Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Intrinsic value is key to growing up

Children are curious to everything in daily life including their own sensation and experience. They do observe everything closely. They taste it, try it and enjoy with it. Enjoyment is one of the driving forces of learning. They can pick up the first language in a few years. They want to talk to their parents, voice out their needs and share their ideas and feelings.

Our world is a sophisticated system with lots of policies, measures and utilities for certain goals. These goals are inscribed in these measures. Even though, these goals may be right, the implementation may not be good for everyone or tailor-made to the perception of everyone. For the sake of prolonged exposure to external measures, the external values are internalized. As we know, the external environment is kept changing. The change would be an impact to the children especially when the internalized values do not match to the new external values.They may collapse.

If the children have not yet internalized these values, they would treat those measures to be controls only. They would either adapt them or work against them. Eventually, they would forget their own values.

Parents should help them to develop their own intrinsic values which are the pillars of self-development. These values also give them direction and stability.