Last Saturday, 3/7/2009, while my daughter was having her weekly art lesson, I was waiting at another room, enjoying the company of the two-year-old girl of a friend of mine. After all, people don’t get the chance to play with a two-year-old that often. Plus, it was a fun challenge to observe how she took sweets from me but not gave away her food, without expected reciprocation, despite of her mom’s kind insistence. It is our natural reaction to keep our food, the natural instinct for self-preservation. She reminds us how all of us were before we were socialized. It is cute and lovely at her age but worrisome for anyone beyond age 10.

Parenting is the first form of socialization. You can also call it the de-naturalizing process, in which we learn how to share, to behave according to social norms and to co-exist peacefully in a social group. We can see how the behavior of the children is thus shaped or to some extent determined during this first socialization process.

Observing the behavior of a two-year-old makes me once again appreciate the socialization process that our parents made us go through when we were this little — not an easy task as it runs against our nature. She is so much true to herself, before being first socialized. And this is what we were before. So next time when we refuse to share, we should ask ourselves, “How old are you?” Happy Friday!