Growing up in an Urban Family: Soliloquy of a Child

Abstract

While teaching social casework, I read a short poem by Helen Harris Perlman on Ego which presented in a lucid manner the functioning of personality and the inter-relationship betweenId, ego and super-ego. Social work educators and practioners have been using creative literature in different languages to enrich teaching and practice. I have had an opportunity to observe a growing child for a year and how he is being reared by his parents lovingly, angrily, irritatingly and exhaustingly. After another year, I plan to write another part to follow the process of growing up and growing out up to three years. As a participant observer I have tried to interpret the meaning of his behaviour-crying, reaching out, body language, curiosity, frustration, sense of wonder and so on with joy. I have been trying to intervene and neutralise the harshness of parenting through soft talking, lifting him, and taking out, showing birds, animals, seasons, flowers, fruits, tending plants, allowing him to use my study table, etc. Since he has picked up a few words and mostly guides me to see and show his toys, the way he plays, and engages me to join. He heartily enjoys my clowning and foolishness and makes new games out of toys, waste materials, touching flowers and leaves of plants, and watering of plants. It is part of his preparation for his pre-school experience, and also to address later such problems as social inequality, discrimination, disadvantage and segregation through play way. Selection of stories and telling them will sensitise him. I am assuming that I am a child of two years and act accordingly to the extent possible in spite of limitations of age and physical movement. This experience blends the personal and the professional roles.