Growing up I didn't think my uncle was different. I mean yeah, of course I knew that he was in a wheel chair and pretty much everyone else wasn't. But I never thought it was weird or crazy. He was just my uncle Hans. It was only when my friends would ask, “what happened to him” or “why is he like that,” when I would start to question the situation as well. All I knew when I was young was: he is disabled and he had a stroke. I had no actual idea of what happened to him. I didn't know that he was a normal 12 years old boy who went swimming on a hot day, and the mixture between the aneurysm in his brain and the heat would cause him to have a heat stroke, die in the car on the way to the hospital, be in a coma for 10 weeks, have half of his brain cut out, then wake up paralyzed and have to learn how to live again. But when I found this out when I was old enough to understand it, I immediately became curious and infatuated with the human brain and I still am today. My uncle today is not self sufficient and this is not because of his stroke but because of his care after his stroke. My loving grandmother, and his mother, babied him after and never let him learn anything for himself. And today she is old and having health issues herself but still has to help him live. His brain after his stroke returned to that of a new born child. At that point my grandmother and his therapists could have started his learning process over again and with practice and a lot of time he could have eventually been able to live a normal life where he could do things himself. Instead at that time my grandma didn't know that when she would help him pour his milk and help him tie his shoes she was taking the ability to learn away from him. She did not realize that helping him do simple things was actually helping him fail at them later. This is why I want to have to do something, career wise, with the psychology of children. The brain and how one learns fascinates me so much. Our brain is who we are. And learning, and who we learn from, has so much to do with our future. It matters so much who is teaching s child and what is being taught. From my uncle and his condition I was able to see first hand how important not only teaching is but teaching then stepping back and letting a child make mistakes until they can do it themselves is important. Failure is the biggest part of learning and I think at times those who teach, such as parents, over look this due to their love for their children. Although my uncles disability is not positive, I was able to learn so much about who I want to be as a teacher and how much learning can affect a child's future.
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AuthorStudent/aspiring kindergarten teacher interested in children's psychological growth Archives
December 2016
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