Psychology is a science that involves the study of a person’s behavior and mental abilities. The article provides an explanation to children’s peer behavior problems, and also determines the role of genetically informed attributes on adoptive parent’s behavior. Adopted children experience coping anxieties, distrust and are unable to form relationships with their peers due to nurture and genetically acquired traits. An adoptive parent has to understand the child, and win his trust before he can begin nurturing the child.
Children behaviors are determined by two major factors: inherited attributes and the environment. Parental interactions are some of the prominent interactions that children experience in their formative years; therefore, they tend to behave as they see their parents behaving (Elam et al, 2014). Additionally, the environment contributes to the child’s social behaviors. For example, a child who grew up in an unsafe environment will not be sociable as he develops distrust from a young age, and prefers solitary company as opposed to friendships. Also, children growing up in hostile environments do not develop their social and cognitive capabilities early as their counterparts in friendly environments or families. Hostile fathers cause the child to develop disruptive behaviors which inhibits a child’s growth and performance while the lack of support from mothers lead to antisocial child behavior.
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"Biological Bases of Behavior".
The above factors influence children’s concurrent and future behaviors. However, the environment, genetics and inherited traits are not only the behavioral influencers on a child’s behavior. In the case of an adoption, the adoptive parents’ relationship with a child will influence his behavior as well. Hostility from adoptive parents will cause a child to become antisocial and unsure of themselves and their surroundings. That is true for all children in spite of their biological parents’ behavior, however, those from a hostile environment are already used to such, and will therefore, use strategies that keep them off the limelight, hence there will be minimal interaction between the adoptive parents and the child.
- Elam et al, (2014). Adoptive parent hostility and children’s peer behavior problems: Examining the role of genetically informed child attributes on adoptive parent behavior. Developmental psychology 50, (5), 1543.
