Among the general signs of the "Mowgli syndrome" are speech disorders or inability to speak, inability to walk upright, desocialization, lack of skills in using cutlery, fear of people. At the same time, they often have excellent health and much more stable immunity than people living in society. Psychologists often noted that a person who has spent quite a long time among animals begins to identify himself with his "brothers"; so an eighteen-year-old girl who was raised by dogs, having learned to speak, still insisted that she was a dog. However, in this case, there are already mental deviations, which are also inevitable.
When asked whether the process of human recovery is possible after a long stay outside the human environment in society, experts again do not give an unambiguous answer: everything is too individual. The chances of becoming a normal person in "Mowgli" depend both on genetically inherent qualities, and on the period and duration of stay outside of society.
In the process of human development, there is a certain age limit, a threshold in which this or that function is laid: for example, the ability to speak, upright walking skills. In addition, there is a transitional period, on average, 12-13 years: before this age, the child's brain is quite plastic, and by the age of 12-13, the human brain is gaining intellectual potential. Despite the fact that development takes place during later life, the main thing is laid precisely by adolescence. In the event that a person has not formed any of the functions, then it is almost impossible to replenish them later.
As the specialist notes, after the 12-13 year old threshold of an undeveloped person, it is only possible to "train" or, in some cases, minimally adapt to the social environment, but whether it is possible to socialize him as a person is a big question.
Speaking of the "Mowgli syndrome", the possibility of a person's further survival in society, after his return to society, also depends on age. For example, if a child enters the animal community before he has formed the skill of upright walking, then moving on all fours will become the only possible way for life - it will be impossible to retrain.
Various cases are known: sometimes Mowgli children managed to survive among people, sometimes not. So, two sisters, taken from a pack of wolves, both died; the youngest - almost immediately, and the eldest - a few years later, without having learned to speak.
In another case, when a ten-year-old boy lived with monkeys for three years, he was able to return: the doctors explained this by the fact that he got to the animals already at the age when he had already managed to realize himself as a man.
An eighteen-year-old girl who considers herself a dog degrades in development after her return. But there are also exceptional cases:
In the city of Podolsk near Moscow, a seven-year-old child was discovered who lived in an apartment with his mother, however, who suffered from "Mowgli's syndrome". In fact, he was raised by a dog: Vitya Kozlovtsev was fluent in all dog habits. He perfectly ran on all fours, barked, lapped from a bowl and curled up comfortably on the rug ...
After the boy was found - quite by accident - his mother was deprived of parental rights. Vitya himself was transferred to the "House of Mercy" Lilit and Alexander Gorelov. Despite the fact that doctors gave very skeptical forecasts, in a year the boy learned to walk, talk, use a spoon and fork, play and laugh. Perhaps the boy could have recovered, but the law in this case turned out to be against the child: problems with documents jeopardized the existence of the House of Mercy. As the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reported, the process of registering guardianship of the boy is now underway so that the Gorelovs can take the child legally.
The material was prepared by the online editors of www.rian.ru based on information from the RIA Novosti Agency and other sources
Incredible Facts
The legend says that Romulus and Rema, the twin founders of Rome, were abandoned as children, and the children were suckled by a she-wolf until they were found by a wandering shepherd. In the end, they founded the city on Palatine Hill, the very place where the she-wolf took care of them. Perhaps this is all just a myth, but there are many real cases in history related to children raised by animals.
And although in real life the stories of these wild children are not as romantic as in the case of Romulus and Rem Since these children were often observed to have cognitive and behavioral impairments, their stories testify to the remarkable human will to survive and the strong maternal instinct of other animals.
Ukrainian dog girl
Left in a kennel by her negligent parents at the age of 3 to 8, Oksana Malaya I grew up around other dogs. When she was found in 1991, she was unable to speak, choosing dog barking over speech and running around on all fours. Now in my twenties, Oksana taught to speak, but she remained mentally retarded. Now she takes care of the cows that are on a farm near the boarding school where she lives.
Cambodian jungle girl
Rochom Piengeng(Rochom P "ngieng) got lost and mysteriously disappeared at the age of 8, when she was herding a buffalo in the jungles of Cambodia. After 18 years, in 2007, a villager saw a naked woman sneaking to his house in an attempt to steal rice. After that, how a lost girl was recognized in a woman Rochom Piengeng by a distinctive scar on her back, it turned out that the girl somehow miraculously survived in the dense jungle.
