There has always been the question in psychology of whether nurture or nature makes the most effect on a child's growth. Over the past week, I have been observing a close friends sister to see whether her environment or family or maybe even both have created her to be the person she is today. Faith is now seven years old and is in second grade. I've known Faith for almost five years, and I have watched her, but never observed her behavior or paid attention to how she acts or reacts to people and things around her.
Meeting Faith, the first thing you would notice was her attitude. I've always known she has had an attitude, but never new why she did or how she got it, so I decided to figure out why she acts the way she does. Watching the way she reacts to her family showed me that she gets some of the attitude from her older sister, but her mother does not stand for the attitude and puts the attitude to rest. She wants what she wants and will ask for it until she gets it. Although her mother counteracts the attitude, she still brings it out whenever she feels necessary. In this case her attitude comes from nature, the outside source being her sister. In Freud's psychosexual theory this would be the id appearing. Faith's attitude is her instincts of how to react to certain situations since she watches her sister react that way. In this scenario her mother would be the Operant Conditioning, showing negative reinforcement and sometimes punishment to make her learn that she needs to stop giving attitude and respect others around her.
Observing Faith has made me realize that she still has the behavior of a child. Although she is seven years old she still has the tantrums and the arguments with her family and has the sense that she is always right and nobody can convince her otherwise. Faith still plays with dolls and wants to play pretend all the time, basically holding onto her childhood instead of realizing she can make friends at sc...