Understanding Child Behavioral Development

Understanding child behavioral development is a complicated topic. Some children behaviors are consider as “easy” and other are consider as “difficult”. Why do some children grow up with behavioral issues while others do not? This conundrum can be applicable to the concepts of nature and nurture in the context of parenting in relation to child temperament. The issues of nature and nurture have been a controversial topic in the history of psychology. It is the argument of whether psychological characteristics such as behavioral inclinations, personality traits and mental capabilities are installed in our system before we are even born. On the other hand, it is how we are brought up in our environment that governs our psychological development …show more content…
From the Developmental Psychology Journal, the negative genetic tendency of child temperament can either manifest itself or not depends on whether certain situations that activates the environmental conditions are presents (Ge et al., 1996). For example, in studies, children with 7-repeat DRD4 allele who encountered insensitive mothering show more externalizing behaviors such as bullying or physical aggression than did children without the DRD4-7 repeated gene. In addition, children whom experienced sensitive mothering showed the lowest levels of externalizing problems and behaviors (Belsky et al., 2009). Another examples from studies, in adoption cases, adopted children with biological parents whom had a history of criminality tends to displayed criminality in adulthood if adopted to dysfunctional homes it will enables these predispositions (Ge et al., 1996). From Collins et al.’s (2000), their research demonstrated that children with a psychiatrically ill parent who were not subject to any parental mistreatment, compared to those who were, showed very low levels of both externalizing and internalizing problems. That different outcome furthers shows that children temperament was both