The girl was unable to learn the language and adapt to the local culture and disappeared again in May 2010. Much conflicting information about her whereabouts has since surfaced, including a report that in June 2010 she was seen in a pit of a dug-out toilet near the house.
Monkey baby from Uganda
After his father killed his mother before his eyes, the 4-year-old John Ssebunya(John Ssebunya) fled into the jungle where he was supposedly raised by green monkeys until he was found in 1991. As in other cases with Mowgli children, he resisted the villagers who tried to capture him, and received help from his monkey relatives, who threw sticks at people. After he was caught, John was taught to talk and sing. The last thing that became known about him was that he was touring with a children's choir. Pearls of Africa.
Victor of Aveyron
He was perhaps one of the most famous Mowgli children. Story Victor of Aveyron became widely known thanks to the film " wild child"Although his origins are a mystery, it is believed that Victor lived his entire childhood alone in the forest before he was discovered in 1797. After several more disappearances, he appeared in the vicinity of France in 1800. Victor became the subject of study many philosophers and scientists who thought about the origin of language and human behavior, although little was achieved in its development due to mental retardation.
Madina
tragic story Madina looks like a story Oksana Malaya. Madina lived with dogs on her own before she was discovered at the age of 3. When they found her, she knew only two words - yes and no, although she preferred to bark like a dog. Fortunately, Madina declared mentally and physically healthy immediately upon discovery. Although her development has been retarded, she is at an age where hope is not completely lost and those who care for her believe that she will be able to lead a normal life when she grows up.
Lobo, the wolf girl from the Devil's River
In 1845, a mysterious girl was seen running on all fours among wolves, attacking a herd of goats near San Felipe in Mexico. The story was confirmed a year later, when the girl was seen again, this time greedily eating a dead goat. The alarmed villagers began searching for the girl, and soon the wild girl was caught. It is believed that she constantly howled like a wolf at night, attracting packs of wolves that broke into the village to save her. In the end, she broke free and escaped from her confinement.
The girl was not seen until 1854, when she was accidentally spotted with two wolf cubs near the river. She grabbed the cubs and ran into the forest and since then no one has seen her again.
bird boy
A Russian boy abandoned by his mother who communicates by chirping has been discovered by social workers in Volgograd. When found, the 6-year-old boy was unable to speak and instead chirped, just like his parrot friends. Despite not being physically harmed in any way, he is unable to enter into normal human contact. He expresses his emotions by waving his arms like a bird's wings. He was transferred to a psychological assistance center, where specialists are trying to rehabilitate him.
Amala and Kamala
These two girls are 8 years old Kamala) and 18 months( Amala) were found in a wolf den in 1920 in Midnapore in India. Their history is controversial. Since the girls had a big age difference, experts believe that they were not sisters. It is possible that they came to the wolves at different times. Both girls had all the habits of animals: they walked on all fours, howled at night, opened their mouths and stuck out their tongues like wolves. Like the other Mowgli children, they wanted to return to their old lives and felt unhappy trying to get comfortable in the civilized world. After the youngest girl died, Kamala cried for the first time. The older girl managed to partially socialize.
Wild Boy Peter
In 1724, a naked hairy boy who walked on all fours was found in a forest near the city. Hameln in Germany. When he was tricked, he behaved like a wild animal, preferring to eat birds and vegetables raw and unable to speak. After being transported to England, he was given the name wild boy peter. And despite never learning to speak, he supposedly loved music, was taught to do simple jobs, and lived to a ripe old age.
Once my son had to spend almost a day in a hospital box.
One. At four.
It was an infectious diseases department, and I was not supposed to stay in it in any way. In the box there was a crib with a red rubber mattress and a drop-down grate, another bed covered with a Ministry of Health diaper, a chair upholstered in black leatherette, a table and a bedside table. There was a bathtub along the opposite wall, and under the bathtub there was a large enameled pot covered with a lid. There were no toys. The huge window, behind which the yard and life were noisy, was smeared from bottom to half with white paint, so neither the yard nor life could be seen through the window.
Go home, the doctor told me in a tired voice. - Nothing will happen to him, someone will definitely come up, even though we are not paid for it.
Are you saying that there are no nannies for children in the children's hospital? I asked as if I had grown up in some other country.
