Agree here. The initial personality and mindset development happens in childhood..
1. How parents treat/behave with kids, among themselves and others are observed and adopted or disliked by kids.
2. Bullying in schools are another one.
3. How elder kids treat the younger one.
4. Beyond that, every kid has his/her own nature and character by birth. All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.
All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.
But we don't all have the same home environment. There are generally some years between births, and things happen in those years. Good things, bad things, and things. It'll be more pronounced if there is more time between children.
I mean, just myself: I have two siblings. One is 6 years younger, the other 11 years younger. Between me and the older of the two: My dad graduated college and got a decently stable job. My parents moved away from my mom's family, who helped take care of me while my mother worked, and moved to a small town. My mother started staying at home since the finances allowed it.
We moved yet again before my younger sibling was born: My father switched careers and made more money than before (which was rich compared to their finances while I was young and my father was in college).
All this meant that we got attention from different sorts of folks while young. Our parents had different finances: While I had poverty while young, my youngest sibling had nothing of the sort. My parents were more experienced by the time my brother was born, too. We all had different sorts of challenges which definitely affected the ways my parents communicated with us - their continuing maturity did this as well: I was born before either were 25, but my siblings after.
But what OP refers to is that kids are born with their own personality which already emerges from a very young age in the first year.
I've seen it with my kids, and also other young kids in my close environment. For instance, some are just naturally extraverted, or wild, while others are careful by nature. Some of it changes when they get older, but a lot stays the same. So yeah environment matters, but most parents I talk to agree with me kids come with their own character.
Can confirm. My son was definitely born with most of his behavioural patterns already formed. It appears to me that we as parents can only guide what is already there, and not completely reshape our children into whatever suits us.
I expect parents expectations of how much they can shape their children has caused more broken adults than anything else.
This brings up an interesting question, where does innate character come from?
In the case of identical twins, their (biological) nature and nurture (upbringing) are the same or very similar, yet their innate character can be very different.
If you believe in the existence of a non-physical soul/spirit, that could be an explanation.
Surprisingly, how parents treat/behave with their kids has no correlation on personality and mindset development! It's mostly in the peers, so parents affect only indirectly by shaping the culture and environment in which children grow up. (See Harris, 2009: The Nurture Assumption.)
I wonder if that applies to children who are growing up isolated from their peers during toddler years due to the pandemic, whose only social interactions are with their parents.
> All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.
I think none of these are the same because "everything flows". With each child the environment changes significantly. The first child doesn't have any siblings to grow around, then it exerts huge influence on the second child, the third child brings in yet another dynamic. Parents also change a lot with each new child. So, except for twins, nothing is really the same.
I don't think the claim relies on siblings' environments being the exact same. The point is just that the degree of intra-family similarity is almost always far greater than the degree of average inter-family similarity. To a reasonable approximation it's fair to call it 'the same' in the context of the comparison with non-siblings.
I don't think that's true - the difference between being an only child and having older siblings is much more than the difference between two only children in relatively similar (from a socio-economic point of view) families, I would say.
The way parents interact with their first child and subsequent children is significantly different, and the added interaction between the children themselves compounds these.
OK, but the claim is that siblings are different, despite growing up in the same environment, because they have their "own nature and character by birth".
I guess what I'm saying is that they might become different due to the environment necessarily changing in pretty significant ways for each of them.
The oldest child definitely gets the most parental attention and investment in most families - this is pretty much a universal finding across cultures as well.
Beyond that, every kid has his/her own nature and character by birth. All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.
Ignoring changing circumstances of a family, is the environment the same?
Suppose you like sports, and get your kid a ball, but your kid likes books more, are you going to persist with the ball or get a book to read together?
If your next kid likes the ball are you going to buy more books or try more sports?
Overly simplistic but a kid is probably affecting their environment.
Even days after birth you can see differences. One kid settles really easily, yet their sibling would cry and need much more holding. After a few weeks, you might have a child who smiles at everybody and doesn't mind being held by others, but their sibling at that age might have avoided people they didn't recognise. etc. etc.
While I'm sure plenty does come from nurture, it's actually incredible how different they can be even before books and toys come into the picture.
OP here: Since the #4th point got maximum reaction, let me add more to it from a very different perspective. Far east text has concept of Samskaras (Impressions). These are earned by us as we do karma (work) and react to outcome of it. The impressions are "carried over" to next Birth. This forms the core nature and characteristics of the person. It's a theory to explain how do we have different nature/character. This is concise explanation of it https://www.sivanandaonline.org//?cmd=displaysection§ion... (Grep for "Past Samskaras Constitute Prarabdha" to jump to exact that point)
Oh please. To even compare scientific models with "someones interpretation" neither does justice to the discipline of psychology, nor to your readers here. Its almost insulting. I consider myself very open minded, but don't bring supernatural stuff to a conversation where the participants actually seek to understand. That's just off.
1. How parents treat/behave with kids, among themselves and others are observed and adopted or disliked by kids.
2. Bullying in schools are another one.
3. How elder kids treat the younger one.
4. Beyond that, every kid has his/her own nature and character by birth. All Siblings are different despite having same parents, same upbringing, same environment at home.