Childhood Observation

I absolutely think that children think in a different way than adults. I witness it firsthand, every day with my 3-year-old. For instance, I have seen my son struggle with static reasoning and think in terms of irreversibility (Berger, 2014, p. 246). Additionally, my son is currently very much in the “why” stage. For every answer you give to one question, there are more that follow it. I have also witnessed my son thinking along the lines of the “theory-theory”, as he is always trying to explain the things he sees (Berger, 2014, p. 252).

My son’s cousin is 6 and just finished Kindergarten. We have witnessed a lot of growth in him this year, not only in academic areas (i.e. reading and math), but in overall maturation. We have also seen an increase in his logic. The following example shows not only a change in logical thinking, but also an example of social comparison as described by Berger (2014, p. 369). Last Christmas, he can home and informed his Mom that he is the only one in his class without an elf (i.e. Elf on the Shelf) and therefore Santa must not like him. His Mom promptly went out and bought an Elf because she didn’t want him to think Santa didn’t like him.

I do not mean to say that as adults we do not wonder and that we are not curious about what we see, but overall, we do not have the same level of curiosity as a child in early childhood. While I think that social comparison is part of the world we live, I think it is less pervasive in adulthood. By adulthood, we have discovered more about ourselves as an individual and hopefully care less about being exactly like our friends. I do think that adults like to “keep up with the Jones’”, but I don’t think it is on the same level as a child in middle childhood who may believe that something is wrong with him because he does not have a possession that someone else