Want. There is no such position in the state - a nanny, we somehow get out ourselves.
The son cried.
Go home, the doctor repeated. - Boy, stop crying, you're big, but you're crying! Look, - she waved her hand somewhere to the side, - our refuseniks lie and never cry, but you ...
The word "otkazniki" scratched the heart, but at that moment it did not linger - the son, of course, was the most important thing.
This is how the ward in Kopeysk hospital looked before the arrival of the Hospital Orphans programThe box was located between two exactly the same boxes that were empty. It turned out that for the first time in my life I was small - yes, yes, small, there are no big ones at the age of four! - not quite a healthy boy was left alone in an unfamiliar government building, and even for the night. Dysentery and all the E. coli in the world seemed to me complete nonsense compared to the plague of loneliness.
In the morning, having learned that the diagnosis was not confirmed, I rushed to pick up the child. The son was still alone in the three boxes, looking out the smeared window and howling softly. He didn’t cry, but rather howled in a thin voice, and then pressed himself against me as if a whole life had passed, and not just one night, and he didn’t even want to get dressed so as not to unclench his arms.
He grew up a long time ago and, of course, forgot about this case, and I have long known who the “refuseniks” are, only almost nothing changes outside the window: nannies (namely, nannies, not nurses!) in children's hospitals are still like this and are not provided - neither in Moscow, nor in Kamchatka - anywhere in the Russian Federation. I wrote “almost unchanged,” because there is still some movement: since last year, when children enter orphanages, they are examined not in a hospital, as before, but in a regular polyclinic, on an outpatient basis. True, this is far from being carried out in all regions and, in any case, it does not completely solve the problem of nannies - there are always sick babies. So doctors, nurses and nurses continue to “get out”.
Sometimes they are helped by caring people. That's how it is in Chelyabinsk.
The son was still alone in three boxes, looking out the smeared window and howling softly.
They lay like little old men in their dull beds, silently and tearlessly, sucking their own hands out of utter loneliness.
Currently, the Hospital Orphans project employs six full-time day nannies.
Here are excerpts from my conversations with them:
“I see once, a long time ago: the little ones are standing on the windowsill, looking out the window. A nurse walks by, asks: “What are you looking at?” He babbles to her in response: "I'm waiting for my mother." And she suddenly pulls him down with the words: “There is nothing to watch, you don’t have a mother!” Now, of course, no one talks to our children like that anymore.”
“The number of children fluctuates greatly, now there are eighteen of them, and all in different hospitals, and in a few days it can become several times more. Today I’m rushing from floor to floor between Sonechka with pneumonia and Styopka, who was removed from the family ... It’s ideal, of course, for us to have a mobile team of nannies, but these are pipe dreams.”
“We have a special contingent of children, they are all traumatized. Once they brought a boy of four years old, his father killed his mother in front of his eyes. The kid was so afraid that he did not come out from behind the curtain.
And she suddenly pulls him down with the words: "NOTHING TO LOOK, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER"
“Most abandoned children are disabled, it is especially pitiful for them, and they need to be looked after more carefully than for an ordinary child, but it turns out the other way around. Life hasn’t spared them anyway, they need a hundred times more affection and care, especially when they get sick and end up in the hospital, but where else…”
“Why else would the hospital staff treat our children like that? Because they understood that there was no one to stand up for them, these are not home kids. And we began to complain - and about the attitude, and about the form in which children are often brought from children's institutions, they had not previously been recorded if a child was admitted to the hospital with bruises. Well, who needs extra control?
“At first I cried out of pity for them, then I put up a barrier, saying to myself this: “I worked all day, giving them love, care and affection. Now I'm going home to my children."
Little Ildar, removed from the family. With him were nannies Valentina, Rimma Ivanovna and SashaPhoto: Public Association "Women of Eurasia"
“The most beautiful thing is to see how a child has learned something. He didn’t know how to suck - and suddenly you see how he does it for the first time! It's indescribable! And the first words! Steps! I am drinking from them. I give them care and love, and they give me childish immediacy. I learn from them to fight for life. Somehow I broke down because of domestic failures, and then I looked at the children, and I say to myself: “What are you going through? Before you is a child who has neither mom nor dad, and you are an adult aunt. It's just ridiculous."
