The crisis of three years: the formation of the child's self-awareness. Part 1
All psychological neoplasms that appeared in early childhood, first of all: the primary mastery of speech with the development of the ability to name objects and actions with words, knowledge of the properties and functions of objects, as well as the increasing physical separation from the mother and the growing independence of the child (in self-service) - all this in the crisis period of three years leads to the emergence of a child's awareness of himself as separated from the outside world, from other people. And the child is affirmed in every way in this awareness. He seeks confirmation of this and even provokes them.
Briefly - about age crises
Age crises refer to the normative changes necessary for normal progressive mental development. In general, age crises that a person consistently goes through throughout life are accompanied by cardinal restructuring of the psyche in connection with the transition from one stage of development to another and a change in the social situation of development (L. S. Vygotsky), as well as leading activity (D. B. Elkonin).
The essence of age-related crises is in changing the system of a person's connections with the surrounding reality and his attitude to it. Correct passage of age-related crises ensures normal mental development (in childhood) and a satisfying human realization of his properties and abilities (in adulthood).
Psychologists admit that the problem of age crises in ontogenesis remains relevant, very interesting, but not fully theoretically and experimentally developed.
Psychologists - about the crisis of three years
The crisis of three years is a very important period in a child's life. This is a fairly short time (from several months to one year), which separates the age stages of development - early and preschool childhood. With a common name, this crisis in some children may begin in less than three years. So far, the fact that the crisis began earlier than three years in some children is only ascertained by psychologists, but its reasons are not explained.
All psychological neoplasms that appeared in early childhood, first of all: the primary mastery of speech with the development of the ability to name objects and actions with words, knowledge of the properties and functions of objects, as well as the increasing physical separation from the mother and the growing independence of the child (in self-service) - all this in the crisis period of three years leads to the emergence of a child's awareness of himself as separated from the outside world, from other people. And the child is affirmed in every way in this awareness. He seeks confirmation of this and even provokes them.
A characteristic sign of such awareness is the naming of oneself not by name, but by the personal pronoun "I". The child begins to understand: there is "I", and there are other people, and I can do what I want, and not what other people want (mom, dad, etc.).
This is an effective separation of oneself, helping the child to realize himself as separate from the outside world; it manifests itself in “doing the opposite” or “not doing” what adults tell him to. The child becomes disobedient, poorly controlled, contradicts adults for the sake of contradiction, even if his behavior is absurd and contrary to his true, natural desires.
For example, the child refuses to ask the mother to get home from a walk, despite the fact that he wants to go home as soon as possible, since he has been hungry for a long time. The desire to do things in one's own way is stronger.
Problem or round of development?
Disobedience of a child is perceived by adults as a problem. For the child himself, disobedience allows him to experience the “charm and exciting anxiety of expressing the will” in the open opposition of his desires to the expectations of adults 1 - and not once, but again and again. To feel this, the child says: “I myself,” and then performs the action of his own free will, feeling pride in the result, or rather, in the fact of achieving it on his own. Feeling yourself the source of your will is an important moment in the development of self-comprehension and self-knowledge 2.
Psychologists name and describe several forms of characteristic (negative) behavior of child 3 during the three-year crisis:
- negativism (the desire to do the opposite, even against one's own will);
- stubbornness (the child insists on something not because he really wants it, but because he demanded it and cannot refuse the initial decision);
- obstinacy (directed against the norms of education, a way of life that took shape up to three years);
- self-will (the desire to do everything yourself);
- protest-riot (state of war and conflict between the child and others);
- devaluation of an adult (the child begins to swear, tease and call parents names);
- despotism (the desire to force parents to do everything that he requires; in relation to younger sisters and brothers, despotism manifests itself as jealousy).
Psychologists give advice to parents on how to behave with one or another negative manifestation of the child. These recommendations, based on empirical experience, remain sketchy advice, without a systematic understanding of what is happening to the child at this time, without explaining why this or that particular child behaves this way and not otherwise.
Let's try to explain this from the standpoint of the System-Vector Psychology of Yuri Burlan.
"Holiday" of disobedience - everyone has their own
The disobedience of children during a three-year crisis differs depending on the set of innate mental properties (vectors).
So, a child with a skin vector is prone to whims and manipulations in order to obtain his own benefit. It is with him that parental promises "work": do what I say, you get this and that. Then he himself begins to put forward conditions: what exactly he wants to get if he obeys.
A child with an anal vector is characterized by stubbornness, refusal to do anything, opposition by inaction. These behavioral features arise in a child if his mother is with a skin vector (in an unrealized state or stress). Such a mother - in a hurry and flickering - constantly rushes her child, urges and scolds for slowness, using sometimes offensive words, which finally introduces him into a stupor.
A child with an urethral vector, when adults try to force him to obey, can demonstrate outrageous disobedience, even hooliganism based on unconscious defense of his natural high rank ("leader"), as if showing that he cannot be told, he decides what to do.
