Personal Needs for Children
to Grow There are basic needs that must be fulfilled
for humans to survive. Here, “to survive” does not simply mean living a
physical life but living with healthy emotions and a healthy mind. “Needs” do
not mean wanting something but require basic things that must be fulfilled. In
other words, humans have personal needs that are to be fulfilled such as
emotional needs and the need for social relationships in addition to physical
needs. The reason that humans have these personal needs is that God created
humans as personal beings. A scholar named Abraham Maslow divided the
personal needs of humans into five categories (stages): physiological need,
protection and safety need, love and belonging need, self-esteem need, and
self-actualization need. These needs are things that everyone, including adults
and children, need for a healthy life so that his or her life becomes
prosperous. First, physiological need is mainly
physical needs for survival. The things that babies need from birth, such as
air, food, clothing, sleep, excretion, and rest, fall into this category.
Parents must provide nutrition to their children through food, create an
environment where children can sleep, and change diapers when they are young.
These are things that take care of the body, but if these things are not
provided, it hinders the healthy development of the baby's emotions and mind. Second, the protection and safety need refers
to the things that must be provided in order to be protected from danger and to
have the perception of safety. Especially for young children, the world is a
scary place without parents, so they need to sense that they are protected from
dangerous or harmful environments. Some parents leave their young children at
home alone to go to early morning prayer service, but they should not leave
children alone until they grow up to a certain age. Some children wake up from
sleep and feel scared if they realize their parents are not home. If such
things happen repeatedly, fear becomes deeply rooted in the child, and as they
grow up, they may hear auditory hallucinations. Third, the love and belonging need can be
rephrased as intimacy and acceptance need. Everyone was created as a being who
wants to have an intimate and loving relationship with someone and need to be
accepted by other people. This need must first be fulfilled in the relationship
with parents. Children must grow up with the confidence that they are receiving
unconditional love from their parents to have unshakable emotional stability.
Children who do not feel accepted by their parents at home may run away from
home as they pass through adolescence because they are more attracted to groups
that accept them. Fourth, the self-esteem need can also be
called the praise and recognition need. This is because self-esteem is built
through praise and recognition. When you go to school, it is easy to receive
praise and recognition mainly based on grades, but parents should closely
observe their children and praise them as much as possible so that their
children can grow up with healthy self-esteem. Parents should not forget the
importance of not only the result, but also the efforts that their children put
into while carrying out the work. Most of all, when we rejoice in the existence
of our children and value their existence, not because they did something well,
children will have healthy self-esteem and learn to respect others. Fifth, the self-actualization need refers
to the desire to realize one's potential and complete oneself. Humans have a
basic desire to find hope in their potential, set goals, and do their best to
achieve those goals. However, many children experience numerous frustrations
and disappointments as they grow up, and as a result, their self-actualization
need is buried without even being able to sprout. Therefore, parents should
help their children have a positive outlook on life, set goals in life with
hope, and have an attitude of doing their best by giving them a lot of words of
encouragement and courage. Children who grow up without fulfilling these
five needs described above are more likely to grow up to be emotionally
anxious, depressed, inferior, and have low self-esteem. In addition, they feel
angry when their parents, who should provide them with those basic needs they
need, do not do so. However, when they are young, they usually do not realize
that they have anger inside them. Because their parents are too big in the eyes
of young children, they often suppress their anger toward their parents rather than
express it. Such suppressed anger does not disappear but remains in the
subconscious. Children who grow up like this tend to become adults who are full
of anger in their subconscious. The social crimes that we sometimes see in
the news are often committed by people who have antisocial personality disorder
because their basic personal needs that should have been fulfilled during their
growth period were not met. There are many types of personality disorders, such
as schizoid personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, antisocial
personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. People
with these personality disorders have anxiety, depression, and anger that are
deeply rooted in them. The five basic personality needs introduced
above are important to everybody, but it is especially important for young
children to fulfill these needs while they are growing up so that they can live
their lives with a stable emotion and healthy self-esteem. And the best people
to fulfill these needs during childhood are parents. (Jin Gyung Park/Yang, D. Min.) |
