Applying the Concept of Socialization to the Story of Dani

Name: Institution: Date: Applying the Concept of Socialization to the Story of Dani The concept of socialization and theories of self-development. Socialization is the process of imparting an individual with the skills and habits necessary for interacting and participating in society through prompting them to inherit the societal norms, ideologies, and customs. The process starts at infancy, and it is lifelong. However, the very early stages of development are very critical to socialization, and if a child lacks socialization at that stage, it is almost impossible for his/her brain to make good sense of the world later on. The effects of denying children human touch can be studied through feral children whose early stages of their lives was devoid of human touch. Several psychologists have attempted to explain the process of learning and self-development. These theories among others explain how children learn and develop and the effects of the necessary factors and conducive environment for their development. How a lack of social interaction impacted Dani Dani was a feral child. Her mother never accorded her maternal and parental love and she likely secluded her away from other people such that she didn’t learn humanness. The physician who treated her described her as unable to ‘make eye contact. She frequently pushed us away, kicked us away," and "[She] would snarl at us, frankly. She behaved like an injured animal.” Other children aged 9 do not exhibit such behavior. Normally functioning 9-year-olds express emotions, have at least basic communication skills, exhibit a relative understanding of the environment etc. All these aspects of humanness were lacking in Dani. Sociological theories of self-development to Dani’s case Dani’s case can be best described by Jean Piaget’s theory on cognitive development CITATION Car131 \l 1033 (Mooney). Piaget described four stages of psycho-development namely: sensorimotor stage, preoperational stage, operational stage, and formal operational stage. In the sensorimotor stage (up to age 2) the child learns object permanence; that the things in his/her environment continue to exist even if they might be outside their sensory field. The pre-operational stage (up to age 7) the child learns communication and linguistic skills and absorb information that fits into the other parts of the world. The operational stage which lasts up to early adolescence the child can accommodate inf...