One thing for parents and others to understand is that every child born is one of a kind. Each child is born with traits, characteristics, latent potential, interests, intellect, aptitudes and abilities which are unique to that individual, making the child unlike any other human being on earth now, in the past or in the future. Every child, unless there is some birth defect precluding intellectual functioning, causing deformities, etc, is born with everything needed to live a full life, capable of taking care of him or herself and able to be happy.

Should this child grow up meeting all the emotional developmental milestones and achievements based on his or her own natural potential, this child would grow up, self-actualizing into a happy and prosperous adult. This adult would have the ability to achieve whatever it is that he or she would want to achieve, based on his or her own potentials, given the natural traits, characteristics, intellect, interests, aptitudes and abilities of the particular individual.

Sadly, few individuals ever grow up this way, and therefore, very few individuals ever actually self-actualize into becoming the very best that he or she could be based on his or her own true potentials.

Why do so few individuals reach their true potentials and self actualize? The answer is that children (who starts out as near to perfect as they will ever be, with all their own abilities, intellect, interests, aptitudes, talents, abilities, skills, etc., latent in childhood to a large degree) begin to have their selves and perceptions corrupted by learning from the outside world, mostly, at first from parents, and later from older siblings, teachers, preachers, aunts, uncles and others who, for the most part, have the best interests of the child in mind as they begin to misshape and distort the child's sense of self.

Parents and other "teachers" begin to tell the child what he or she "ought to do or become," what he or she "should or should not do," what the child "must or must not do," in most cases never taking into consideration what the child's interests, intellect, aptitudes and talents truly are or what the child needs. The developing child, who has a very concrete and literal mind, is not able to discern all the do's, don'ts, should's, must's, ought's, etc., that bombard the child from every direction. (And, keep in mind, I am not fixing blame.) Most parents, teachers and others had the child's best interest in mind when they were putting all these demands on the child as they were trying to shape and form the child for the child's well being and preparing him or her for life. The parents and teachers were doing what they believed to be right based on what they also believed, based on their own upbringing, that they too, learned from others who "meant well.")

What happens is the child begins to learn and believe, developing an "irrational" and "dysfunctional" belief system as his or her thoughts are formed. As the child continues to grow, all of his or her other ideas, beliefs and thoughts are interconnected with other irrational and dysfunctional beliefs and thoughts. Distortions grow as the child makes conclusions based on his or her own "realities of the mind" and the errors and distortions are compounded exponentially as each new conclusion is based on other faulty assumptions, beliefs, thoughts and ideas.

When a child enters school, his or her realities become further confused and distorted as school teachers and others begin to shape and form the child into being a student, teaching the child things that they may have no interest in learning at that time or may not be developed enough intellectually or emotionally to deal with. Teachers and others try to get the child to behave in ways that are totally alien, unnatural and abnormal for a young child, who wants to keep on being a normal and natural child who is carefree and fun seeking, just wanting to play, have fun and enjoy life.

Then, the child gets coaxed or coerced into becoming a model student. When children who are successfully coerced into doing some abnormal and unnatural things like sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher teach them things in which they have no interest or maybe even any understanding of, based on their concrete level of intellectual development, they begin to have more "ought to's," "should's," "must's," "do's" and "don'ts" imposed on their developing minds that go contrary to their own natural selves, and their distortions of reality become even more distorted, irrational and dysfunctional.

A child who cannot be coerced or coaxed into becoming something that he or she is not ready for or has no interest in winds up being labeled. These labels will range from: "ADD or ADD/HD; LD; Slow Learner; Mentally Handicapped; trouble maker; unruly; Hyper Active, etc." Depending on the particular child and the particular mindset of the school officials, the child will be labeled, pigeon-holed, punished, drugged, etc., because the child is not performing or behaving the way the teachers or other professionals say that the child "ought" to be behaving, performing or achieving. These "experts" then convince the parents that their child has a problem, and then things grow from bad to worse for the child. A child moving through this system is further damaged by the "experts" who say they are "doing what is for the child's own good" and the "experts" get the parents to go along with whatever the schools prescribe for their child, including in all too many cases "Prescription Drugs." After all, the "experts always know what is best?"

Children who are able to be "coaxed" or "coerced" into behaving in unnatural and abnormal ways, not getting into behavioral problems, are being damaged emotionally and intellectually as they do and behave in ways that go against their own best interests, their natural interests, aptitudes, abilities, traits, skills and other interests. The child begins to develop a secret world trapped in his or her own mind, as he or she thinks silently about what he or she is "not living up to" based on what he or she is being told that he or she should, ought to, must do, etc. The child begins to create a "sense of failure" because he cannot live up to all the expectations. The child begins to create "shame or guilt" because he or she may be letting teacher or parent down. The child then begins to learn to be dishonest, because he or she does not want to let the teacher or parent down and tell or confess to them that they have not "been perfect" and lived up to all the "should's, must's, etc. If asked by a parent or teacher if he or she did something, the child lies to protect him or herself from punishment or to keep from letting the teacher or parent down. Remember, the young child's mind and level of intellectual development is still concrete and literal and what you tell the child to do or not do is absolute.

When the school begins to present school work that is abstract and incomprehensible to a child's concrete and literal mind, the distortions continue to compound. When a child misses concepts he or she could not comprehend and the school then presents more information based on those concepts, the errors compound, creating in the child more and more of a sense of inadequacy, a feeling of intellectual inferiority or a sense of being a failure. This secret sense of inadequacy may manifest in different ways depending on the defense mechanisms a child develops to hide this sense of inadequacy or failure identity that is being developed.

About this article:
This is the first of a three-part series by Jerome Ennis, MA, Ed, Tuscaloosa, AL 35406. For more information, he can be contacted by phone at 205-523-1967 or via e-mail at jeromeennis@aol.com or marvin.ennis@va.gov