What are the symptoms of personality maladjustment?

Answer 1

Symptoms:

(1) Nervousness in the child is exhibited by habitual biting and wetting of lips, nail, biting, stammering, blushing, turning pale, constant restlessness, body rocking, nervous finger movements, frequent urination.

(2) The maladjusted child shows undue anxiety over mistakes, marked distress over failures, absent-mindedness, day-dreaming; he refuses to accept any recognition or reward, evades responsibility, withdraws from anything that looks new or difficult: he has lack of concentration, is unusually sensitive to all annoyances is suitable to work when distracted and has emotional tone in argument and feel hurt when others disagree; he makes frequent efforts to gain attention of the teacher. Such are the emotional over-reactions and deviations.

(3) The child, having emotional disorders, is unable to work alone, and rely on his own judgment; he is suffering from complexes; he is unusually self- conscious or over-critical of others, either too docile or too suggestive; such are his characteristic traits exhibiting his emotional in stability.

(4) The child who cannot adjust himself in the school environment shows exhibitionistic behaviour. He tends to tease, push and shove other pupils; he wants to be too funny or over-conspicuous; he is either found bluffing, or refusing to accept any lack of personal knowledge; he agrees markedly with whatever the teacher says or does and shows exaggerated courtesy.

(5) The maladjusted child has behaviour disorders which are generally seen in his antisocial behaviour. He is cruel to others, bullies them, uses obscene language, shows undue interest in sex, tells offensive stories, dislikes school work, resents authority, reacts badly to discipline, runs away from the class, and shows complete lack of interest in school work suddenly. He has psychosomatic disturbances also. When he is emotionally distressed, he begins to vomit or develops constipation and diarrhea or tends to overeat and shows other feeling disturbances.

Conclusion:

Many of these symptoms may be seen in normal children but frequent occurrence of a number of these symptoms indicates that the child is mentally ill or maladjusted.

Traits that mark the maladjusted child are: Carelessness, Cheating, Cruelty, Destroying material, Disobedience, Domineering, Dreams, Enuresis, Fearfulness, Heterosexuality, Imaginative lying, Impertinence, Inquisitiveness, Interrupting, Masturbation, Profanity,

Obscene notes, Restlessness, Shyness, Silliness, Smoking, Stealing, Stubbornness, Suggestible sullenness, Suspiciousness, Tardiness, Taunting, Temper Tantrums, Thoughtlessness, Truancy, Unhappiness, Unreliability, Unsocial withdrawing, Untruthfulness, Whispering.