“Enfants Sauvages” Phenomenon

317 Words2 Pages
“Enfants Sauvages” Phenomenon What socialising influences have these children been subject to? Enfants Sauvages is a french term that roughly translates to ‘Wild Child’. A Wild Child is a human child who has been abandoned or lost in the wilderness and lived without human contact from a very young age. Many stories have told of Wild Children being raised by animals such as wolves and bears, only a few of these cases have been proven true. From the first moments of life, children begin a process of socialization. Socialization is when we learn the values, views, and behaviors of the culture we are living in. Children learn by hearing and seeing what the people around them do, they then copy those actions to become a normal member of their society. Wild Children don’t have the needed people around them to copy from, therefore they have no way of knowing what normal human behaviour is. Because of this they have to discover what skills and behaviors are necessary to survive by themselves in their environment. In addition, with no one to tech them they would have no way of learning a human language and no need to acquire one as they have no one to communicate with. They would make up their own customs, traditions and views of their world and their own rules to live by. On the other hand, the Wild children that have been adopted into animal groups would use their new family as a baby would their human family. They would look and listen to what is happening around them and copy it to integrate themselves into that society. They have to rely on the animals way of life to teach them how to live. They would also pick up the way the animals socialise around each other, such as: sniffing, growling, howling and any other action specific to that
Open Document