Childhood Secrets Essay

Zain Muzaffar

Sociology of Parenting

4/22/2012

Childhood Secrets Essay

We are given a childhood, with experiences we foster within ourselves that ultimately stays in our subconscious self. In Childhood Secrets the author gives us a wide array of childhood memories that are examples of what we all have had to some degree in our childhood memories that shape the being and self in a phenomenological manner. The secrecy and privacy of the child's past is prolonged throughout the later stages of the adolescents years that the child grows up to be and has characteristics of behaviors he/she exhibits that have been overlooked through the years of the child growing up; and redefine the psychological reasoning by elucidating what we know and what are the pedagogical implications that reasons out. The word " Secret," comes from the Greek word meaning, " to shut or be closed."

The phenomenon of mystery and social secret are bonded by the presence of existential of social secret phenomenon of personal secrecy that would stay with us throughout our life until another unknown that would take the place of the previous secrecy we had fostered within over the years. In the documentary, "The Postmaster," the protagonist is being sheltered by some young 5 year old servant. The child is helping him get over his emotional disturbance which causes him to be scared and act inferior to his surroundings. The girl comes from an orphan like background and does her best to be his servant/part time companion friend. We see his self-reflection of his past be part of the existential secrecy that lies within him and allows him to be who he is. We have to go inside our character and inside our inner self to see what afflicts us and what we can do what self-condemns ourselves and heal the truth and the void that was lacking in the creation to prevent the social secrecy that caused the disturbance that afflicts us from the beginning. As a child there were times when the Communicative secrecy was present because there was a lack of communication between myself and the underlying secrecy that was preventing me from telling on myself. I was in preschool, and the teacher has picked me up and touched me very aggressively in school, which was child abuse. I was mishandled many time, and often those times where amongst other children that were going to school at the time. This was not the existential part that I had to keep to myself as a whole, but it was a communicative secrecy because I kept it within myself and I could not articulate myself to authority about how I was being mishandled many times of the day. We know secrecy actually exist in our world, and that we experience it in our everyday life. We keep our affairs to ourselves and know that we have to keep these secrets to ourselves for our own benefit, or to prevent any disasters that may happen. As quoted in chapter 2, the author state, "sometimes we choose not to share certain thoughts with others." The concept of doing so is called personal secrecy. Personal secrecy can b used for our benefit or against us. There personal secrecy as seen in Hallstrom's film "My Life as a Dog," sets theme for personal secrecy to exist in defining the sexual contact between the adolescents and the level of awareness underlies the concept of personal secrecy. Just like others I felt this has been a focal point in denial and troubles I have gone through in my mid 20's that is who I am today and where I am as well. A white lie may just be what we accept as evading the truth by taking a safer detour to avoid the hole in the ground that lies ahead of us. Can we be so sure that we are doing the right thing, or should we bring some 2nd or 3rd party to get involved in our affairs as counseling or therapy that we all should manage in our lives? This is what can be a social phenomenon that we can overcame and feel proud of, or just keep it within ourselves and never acknowledge that the occurrence that we encountered existed and stay in a temporary state of denial until we have enough time to move on and get back to what we started with.

I guess we all need to accept the fact that if what we say is a result of what we will get. In return I can only accept the fact that whatever comes out of my mouth is the truth or is it going to be taken in account as a non-biased perspective. In chapter 4 the author describes how personal secrecy afflicts us in many ways that it can dominate and take charge. It can take over ones being completely, and have an adverse effect on our personality.

In applying and fostering the concept of being a good parent, parenting as a whole; we need to be as positive in our approach and think as rational minded as we can. We need to be truthful in our approach if one is parenting a family of ten kids. We adopt a mutual understanding approach and being open so that communication if there and we are being completely open and honest with whom we are around. These values are good and are effective methods to avoid future problems that may arise of personal secrecy. The self/child is much more comfortable with them and does not have to worry about what anyone is thinking or being overly critical with one 's self. After all we are all people and we need to be as moral as we can be with ourselves and others, but that should not allow ourselves to confuse our attitudes about our inclination to still keep secrets reserved for us to keep. This is what one can call as saving their money in the bank, and spends it when they feel they need. The need is an option and can be exerted when one feels they are necessarily obligated to keep a secret from someone or to verbalize the truth to save the moment. If we are acting on this, then we are acting on what is called being reserved. Being reserved simply means not allowing oneself, or just simply just abstain from saying what is really on their mind, or what has happened to them in the past is a social setting, labeling the term as social secrecy. This can be so one is not putting out their dirty laundry for everyone else to know; so I guess simply don't spill the beans to maintain the self-image we all personify to the world every day. There is pedagogical that exits here. The main reason is the we cover our vulnerable , " self," and have a reserve that we keep afloat at all times simply at times because of prudence, and others as a social discretion that must be observed and learned and applied in the daily lives of the youth acquiring these social mores.

Secrecy is already involved in the act of describing