“We had a girl Polina, very heavy, with cerebral palsy. She also lacked a sucking reflex. She was fed in the orphanage through a tube, she was launched catastrophically. We removed the probe and just sat near her for an hour, fed. And she started to suck. Herself. And it was a victory."
“In 2012, I worked as a public nanny in the Department of Pathology of Premature and Newborns. When I first came to the hospital and saw the kids, a lump stood in my throat. There were eight abandoned children in the ward, everyone needed their mother's warm word, affection, love, mother's gentle hands, but there was no mother nearby, doctors, nurses fought for the lives of the kids, in general, everything except the most important person ... In the care of one nurse there are 20-25 children, and everyone needs to be given medicine, someone to feed through a tube or an injection. But the biggest amount of time is spent on filling out the documentation. I know that nurses try to devote at least a little time to the children, but, unfortunately, this does not always work out. Not because they are so cruel, but because there is simply no time.”
“Once, a lady in the city administration, refusing a subsidy, told us that our project is harmful, because children get used to hands and then do not give caregivers in the orphanage rest. For some reason, statesmen are not at all able to think of the children they dispose of as their own. If they could, half of the problems would go away by themselves and forever.
They don’t need much at first, but they don’t get that either.
“I’ll tell you honestly - they don’t like abandoned children in hospitals. I see this by the way they treat children when we are not there - on weekends, holidays and at night. In the morning I come to my shift, I take off the diaper from the baby, and it weighs one hundred and sixty grams and flows from it - which means that since the evening they put it on, they never changed it.
“The most difficult thing for me at first was to get used to their psychological and physical characteristics. Children from orphanages cry abnormally little, but often get on all fours and sway, calming themselves. Several days pass - they come to life, you look - already his eyes are burning, and he is smiling! They don't need much at first, but they don't get that either. I love them all, professionally I didn’t burn out at all, I have my own approach to each, I know who loves what - put one on a barrel, and sing a song to the other.
“Some are very tiny, even with a clothespin on the navel. And the best part is when they are adopted right from the hospital. It's indescribable."
Left: Rimma Ivanovna with a baby with cerebral palsy Right: Nanny Yulia, ChelPipe HospitalPhoto: Zhenya Kozikova
Tanya Shchur at the end of our conversation says:
“You are engaged,” they threw me in the face several times in high offices as an accusation. And I do not argue, we are really engaged by hospital orphans! Do you know why? Because a baby who has not received his share of parental hugs, lullabies and kisses grows up with an almost incurable injury, earns a kind of “Mowgli syndrome” - pathological emotional deafness, great difficulties in communicating with other people, a complex of fears and spiritual callousness. Any psychologist will tell you this without hesitation.
It will still seem to someone that the presence of a nanny in a hospital is more from the field of lyrics, pink snot and pampering. But just imagine for a second that after the operation and dressings there is no one to take your baby in your arms, to squeeze, kiss, soothe in order to somehow alleviate the pain, and that this is your baby lying alone in a crib with a stray sheet, and this is your the little blue-eyed cries and sways himself from side to side, trying to lull and calm him down. Only human kindness, uncontrolled by the state, can help here.
With its own kindness, the state is somehow not in a hurry: public organizations have many times tried to achieve changes in the law on medical care so that a nanny in the hospital would be given to a little man without a mother, just as he was given air, water and medicine. But the state does not notice these attempts, does not hear the lonely cry of a child, rushing from all the hospitals of our great country through the black darkness of the night and the icy loneliness of the day. The ear of the state is deaf.
Please become engaged too, help the project, extend the kindness. Without it, hospital orphans will be very bad. 100, 200, 500 rubles - any amount is very important. More importantly, monthly donations. In January, the New Year's calm will come, when charitable activity decreases. If you make a regular donation right now, the project will continue in the new year.
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Our modern world can be called child-centric: there are many development methods, the principle of manifestation of creativity has become fundamental in the process of education and training, an individual approach is being implemented. Especially valuable for developmental psychology is the discovery of L. Vygotsky concerning sensitive periods in human development: if you use this time to the maximum, you can grow, if not a genius, then a gifted and realized person. However, if these periods are ignored, irreparable losses and omissions occur in the course of the formation of the personality, and confirmation of this is the Mowgli children.
What are sensitive periods?
