There are many parents who complain that 2- to 7-year-olds are "too egotistical" because children in this age group always do what they want and protest by crying and rolling around if their demands are not met. Many children do not like to share their own toys and snacks, and they will rob other children of things, which makes parents feel very headache.
"How can a child be so selfish?" The parents questioned helplessly. But the psychologist Piaget wants to be fair to the children, he believes that the children's behavior can not be regarded as "selfish", because they are in the pre-computing stage of intellectual cognitive development - they can only experience their own feelings, and they have no ability to speculate on other people's behavior, perceive other people's emotions and feelings.
To prove this, Piaget did the famous Three Mountains experiment.
He placed three small hills of different sizes and shapes on a three-dimensional dune model, then asked a group of children under the age of 7 to look around the model carefully, and asked assistants to take pictures of the dunes from all directions, and got a set of photos.
When the children had finished observing, Piaget asked them to sit around the model, then take out the photos, let them choose the scenes they can see now, and then choose the scenes that the children sitting in other directions see. As a result, these children all thought that the children sitting in the other direction were exactly the same as what they saw.
Piaget thus concluded that a 2- to 7-year-old would think that his thoughts were the same as others, and would even think that the whole world had been created for him, thus exhibiting a typical egocentricity. They only know things from their own standpoints and perspectives, and cannot think from the perspective of objective or others, which is typical of the pre-operation stage mentioned in Piaget's theory of the stages of cognitive development.
As children get older and reach the specific computing stage, they will be able to get rid of this overly self-centered situation and gradually learn to think about others.
Therefore, when parents find that their children are unwilling to share and are too willful, they should not rush to blame them for selfishness, and do not take tough measures to correct their children's behavior, otherwise it will interfere with the normal development of children's thinking.
It is advisable to use the psychologist's advice to use role-play methods to help children gradually become self-centered. For example, you can play "doctor and patient game" and "teacher and student game" with your child, so that children can try to talk and do things like a certain character, so that they can gradually learn to experience the feelings of others.