PSYCHOLOGY 207
TAKE HOME FINALS
DR.A.T.CORTEZ
CHAU LEUNG
12/14/1999
MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Before this course I though adopted children must be very sad, since their adoptive parents could not love them as their biological parents would.  But now I think I was wrong.  This learning is personally meaningful to me, because when I was young my neighbor had an adopted child.  She was three years older than I. She had always told me I was so lucky that I could live with my biological parents.  Her self-esteem was very low.  She didn’t tell her adoptive parents how she felt, though.  She said she had to treat them, since if they hadn’t adopted her she would have been dead a long time ago.  I saw her adoptive parents treat her like a servant:she had to wash the whole family’s clothes when she was 9 years old. I told myself that if I could not have baby, I wouldn’t adopt a children instead, because it is so unfair for them.  I didn’t want my adopted child to feel the way my neighbor did.  The reading on adoption helped me reach insights different from what I had thought back then.  Before I thought that the adoptive parent could bring happiness to adoptive children, but not the other way around.  I seen now that I was wrong:  each makes the other happy. Also, I now see that most adoptive children view their adoption positively.

Before this course I believed children talking aloud to themselves were strange, but now I think it is normal.  This learning is personally meaningful to me because I am the youngest in my family.  My brother said when I was young I always talked to myself.  My brother felt I was strange and crazy.  I didn’t understand it.  I  knew that when I was young I liked to talk aloud to myself, and answer questions I asked myself.  I thought I really had a problem.  I tried asking my parents: was I crazy?  But they didn’t answer me.  The theories of private speech helped me reach the insight that this was normal.  After studying private speech, I called my brother in Hong Kong and told him I had been normal when I spoke out loud to myself.   
 
Before this course I thought everyone remembered their first day of preschool.  I have vivid memories of going with my brother to preschool that first day; but now I think not everyone can remember something like that.  This learning is personally meaningful to me because I have such vivid memories from the age of 3.  This memory must very important to me.  The theories of autobiographical memories helped me reach insight into specific events in my own life. The first day I went to preschool with my brother, it was raining heavily.  I opened my umbrella and the metal button on the umbrella cut my finger. Even right now I never own umbrellas like that, choosing automatically-opening umbrellas instead.  My brother always laughs at me about that. He doesn’t understand how could I remember that.
 
Before this course I thought learning a new language is easy, but now I realize that isn’t true when you get older.  This learning is personally meaningful to me because when I was 8 years old I emmigrated to Hong Kong.  I didn’t know how to speech Cantonese.  But at that time I learned Cantonese very naturally.  The concept of fast mapping helped me reach the insight that as a child I had a natural gift for learning language.  I didn’t try to memorize words then as I did learning English later.  I have spent much more time learning English than I did learning Cantonese, but my Cantonese is better. I realize now that fast mapping allows children to absorb the meaning of new word after hearing it only once or twice in conversation.  I wish I could have that gift of language learning again.

 Before this course I didn’t think physical abuse effects children very much, but now I deeply believe that physical abuse can effect children forever.  This learning is personally meaningful to me because my father was physical abusive to my brother.  The concepts of physical abuse involves potential injury to the body, in a pattern often referred to as the battered child syndrome. This knowledge helped me achieve insight into my brother’s situation.

My father is a bad-tempered person.  I remember how, when I was young, he physically abused my mother and my brother.  At the time I thought that was normal, because my neighbors were the same way.  In China physical abuse of wives was normal.  I was so scared when my father battered my mother, but nobody could help.  One time my father beat my mother and my brother only watched, without thinking to help.  I was young, and the only thing I could do was cry.  Right now my brother has no girl friend, because he thinks he has to look for a person who he really loves.  He had a girlfriend when he was an undergraduate; after they separated, his former girlfriend told me that when my brother was angry he would hit people.  It scared me: I never thought he would hit his girlfriend.  After he graduated and went back to Hong Kong,  in less than three weeks my brother had a big fight with my father.  My brother was hurt badly and my mother took him to the hospital.  I told them to go to get family therapy.  According to their traditional mind-set, they considered physical abuse is normal.  I worry about my brother’s future wife.  I don’t want them to stay like this.