a. What challenges did you overcome throughout this inquiry project? How did you go about overcoming these challenges?
I believe my biggest challenge of this project was the research aspect. I struggled to find good articles that would give me a base understanding and this took up a lot of my time. I think that the reason that the websites and resources were so hard to find was because my question is a new concept. First of all, the whole world of Early Childhood Education and how much of an impact it can have on people as they grow up is a developing idea. My question was going much deeper into exploring ECE, but mainly looking at white lies. The hard part is that white lies are such a base for parents and provide so many advantages to protect their children from harm and give them hope and imagination, so there were not too many people that questioned the lasting impacts on our brain and the trust issues that can form. I started with the idea of how the lie of Santa can be damaging to a child, and that created the base for the rest of my research. As I did not want to talk about the imaginative characters the whole time, I explored physical harm and self-esteem. While they were less articles on these topics, I overcame this challenge by using key words while researching, combing my opinion into my article along with facts and finally adding more the advantages and disadvantages, which gave more perspective to my article.
This was a challenge, but with a bit more time and patience to overcome this challenge, I was able to add a lot more depth in my blog posts.
b. How did this inquiry change the way you think?
I believe that this inquiry project really made me change the way I think, because I started brainstorming for this project, I began thinking about all the negative connotations with lying to kids about the Santa Claus. But, as I starting researching, I found more and more people online that had the same opinion and believed that he is just a figure meant to scare children in acting their best. As Santa is so normalized in the world and a big part of my childhood, I believe that this shifting my positive thoughts associated with Santa and I began to think about how it can bring so much fear and negativity.
c. How did this investigation impact your future decisions?
I believe that this investigation, along with my last inquiry question in the first semester just prove that I want to go into the field of neuroscience and specialize in Early Childhood Eduction. I already knew that this is a pathway that I wanted explore further, but my research for this project has just led my to learn about all the layers of ECE and how many problems lie at the base of a complicated childhood. I believe that we are greatly impacted based on our experiences as children, which create our personality, behaviour and mental health. After this project, I can see that even events that are normalized in the world, can impact children far further than belief. I learnt how parents use white lies out of convenience and how detrimental that can be for the relationship and trust between the child and parent, but can even have more long-term impacts on how their prioritize and treat their own children. This investigation led me to learn more about one of my interests and I can see myself pursuing this to learn more about it in the future, and take this class next year to expand my knowledge on these topics.
d. What impact will this investigation have on others locally and/or globally?‘
I believe that even the impact that more knowledge on the importance of Early Childhood Education can make a real difference on others in the world. The amount of problems that were could prevent, if we gave children a good base is incredible, between making sure that they view themselves and others positively while still giving them good mental health. And the amount of advantages that can come when children are properly educated intellectually and socially, which could help them become a leader in society. That alone is important, but diving deeper into my topic, white lies. White lies, especially the ones that parents tell to children are so normalized in the world and it is used out of convenience, but they could really change the way a child’s brain develops and puts trust in others. Understanding the negative influences of white lies could be greatly of help to any parent in the world. To expand, the lie of Santa Claus is so normal all around the world and if people actually looked at how much harm that it is causing and the poor narratives that it is putting on children, this could impact others all around the world.
