn't always the case.
Bad science is never a good thing, so I can under stand you getting irked by it. I mean, it bugs me too most the time at least
I just question everything, and I don't see how a study of a child's understanding of something is not inaccurate in it's results when the child, or anyone of any age really, has never been offered any instruction as to the concept let alone the details of a subject. I'm sure it wouldn't change the results by much, but there would no doubt be differences
^Well, the studies I've cited are classic experiments that have been replicated over and again for decades and in many different (though mostly Western) cultures. I'm sure there are differences between cultures and individuals who have been taught more about death, but one must also take into account that people must reach a certain stage of development before they can comprehend certain things, or perform certain tasks, for that matter. A two month old won't walk no matter how well tutored in walking he is. A four year old will still insist the tall vessel holds more water no matter how many different ways it is explained and shown to her that the same amount of liquid is being transferred between the two.
Here is Piaget's classic conservation of mass experiment with water and clay.
I had trouble finding a video of the specific living v non-living experiment I cited, and don't really feel like trawling the web for it, but I did find this abstract (which, interestingly since we are discussing the phenomena across cultures, is about a set of experiments conducted on Chinese children):
Here is Piaget's classic conservation of mass experiment with water and clay.
I had trouble finding a video of the specific living v non-living experiment I cited, and don't really feel like trawling the web for it, but I did find this abstract (which, interestingly since we are discussing the phenomena across cultures, is about a set of experiments conducted on Chinese children):
source
Easy there, quark. No need to go trawling the web. I was just asking a question for basic board banter. No need to prepare a lesson plan and school me. I'll accept what you are positing, but I still believe that there are "abnormal" youngsters who run counter to the findings of the studies, even if they are an extreme minority.
I'll accept what you are positing, but I still believe that there are "abnormal" youngsters who run counter to the findings of the studies, even if they are an extreme minority.
^Oh, don't take it like that! It's a subject I am interested in, that's all. And I agree, not all children develop the same way in and in the same time.
I'm just razzing you a little quark, I'm not taking it like that.
I wish schools did more to accommodate that fact.
My youngest son was able to grasp certain concepts which others in his age group weren't despite the fact that my son had serious learning disabilities.
Once my son's teacher asked her class of 5 to 6 years old "where does the sun go at night?". Most of the children offered explanations such as under the ground or to the other side of the world but only my son said that the sun didn't go anywhere and that night came when the part of the world you were on turned away from the sun.
My son used to score low on IQ tests but this was probably due to his language development problems. He also scored extremely low on motor-visual tasks (due to his cerebral palsy). When he was 5 years 11 months old he did both a motor-visual and a visual perception test. For the motor- visual he scored at about a 3 1/2 level but on the visual perception test he scored extremely high. An average 9 year old would have got 30 of the 40 questions correct and my son got 36 of the questions right.
I think my son might have been able to pass the tall and short glass test at four. I once tested him by seeing which glass he would take when I showed him a particular short glass held more than a tall glass. He choose the short glass to drink out of. My son had no speech at four so it is hard for me to really know whether he fully understood (he might have simply choosen the shorter glass because it was easier to use).
Once my son's teacher asked her class of 5 to 6 years old "where does the sun go at night?". Most of the children offered explanations such as under the ground or to the other side of the world but only my son said that the sun didn't go anywhere and that night came when the part of the world you were on turned away from the sun.
My son used to score low on IQ tests but this was probably due to his language development problems. He also scored extremely low on motor-visual tasks (due to his cerebral palsy). When he was 5 years 11 months old he did both a motor-visual and a visual perception test. For the motor- visual he scored at about a 3 1/2 level but on the visual perception test he scored extremely high. An average 9 year old would have got 30 of the 40 questions correct and my son got 36 of the questions right.
I think my son might have been able to pass the tall and short glass test at four. I once tested him by seeing which glass he would take when I showed him a particular short glass held more than a tall glass. He choose the short glass to drink out of. My son had no speech at four so it is hard for me to really know whether he fully understood (he might have simply choosen the shorter glass because it was easier to use).
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^He sounds like a very good example of the differences in individual children, especially with his extremes of having no speech yet grasping difficult concepts. I was much the same as a child, actually. I spoke some sign language at the age of four, but it was limited because my mother began learning it only a year earlier when she discovered that hearing impairment was the definite cause of my stalled speech development. I know that I understood concepts of perspective that were very advanced for my age, though, because of the drawings I produced.
Piaget's stages are not catch-all, but they are very accurate when generalizing.
Piaget's stages are not catch-all, but they are very accurate when generalizing.
It does look like there is a controversy as to whether the repressed memories are created by suggestion during therapy.
Here's a wikipedia link, about repressed memories.
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