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A two year old is not capable of understanding that an object doesn't cease to exist when they can no longer see it. This is why peek-a-boo is enthralling to ba
by po 16y ago
A two year old is not capable of understanding that an object doesn't cease to exist when they can no longer see it. This is why peek-a-boo is enthralling to babies.
There are similar developmental challenges faced by the human brain over it's lifetime. It never stops changing. At some point, we draw a line and say that it is grown up, but it's a blurry line.
There is nothing de-humanizing about taking a group of people (based on age) and saying they are incapable of certain types of thought. Adding the word "decent" as you did would be adding subjectivity and moral judgement, however the parent post didn't say that.
You might not remember it, but you also struggled with certain concepts: object permanence, abstract thinking, reasoning. Assuming a child is the same thing mentally as an adult is a huge mistake. We may grant them the same basic human rights, but they are absolutely not capable of the same level of thought. That's why we have a different word for them: children.
At the age of 3 or 4 children are just starting to understand the concept of "same" and "different".
Here's some information about childhood milestones:
http://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/toddler/Pages/Developmental-Milestones-3-to-4-Years-Old.aspx http://www.healthychildren.org/English/ages-stages/toddler/P...
- johnyzee 16y agoI agree and being the father of a five year old I experience every day how little idea I have about how he understands things. As an example he is currently struggling with the idea of things being relative, so while I watch the world cup and say that one of the teams playing are a good soccer team, he will respond that then the other team must not be good. For some reason he really needs this to be true for his world to make sense. There are just so many learned realities that we as adults assume but which kids have no idea about, to the extent that we have no freaking clue about how they see the world.
- po 16y agoAbsolutely. Sometimes I think about what the difference between an 18 year old and a 24 year old's brain is. Or, perhaps the difference between a 30 year old and a 50 year old person. I think we have an intuitive understanding of it and it shows up in a lot of public policy debate. People talk about ageism and old people "not getting it" and older folks have a similar "kids these days" feeling. I wonder what part of that is simply due to differing world views caused by differing brain capabilities. Nobody seems to talk about that when we debate these things. I'm sure its being studied.