Today, classical developmental psychology identifies evidence-based sensitive periods that are most favorable for learning basic life skills. Why are they considered so auspicious? Because at certain periods in the very physiological and mental process of development there is a maximum potential for mastering certain skills - this is due to the pace, rhythm of life, the formation of basic systems of life. The term "sensitive period" was introduced into scientific use by L. S. Vygotsky. We are talking about qualitative changes, after which a person already acts in a new mental and physical incarnation, having risen to a new level of development.
And if you miss the chance of learning given by nature itself, then the development processes can be distorted or even become irreversible, take place with irreparable losses. Consider the main sensitive periods in human development.
Sensitive periods for speech activity
- development of vocabulary, development of fine motor skills (from one and a half to 3 years);
- mastering letters (3-4 years), the formation of meaningful speech;
- manifestation of interest in music, mathematics (from 4 to 5 years), the formation of ideas about the size, colors, configuration of objects;
- active social interaction (from 5 to 6 years);
- rise in the ability to speech activity (from 8 to 9 years).
Need for stability
For a child, the predictability of each day at an early age is very important: certain awakening rituals, eating patterns, walking, games, bedtime rituals. Associated with these phases of daytime activity is the primary idea of the world, and if it is stable, predictable, then it is safe, and then the child's basic trust in the world does not undergo unnecessary tests.
Stability is, among other things, when a mother reads the same favorite fairy tale many times, in which all the events are already known, this is the sequence of adults, their ability and ability to keep promises, the establishment of family rules (“In our family, they don’t spit on the floor "," In our family, you can get angry, "etc.). The sensitive period for the formation of a sense of stability is up to 3 years.
sensory development
Sensory is the basis for mental activity, the accumulation of vocabulary, teaching the exact sciences and the humanities, and the formation of aesthetic taste. Therefore, sensory experience is an important aspect of personality development, and the sensitive period for the formation of this experience is the first 5 years. It is at this time that the child's manipulations with objects of small shapes, various configurations, colors, and volumes are especially productive.
Physical activity
The most favorable period for the manifestation of physical activity is from the moment of independent walking (from about 1 year) to 4 years of age. At this time, mental activity is formed in close connection with physical active actions. With the development of motor activity, the idea of the independence of the child is also associated - the ability to observe the norms of etiquette, manage clothes and shoes, and manipulate important objects.
Sensitive period of primary socialization
This time is from 2 to 6 years. The child is immersed in the culture of communication, the general culture adopted in his family, learns the productive norms of interaction, including learning the ability to express and experience emotions, focusing on the parental model. The “feedback” that he receives from his peers and parents, the ability to make friends, empathize, help and ask for help, etc. becomes important.
Why are sensitive periods recognized by psychologists as irrevocably disappearing in the course of personality development?
The sensitive period is the time when you are most receptive to learning important skills, as discussed above. And if no training has taken place, it will either be very difficult for a child to master the skills, or even impossible. This is confirmed by stories about Mowgli children, the first report about which was made in the scientific community by Itar. For example, if no one talks to a child until the age of 1, then it will be difficult for him to learn to speak, and he will never fully master this skill. Moreover, the emotional sphere is also closely related to the manifestations of feelings of a significant adult in relation to the child. Today, there are many stories of orphans who experienced a severe lack of affection, care and love and therefore did not learn to experience and express these feelings themselves. According to Erickson, before the age of 1, a basic trust in life is formed, and if this life is harsh on the child, if his needs are not met, and emotions are not experienced in their entirety, there is no trust in the world around him, and it is impossible to form it artificially afterwards.
Having missed the sensitive periods of development, Mowgli children (those who for some reason were removed from the human environment and raised by animals) will not be able to become fully socialized without sincere long-term participation in them. In addition, the factor of heredity and the period of being outside the human environment are also important in this respect. Today there are many true stories about how animals (wolves, dogs, monkeys) practically saved the lives of human cubs, teaching them vital skills for survival in the animal, wild world. At the same time, the mental processes of many of these turned out to be irreversibly distorted, without the possibility of recovery. That is why such cases are designated in modern psychology and medicine as "Mowgli's syndrome".
What is "Mowgli Syndrome"?
