Essay on the Influence of Environmental Factors on Personality Development of a Child

Environmental factors play a significant role in the personality development of children. These are the influences of environmental factors on personality development of children.

1. Rearing patterns:

Interactions between the infant and mother for satisfaction of biological needs play a significant role in personality development. Care develops a sense of security. Over indulgence or under indulgence of the mother in breast-feeding would determine the oral personality and severity in toilet-training is the ‘anal’ personality.

A mother can make her child disciplined from his/her childhood by providing him/her positive environment. A mother should give balanced affection to her children to make his/her balanced personality.

2. Regularity:

Regularity in feeding practices would develop in the child basic trust in the world. While if mother does not maintain regularity in feeding practice then it can develop mistrust in child for world. Similarly toilet-training severity may cause the child to grow into a doubting and shameful person. So mother should have regularity in feeding and other practices develop personality of her child positively.

3. Parent-Child interaction:

Parents behaviour also influences personality development of a child. If the behaviour of parents is ejective then child can face difficulties in adjustment and feel insecurity, nervousness and shyness while dominating parents can make their child dependable shy, polite, self conscious, un-cooperative bold and quarrelsome.

Submissive parents can also influence on child. They can make him/her careless, disobedient, independent, self confident etc. Parents should have harmonious, well adjusted behaviour so that they could make their child calm, happy, cooperative, superior in adjustment and independent.

Child accepted behaviour make a child socially acceptable and confident. If parents play with their child then he/she feels secure and self reliant. Thus we can say that the parent-child interaction play a significant role in the development process of personality of a child.

4. Social class of the family:

Gnerally, middle class parents tend to develop in their children a sense of self direction, the power of decision-making. Parents in lower class homes do not have experience of building independence and controlling the behaviour of the child. The children of such families develop an attitude that the situations or environment are given and cannot be changed. Thus we can say that the social class of family also influences very much the personality development of a child.

5. Sibling relations:

A child’s brother and sister also influence his/her personality development. A sibling less only child tends to become overprotected and self centered. The eldest child happens to be an only child till the second is born.

The youngest child is never deprived of the affection of parents and may turn into a spoil child. Some studies that the first born children have contributed more geniuses while the last born children tend to contribute some creative, expressive persons. Parents should make positive and balanced behaviour among their children.

6. Neighbourhood:

Neighbourhood of child influences his/her personality development very much. A child learns very much from his/her neighbourhood; Children see and feel the behaviour of the parents of neighbourhood towards their children and compare to it with their own cases.

Children see various family styles and learn how to deal with the variety. If a child finds negative environment in his/her neighbourhood then he cannot develop his personality positively.

7. Peer group:

A child learns very much from his/her peer group. The child! learns to take turns, to suppress his/her wish in favour of the decision of the group.

A child moulds his/her behaviour to the standards set by the group which suggests to him continually what would please the group. If a child find! acceptable and positive peer group relations, then he/she can build his/her personality positively.

8. School:

The school environment makes a child learn punctuality, regularity,!’ and scheduling by conditioning through the bell when to arrive, when to study various subjects, when to play and when to leave for home etc.

Although students learn from curriculum of the school but a lot is learn through the school environment in its hidden curriculum. A child can learn rules and regulations to be followed from school environment.

9. Mass-Media:

The mass media radio, television, the newspaper and the magazine or the comics etc communicate to the child the styles of the various sub cultures in the total culture.

Today T.V., films, etc. are influencing the personality development of a child very much. Now we can say that various environmental factors influence very much the personality development of a child.