moral development

I've been fascinated lately to see how Esther's sense of morality is developing.  Actually, I was interested enough to do a little internet research on typical child moral development, but mostly all I could find were summaries of a certain person's theory that lumped ages 1-6 into one category.  If my memory serves, this stage was dubbed pre-conventional morality, and children's moral behavior throughout this stage is supposedly driven by the desire to avoid punishment.  Thus, young children's sense of right and wrong (according to this theory) is externally based rather than internally based.  

Wherever Esther's ideas of morality come from, she certainly has them.  There have been a couple of occasions recently where she saw another child breaking one of the rules I have for her.  Once a young houseguest was fiddling with the knobs on the stove, and once a little neighbor was walking onto someone else's private patio.  On both occasions, Esther said, "No!  No!" to the other child and sounded almost distressed.  She also looked at me as if she wanted me to intevene.  (I did redirect the child at the stove, but not the one on the patio.  Esther eventually followed the little boy onto the patio.)

I also remember reading a fascinating study done with very young children where the child was put into a room with an interesting object and observed.  An adult would then walk into the room and either behave neutrally or react to the object with disgust.  If the adult reacted with disgust, the child would decrease the amount of time they spent looking at or interacting with the object, even though the adult made no effort to dissuade the child from engaging with the object.  Once the adult left the room, however, the child would again pay attention to the object.  So it seems that a motivation to please adults is present, but that the child may not internalize the values of the adult they are trying to please.

Along these lines, the other day Esther walked up to me to show me something, but she had a very strange expression on her face.  I finally figured out that she had a piece of cereal in her mouth (which she had swiped from the table, breaking a rule) and was trying very hard not to open her mouth or chew so that I wouldn't find out what she had done.  So her desire to please me was strong enough that she didn't want me to know she had disobeyed, but not strong enough to obey in the first place.  Sigh.  I guess I have to be on the lookout for deception from now on!  (There have also been a couple of times recently when I've caught her playing with something she wasn't supposed to have, and she's jumped almost out of her skin and tried to put the object back where it belongs as quickly as possible.  Some of the misdeeds were a little hard to disguise, like when she unrolled a tube of toilet paper in her crib!)