preview

Children 's Influence On Child Vulnerability

Decent Essays

It is well understood that the influence on child vulnerability stems from their environment of basic social, emotional, physical, and cultural developmental needs met both in their micro and macro system. These influences can create conditions that can migrate into a range of abnormal adult behaviors such as; fears of intimacy, aggression, lack of trust, addictions, aggressive relationships, and phobias initiated from childhood fears (New Zealand Ministry of Social Development, 2012). This paper describes the fear in children observed as they develop from an early age, including not only fears that arise from the consequences of their own experiences, but also by means of threat information described as seeing or hearing frightening …show more content…

So what types of fear are innate vs fears that are learned? We know that a large number of the US population (10 million) has phobias such as snakes and spiders and one could assume that this would be an innate fear, (Lea Winernan, 2005). Yet we know that these two fears are learned during infancy, (PsychologicalScience.org, 2011). Innate primal fear in infants under 23 months is well documented and summarized by Sandra Scarr and Philip Salapatek (1970),“Noise and agents of noise (27%); pain (18%); falling, loss of support plus high places (13%); animals (7%); sudden, unexpected movement; plus lights, flashes, shadows (6%); and specific objects and situations (6%).” At the very early stages, children are helpless so innate fears keep them naturally within a safe and watchful distance of their parents. Fears beyond this are therefore known as learned fears derived from their developing life experiences or something a caregiver would instill.
Early childhood from one through six-and-a-half years is critical in roughly fifty percent of their cognitive and social development, and children in this age range live by their emotions established by their own imaginations (V. V. Zen 'kovskii, 2013). Muris and Field (2010) in “The Role of Verbal Threat Information In the Development of Childhood Fear” describe the emotion fear as having three response systems listed as subjective, based on verbal-cognitive; behavioral changes; and their physiological states. Such fears

Get Access