Thought Question Number 4
One evening at the Centre 4 girls, seven year old Ellie thought it would be great to pick up a medium sized lizard and kiss it. When she kissed that lizard it left me in shocked state and I wondered why a little girl would do such a thing. It also left me disgusted at the thought of all that bacteria she just transferred from the animal to her mouth. Once she spun around and noticed my response to her actions, Ellie smirked and proceeded to bring the lizard closer to me, despite my pleas that she “stop playing so much.” To my dismay, she didn’t stop, but instead, Ellie proceeded to creep closer and closer with the lizard in hand. At one point in time, Ellie placed the lizard so close to my lips that lizard was one …show more content…
It was then that I realized that Ellie thought I was playing the whole time. As if we were in some sort of play. Although I was telling her to “stop,” she believed that I didn’t mean what I was saying and I was acting the whole time. Thinking back to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development this all makes sense. Ellie is in the Preoperational stage, the common theme of children in this phase is the fact that they are egocentric (Piaget’s theory, 165). Egocentrism refers to a child believing that others see and experience the world- the same exact way they do. This is what caused Ellie to believe that I liked the lizard even though I said I didn’t multiple times. In her mind she believes she likes it so every girl has to like the lizard. The level of her cognitive ability also could explain the reason why she was genuinely surprised when I told the instructor on her. She was smirking not because she intentionally wanted to pester me with the lizard. But instead, she actually believed that she did nothing wrong but in fact, thought that we were just two friends playing a friendly game of ‘catch the lizard.” Ellie’s egocentric mind frame also explains why she referred to the lizard as “sad and lonely.” Often times, preoperational children attribute their own thoughts and feelings to non-human objects, this phenomenon is commonly known as animism (Piaget,
One evening at the Centre 4 girls, seven year old Ellie thought it would be great to pick up a medium sized lizard and kiss it. When she kissed that lizard it left me in shocked state and I wondered why a little girl would do such a thing. It also left me disgusted at the thought of all that bacteria she just transferred from the animal to her mouth. Once she spun around and noticed my response to her actions, Ellie smirked and proceeded to bring the lizard closer to me, despite my pleas that she “stop playing so much.” To my dismay, she didn’t stop, but instead, Ellie proceeded to creep closer and closer with the lizard in hand. At one point in time, Ellie placed the lizard so close to my lips that lizard was one …show more content…
It was then that I realized that Ellie thought I was playing the whole time. As if we were in some sort of play. Although I was telling her to “stop,” she believed that I didn’t mean what I was saying and I was acting the whole time. Thinking back to Piaget’s stages of cognitive development this all makes sense. Ellie is in the Preoperational stage, the common theme of children in this phase is the fact that they are egocentric (Piaget’s theory, 165). Egocentrism refers to a child believing that others see and experience the world- the same exact way they do. This is what caused Ellie to believe that I liked the lizard even though I said I didn’t multiple times. In her mind she believes she likes it so every girl has to like the lizard. The level of her cognitive ability also could explain the reason why she was genuinely surprised when I told the instructor on her. She was smirking not because she intentionally wanted to pester me with the lizard. But instead, she actually believed that she did nothing wrong but in fact, thought that we were just two friends playing a friendly game of ‘catch the lizard.” Ellie’s egocentric mind frame also explains why she referred to the lizard as “sad and lonely.” Often times, preoperational children attribute their own thoughts and feelings to non-human objects, this phenomenon is commonly known as animism (Piaget,