This is a complex of signs demonstrated by an individual who developed and was brought up outside of society. How does it manifest itself? In the prevalence of instinctive manifestations, in isolation, the inability to speak or distort speech, walking on all fours, the lack of a concept of etiquette, the complete absence of socialization, health stability, mental abnormalities that are virtually inevitable under such conditions of education, certain physical characteristics (for example, in a girl, living among monkeys for a long time, excessive development of the fingers was revealed, due to the fact that they had to move through the trees). Since a person is a complex system, the manifestations of Mowgli's syndrome will be qualified differently by different specialists.
What determines the possibility of getting rid of Mowgli's syndrome?
Complete elimination of this set of features will most likely not happen even under the most favorable conditions: too much has been lost in the process of development outside of society. For psychologists, such cases once again confirmed the legitimacy of the thesis about the exceptional importance of socialization for the development and formation of the individual.
Here it is important to approach the issue individually: first of all, the length of stay in the wild and genetically determined factors are important.
If the Mowgli child is more than 13 years old, that is, the period of greatest mental flexibility has passed, then only training will help in the process of developing important social skills, and then their development will not happen completely. But whether such an individual becomes a personality is a complex question, the answer to which is implied in the negative. He will no longer become a full-fledged personality, he will remain half animal, half human - the basic mental processes of formation have been completed, periods of sensitivity have not been used.
If a baby enters the community of animals moving on four legs, then by the year he masters this particular skill, and subsequently it is impossible to teach him to walk upright. The fate of the “rescued” Mowgli children turns out to be deplorable in the human world: there were cases when they managed to survive and adapt slightly, but there are also stories about how, after being removed from the familiar world, such children died without mastering human skills.
What is the conclusion?
Nothing is given to a person just like that, and in order to develop fully, you need to use all the receptors of perception to the maximum, stimulate mental, physical and emotional activity. And most importantly - to live in a society of their own kind, assimilating productive patterns of behavior and response. A person is not able to realize his full potential without society.
Literature:
- 1. Antipov A. Children-Mowgli. Electronic resource. Access mode: http://rumagic.com/ru_zar/sci_psychology/antipov/0/j151.html
- 2. Erickson E. Childhood and society. Electronic resource. Access mode: http://www.koob.ru/ericson_eric/detstvo_i_obshestvo
Editor: Chekardina Elizaveta Yurievna
Mowgli kids: life without intelligence
Incredibly, even in our century there are feral children, the so-called "Mowglis", raised by wild animals or living in complete isolation from childhood. They do not have social communication skills and, like wild animals, they are afraid of humans. Distinguished by excellent health, in terms of intelligence, “Mowglis” are often at the level of the animals that raised them, they learn to talk with difficulty, refuse to wear clothes and cannot even walk straight.
Scientists give extremely disappointing forecasts for the rehabilitation of “Mowgli children”. It is believed that if a child did not communicate with people until the age of 3-6 years, it is almost impossible to return him to human society. They hardly learn to speak, it is difficult to get used to people and may even die in isolation from the wild.
It has been established that the lack of human communication in a child leads to an anomaly in the formation of cells that isolate neurons, and a slowdown in communication between different areas of the brain. Social isolation in the first years of a person's life leads to severe emotional instability and mental retardation.
The authoritative scientific journal Science published a study of the “Mowgli syndrome” by American neurophysiologists, which showed that brain cells are disrupted in isolation, even in rodents. One group of newborn mice was isolated, and the second was left to develop in a normal environment. Comparing the brains of rodents a few weeks later, the scientists found that in isolated mice there was a malfunction of the cells that produce myelin, which is responsible for the sheath of nerve fibers, protects neurons from mechanical and electrical damage, and disruption of its production leads to serious diseases, such as multiple sclerosis.
Similar brain disorders are observed in wild children. Interestingly, children raised by different animals are different from each other. For example, a child raised by monkeys or dogs is easier to "humanize" than a child raised by a pack of wolves. But most often the work of foster families and psychologists for their rehabilitation does not bring the desired results. Only a few of them manage to adapt to normal life, and their further existence takes place in specialized institutions.
Studies of children with "Mowgli's syndrome" proved that if the conditions for the child's mental development do not meet his needs, then he will not be able to fill the gaps in adult life. This suggests that a person is an exclusively social being and outside of society a child cannot become a person, develop mentally, mentally and socially. Mental development largely depends on the influence of the external environment. A child is born with given properties, but these are only seeds that need certain conditions.
"Mowgli": who are they?
