TODAY, I’d like to talk about the importance of sheltering children from adult topics, abuse and pretty much any unhealthy behaviour.
Anyone who has children knows the famous saying – that children are like sponges, they soak up everything. There have been mountains of scientific research to support this, even though you probably don’t need it when you curse and notice your child picked up the word quite quickly.

Parents are spending more time with their children now than ever, so this is something that worries me. Age doesn’t really matter – children start soaking up this information from birth and from birth to three years of age, their brain increases 80% of its adult size. It’s a crucial point of development.
Healthy interactions between this age aids in healthy communication and social skills – ones that will last a lifetime.

An important thing to remember is that children learn without being taught. They learn from their environment and who’s in it. It’s called modelling when a child acts and speaks the way they observe to be the norm. This means it’s important for adults to speak and behave wisely around children- not just to them.
Psychological studies show that children who witness abuse are at a much higher risk for mental health issues later down in life- the same risk as If they were abused directly.
Exposure to psychological or physical stress reduces the potential for learning, forming healthy relationships and becoming independent. And these negative consequences continue into adulthood.

If we’re talking about a child witnessing abuse, they can become depressed, have difficulty eating and sleeping, issues in school and their relationships. They even may become violent themselves and have a low sense of self-worth. All these factors cause them to grow up to become abusers themselves.
I think most of us already know this. It is important to shelter our children from anything negative, including things that may seem harmless such as gossip or insulting their other parent or grandparents.

You can’t blame children- they learn from copying you. They are listening to what you say and they are watching how you eat.
How did we find this out? There was a very famous psychological and behavioural study conducted in 1961 by Albert Bandura and colleagues to investigate if social behaviours (specifically aggression) can be acquired by observation and imitation.

They randomly chose 36 boys and 36 girls from the Stanford University Nursery School aged between three to six years old.
The children were pre-tested on their levels of aggression, so there would be no bias or false results.
They showed an aggressive model to 24 children, a non-aggressive model to 24 children and no model to 24 children.

The aggression was an adult coming in and becoming violent with some toys, especially a large bouncy ‘bobo doll’- both physically and verbally. The intention was to see if the children were in the aggressive group would copy or ‘model’ the violence that they witnessed the adult partook in. The children witnessed the violence for only 10 minutes.

The results were astounding. Children who observed the aggressive model made far more imitative, aggressive responses than those who were in the non-aggressive groups. The girls in the aggressive-model condition showed more physically aggressive responses if the model was male, but more verbal, aggressive responses if the model was female. Boys were more likely to imitate same-sex models than girls. Boys imitated more physically aggressive acts than girls. There was little difference in the verbal aggression between boys and girls.

The conclusion was that children copied what they say from adults, even if it’s not in their nature.
If you are guilty of a few things mentioned, it’s not too late to make some changes. Look at your home as your child’s first and last classroom, as they are watching and copying everything that you do. Set a positive example for your children. Also, limit what they watch on television as they can model behaviour from there as well.

Finally, keep in mind that every person your child sees is teaching them something. – so keep good people around.
Thank you for reading. Please continue to send topics to caitlinvieira@gmail.com.

If you would like to book a personal counselling session with me, please WhatsApp +592 623 0433