Ja'Nya Johnson| Guest columnist
“When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became an adult, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)
As children, we often don’t slow down enough to rationalize how the behaviors we adapt to early in life evolve in adulthood. The expectation is that life matures the innocent mind, and mistakes are the best teachers. The drive of human behavior comes from the things that shape the world around us, built environment, family structure, morals, adverse events, belief systems and education.
Approximately 47% of the behaviors learned as a child transfer into adulthood, but the prototype version of those behaviors alter as life impedes their response to different occurrences. Adverse childhood experiences (or ACEs) play a major role in influencing child behaviors.
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Adverse childhood experiences are traumatic events that occur from the ages of 0-17. According to the 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, approximately 61% of adults reported that they experienced at least one such event before the age of 18, while about 1 in 6 adults reported having experienced four or more types of adverse events before they were 16.
It is ideal to say that adverse childhood experience events assist in shaping childhood behavior, which (in the long run) spills over into adulthood.
Research has shown that childhood experiences affect individual health in adulthood. People who experience numerous adverse childhood experiences early in childhood are at risk of developing behavioral disorders, such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse and detrimental health behaviors. In contrast, however, positive childhood events (also known as PCEs) lead to improved health outcomes in adulthood.
If you’ve ever heard of the life course theory, you know it involves interconnected biological changes that interact with psychosocial factors over time.
Early experiences like family dysfunction, neglect, abuse, violence, resource deficit, access to care, and parental resilience create a pattern of disadvantage or privilege over time. Having more positive childhood experiences allows for better well-being in adulthood.
I happen to be a number in the 1 in 6 adults who experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences before the age of 16; while several of those instances have shaped my life perspective, my ability to adapt — and allow positive influences to alter my way of thinking — has given me the opportunity to beat the odds.
Like any other child who went through such events, I had behavioral issues, some that I carried into adulthood and others I was able to revamp due to early positive intervention in my adolescent years. One intervention that had the most impact was being planted in a positive educational environment, which gave room for my childhood behaviors to evolve.
Behavior evolution is inevitable, but the more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you change. The more you change, the more you grow and the more you grow — the more you'll become.
Ja’Nya A. Johnson is pursuing a master's of public health at UNF, with a focus on social and behavioral sciences.
This guest column is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Times-Union. We welcome a diversity of opinions.