"Mowgli children" are found everywhere: in India and China, in Uganda and Cambodia, in Russia and Ukraine, even in the USA and Europe. In forests and big cities. They grow up with animals in barns, dog kennels and are completely isolated from society.
Their instincts predominate, and although they become very hardy, strong, hardened, they lose their speech and the ability to adequately perceive the world. The older the child and the longer he was isolated, the more difficult it is for him to live among people. It is believed that the adaptation of the "urban Mowgli" is more successful, because they were not completely excluded from human society. They begin to talk, walk on two legs and are more receptive to learning than the "forest". But these children almost never become full-fledged members of society, having mental and mental disabilities.
Monkeys, cats, wolves, squirrels, pandas and even birds can replace their parents. But most often there are children raised by dogs. So, in 1991, a girl, Oksana Malaya, was found in Ukraine, whom her alcoholic parents left on the street at the age of three. She grew up with stray dogs for eight years, eating raw meat and garbage. The girl entered the dog pack, forgetting all speech skills, and when they found her, she barked, ran on all fours and bit. After many years of adaptation, she was able to work on a farm (she takes care of cows) and learn to talk again, but mental retardation still remained. Speech abilities were restored due to the fact that, having got to the dogs, she already knew how to talk a little.
The Moscow dog boy Ivan Mishukov has fully recovered his speech abilities, and now he is studying in a regular school. The fact is that he ran away from home at the age of 4 and already knew how to talk. He was adopted by a pack of dogs, in which he became the leader. The boy begged for food in the street and fed the flock guarding him. Ivan had been living on the street for almost two years when social workers found him.
But the American Gini, who was kept in a wire mesh enclosure closed with a lock for almost 10 years by her own parents, was able to restore her speech only partially, despite all the efforts of psychologists. The head of the research team tried to introduce her into his family, scientists took her out for fun, teachers educated her, but the results were not very impressive. The girl was able to operate only with the simplest phrases, the level of non-verbal intelligence rose over time, but psychologists stated the highest level of spatial thinking of Gini.
The famous "wild boy from Aveyron" - Victor (one of the first "Mowgli"), never learned to speak. When he was found in France in 1800 at the age of 11-12, he could not utter a single human sound, but only growled like an animal. He sniffed suspiciously at food before eating it, biting and even fighting with dogs over a bone. The boy began to live in a family where he was taught human speech and behavior among people, but to no avail: he could only learn to read the words specially written for him on the cards, and then even began to write himself.
Not surprisingly, children adopt the habits of the animals that raised them. The boy, found on the island of Fiji, lived among chickens and imitated their behavior: he pecked at food, jumped onto a perch, and made characteristic sounds. The panda boy, found in China, moved on all fours, he did not wash, but licked himself. He ate leaves and shoots of bamboo, expressed dissatisfaction with a growl. Aside from a few small differences, the little one behaved like "tree bears". In addition, he was covered with wool, which, according to scientists, was the reason for his parents to abandon him.
The Chinese girl Wang Xianfeng adopted the habits of the pigs that raised her, and the behavior of Anton Adamov, found in 2003 in the Ivanovo region, completely imitated the habits of a cat. He meowed, scratched, hissed, moved on all fours, rubbed his back against the legs of people. The kid communicated only with a cat, with which the mother locked the child so as not to distract him from drinking.
The Volgograd bird boy, discovered in 2008, understood bird language. The seven-year-old kid lived with his mother in an apartment filled with bird cages and soiled with droppings. Since the woman did not communicate with her son, he learned the language of birds: when you talk to a baby, he chirps and waves his arms, imitating the flapping of bird wings.
The work of scientists with such children is extremely important for science - for understanding the process of formation and development of the human personality. It helps to understand more clearly the aspects of the formation of the human intellect, one's own conscious self, the importance of the transfer of information between generations. Studies show how fragile the child's psyche is, the gaps in the mental development of the child are irreparable, and how much the formation of the personality and the whole future life of a person depend on education. This is evidenced by the further life of "Mowgli" - none of them became a real person ...
By studying them, psychologists create new methods of teaching children with disabilities, helping thousands of people around the world to lead a normal life. Linguists receive important information about the development and formation of human speech skills, and neurophysiologists are groping for ways to treat such deviations with drugs that stimulate the production of proteins necessary for the brain.
