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Behavioral Changes During Childhood

Children change a lot during their period of being brought up. This is exactly what happens in The Secret Garden by Burnett whereby the girl Mary Lennox is very much ill behaved. However, this does not last forever and with time and geographical location she changes. Even though it is clear and evident that she changes because of circumstances it is possible to ask oneself of the factors that contribute to the change as well as what these changes communicate about child bearing and growth. This paper therefore discusses the behavior of Mary Lenox and how she changes as well as the events and factors which lead to these changes together with the lessons obtained from the change.

Firstly, Mary Lennox is foul-tempered, and she is also selfish and rude. This is clearly presented in the first chapter. She is explained as girl who always got everything that she needed and this made her a very self-loving girl. Her parents are working and they have very good jobs. Her father is a captain and he works in the military while her mother is very beautiful and nothing much is said about her, just that she is not allowed to see her while the father can see her as frequently as he wants. However due to the nature of tehri jobs the two parents are unable to properly care for their child whom they loved very much. Therefore, they employ native servants who look after the needs of little Mary Lennox. The servants are supposed to provide literally everything that the child needs and this makes the child very lazy.

When Mary Lennox decided to get something, one of the servants could provide it without asking anything and this made her happy since she thought she could control everyone. She also through what she had at that time was eternal and therefore never really bothered to think of what could happen if she did not have all those different types of treatment that her parents had provided for her. In this state she hated everyone and everyone hated her. This was because she thought to be at the top and she was being served by adults which she enjoyed (Kohlhoff, 423). Even though during these times she was young the provision of almost everything she needed taught her that life was easy and that she did not have to struggle a little bit in the process of getting c clear direction in which she needed to go into.

As it is with children, she held onto the faith that she could remain this powerful and never really be able to lose her powers. However, the unexpected happened and during the cholera outbreak she is left alone when either of the servants were hiding or had fled into better places to work and also with the fear of cholera. At this specific point in time life got very busy for her because for once she thought of how she could manage to work for herself without her servants. Before this happened, she was a proud and angry girl, however after this happened, she changes into another person who is looking for a correct and good path to follow which could lead her to a place where she could feel safe and run away from the neglect and the ‘un-kindness’ of her servants (Kohlhoff, 420). At this point her mindset changes and she begin to realize that she needs the other people very much and much she needed them.

At this instance she is lucky since she is picked by a group of soldiers and taken to stay with allergy men. Even though they thought it was the right place for her as she develops, hatred for the priest and the servants in the house was evident and conflicting with these two people made her to lose and she was taken to Yorkshire where she lived with her maternal uncle. When she is in the new position, she realizes that she has already changed and indeed in a positive way. This can be attributed to the dilemma which she faces when she is left alone during the cholera outbreak, the staying with a clergy man and his servants among other things. It is through these experiences that she changes into a good person who can desire to find a secret garden and work on it.

She finds the secret garden when she is in the company of her friends who are Dickon, Martha and Susan. It is the first time in her life to make friends and this is a very important step which she takes. With this kind of step, it is clear that the emotional change which she needed had already happened and it was affecting her in a positive manner. She changes from an ill-mannered child into a responsible child because even at some point, she wants to investigate some cries she was hearing and indeed upon following them even when the teacher said she could not do that she found that there was a person who had been tied and was suffering.

She at last as well finds the good garden and begins cultivating it. When she does this there are some individuals who are against her however later they come to accept her way of doing things even though she was young and she had been a ‘bad’ child (Spence, 88). She finds the tied person through disobedience and this was the same when she wanted to find the secret field. Even though her methods are questionable she has indeed changed and the uncle as well as the other people in the family recognize this and appreciate it.

Therefore, it is true that pain and freedom changes a person, some change in a positive manner while others change in a negative manner. Mary changes to a positivity. This was majorly facilitated by pain and seeing how the other people around her were suffering and she had never seen it because she had not experienced it. After her experience everything changes.

In conclusion, bringing up children is always a very difficult task and a lot of people do not understand what is needed for a child to grow to become a good person. Some parents give the child everything like it is mentioned in the first experience with Mary and her parents. Even though sometimes hardships might see the only thing, hope and love for one another as well as understanding that difficulties enable critical thinking are very important aspects of bringing up children.

Works Cited

Burnett, Frances Hodgson. The secret garden. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Kohlhoff, Jane, et al. “Parent–Child Interaction Therapy with Toddlers: A Community-based Randomized Controlled Trial with Children Aged 14-24 Months.” Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology 50.3 (2021): 411-426.

Spence, Susan H. “Social skills training with children and young people: Theory, evidence and practice.” Child and adolescent mental health 8.2 (2003): 84-96.