Psychological Confessions: KINDERGARTEN

            At this point in my life, I was already starting my early school years. I had my nursery and kindergarten at St. Matthew’s Academy, which is a private, co-ed school and my preparatory year at St. Scholastica which is a private exclusive school for girls. I remember during my kindergarten year, my classmates and I already had a sense of malice in us. We often teased our boy and girl classmates and pretend like we are conducting a wedding for them.  I knew I had a crush on the “groom” but I went ahead with the flow thinking that I don’t want to mess things up between the “couple” in our class.  I think this behavior of mine falls under Erikson’s developmental task of early moral development and group play. And it feels quite rewarding on my part that even at that young age, I already had some sense of values. I do believe that I carried this with me until my teen years and beyond, because if not, I would have been impregnated long before or at least lost my virginity to my ex-boyfriend back in high school. And even now that I have my long standing boyfriend, had I not developed my morality during those formative years, I would have been in a much different place right now.

            In consonance to group play, I remember the times when I played house with my male cousin who was older than I am. He would be the father while I would be the mother and my little brother and sister would be our children.  This is an example of Erikson’s sex-role identification, one of the developmental tasks in this stage of early school age. I believe this task is very important because even at this time, I can already distinguish what role I should play which will eventually help me mature and move accordingly to the next stages of my development.

            Moreover, at about the age of five, I was already developing an acute sense of attraction towards my cousin. In fact, I consider myself as an early bloomer in terns of having feelings of malice and attraction towards the opposite sex. It is no wonder that in my succeeding years, I had numerous encounters and memorable experiences with the opposite sex more than I did with my own kind considering the fact that from 6 years old to high school, I was educated by private, religious, exclusive schools.

            Furthermore, another set of experiences I vividly remember were: at age four, while waiting for my parents to come home from work, I was practicing reciting numbers from 1 to 5. When I was finally able to do it, my parents arrived and I was so glad to show them off my latest accomplishment. They were so proud of me and I remember feeling very, very proud and good about myself at that time. At this stage, it is clear that I was acquiring initiative with the help of my parents’ encouragement and compliments. And consequently, I knew that I was a very smart girl and if I keep it up, I will always feel good and my parents will always shower me with kindness, affection and attention. As you may have noticed from my account above, I don’t remember doing well in school for the sake of my parents’ happiness. It is always about me — my feelings, my rewards, my accomplishments. In Piaget’s words, I was at the stage of preoperational intelligence and I was thinking egocentrically. Come to think of it, I think I am stuck at this stage even until now or should I say I am in what Piaget calls adolescent egocentrism such that I cannot avoid not thinking that people’s attention around me is centered on me. Sometimes, I even get somewhat paranoid thinking that my friends are all out to get me or are planning something evil for me. But ever since I knew about this, I felt much better knowing that it’s normal and is a part of my development. I even try to control it sometimes when I am aware of my egocentrism.