A visual child can fall into strong emotional moods with demonstrativeness, up to hysterics. Alternatively, with a bundle of skin and visual vectors, the baby can arrange violent emotional scenes “in public” in order to put parents in an uncomfortable position and, with this “lever”, bargain out promises from them to do something (pragmatic skin). In addition, emotional "visibility" will be manifested in the child's attempts to get pleasure from a prolonged "public speech" in order to attract the attention of others - "kind aunts and uncles" - who would begin to calm him down, shedding waterfalls of attention on him and condemning the "insensitive" parents.
A child with a sound vector, especially when they shout at him or call him derogatory words, can withdraw into himself, become unresponsive. His unwillingness to listen can be expressed in a characteristic gesture - covering his ears with his hands, which looks like a demonstrative refusal to listen and obey. In fact, this gesture is a defensive reaction in the child's desire to block the sound channel, to isolate himself from the "screaming" outside world that traumatizes him.
A child with an oral vector, with his tendency to activate the articulatory apparatus and voice, is likely to scream (moreover, his scream will almost literally "tear the eardrums"), he can spit, even swear in order to attract the attention of the parent, force himself hear (listen to his speech).
System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan says that modern children are "polymorphs", that is, from birth they are given the properties of several vectors. Therefore, a child, for example, with skin, anal, visual vectors in a crisis of three years, may have a complex combination of signs: stubbornness, and whims with manipulation, and hysteria with demonstrativeness.
From this point of view, every child has a combination of negative manifestations during a three-year crisis - not by chance, but quite naturally and individually - in accordance with natural given vectors. However, negative manifestations of vectors can be sequential: having worked out the “set” of one vector, the child moves on to the next.
The Consequences of Correct and Incorrect Passage of the Crisis in Three Years
Why mothers?
It is known that a three-year-old child does not go through a crisis alone, but together with his parents. In this case, the greatest severity of problems falls on the shoulders of the mother. Due to the fact that, due to the age of the child, she spends relatively more time with him than other close adults. And because, as the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan says, it is the mother who gives the child a sense of security and safety, laying the foundation for the correct mental development of the child. A mother can give this to her child if she herself is in a good - balanced - mental state.
And vice versa - an anxious, tense, internally unbalanced mother cannot give her child full psychological protection, even if she tries to externally control herself and spend day and night with him. In this case, it is not the amount of time spent with the child that matters, but the quality of the mother's inner state.
It is mothers who need psychological help who ask themselves (if they ask them at all) what to do with the child's negative and self-willed behavior during a three-year crisis.
How many children go through the crisis without problems?
According to the 1999 dictionary 4, about 1/3 of children go through this crisis as if imperceptibly, without any special problems, if the surrounding adults do not try to suppress the child, do not resist (within reasonable limits) the manifestations of his independence. System-vector psychology explains that such a favorable passage of a crisis - without acute forms of negative behavior of a three-year-old child - occurs when the actions of an adult do not contradict the natural characteristics of the child (due to the emotional sensitivity of the parent or the similarity of his and the child's properties).
However, now, under conditions of growing social stress, the proportion of such happy children is probably much smaller. The anxieties of modern life do not have the best effect on mothers who, being in bad conditions themselves, do not have enough mental resources to provide their children with a sense of security and safety.
It becomes clear that the crisis of three years can be passed correctly, that is, with a positive development of the child's self-awareness and independence, or incorrectly, with the strengthening of negative behaviors and various adverse consequences for the child's psyche and his future fate.
System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan does not stop at such a generalized understanding of the problem; according to her ideas about the vector features of children's behavior, the consequences of the passage of the three-year crisis for different children can differ significantly.
How to cope with a mobile child, how to calm down an emotional one, how to encourage a slow one, so as not to harm, but to help the correct mental development of a baby during a three-year crisis - in accordance with his natural characteristics? Read about this and much more in the continuation of the article.
Part II. The crisis of three years: the formation of the child's self-awareness
Part III. The crisis of three years: the formation of the child's self-awareness
1 Mukhina V. S. Age-related psychology. Phenomenology of development: a textbook for students. Higher. study. institutions / V. S. Mukhina. - 11th ed., Rev. and add. - M.: Publishing Center "Academy", 2007. - P. 218.
2 Mukhina V. S. Age-related psychology. Phenomenology of development: a textbook for students. Higher. study. institutions / V. S. Mukhina. - 11th ed., Rev. and add. - M.: Publishing Center "Academy", 2007. - P. 219.
3 Child psychology: Methodological guidelines / Compiled by R. P. Efimkina. - Novosibirsk: Research and Training Center of Psychology NSU, 1995. - P.14
4 Handbook of psychology and psychiatry of childhood and adolescence / ed. Tsirkina S. Yu. - SPb: Publishing house PETER, - 1999. - S. 30-31
