MIDDLE CHILDHOOD: Emotional and social development

The Quest for Self- Understanding

Erickson  Erikson’s Stage of Industry Versus Inferiority  Self-Image: The overall view that children have of themselves.

Self-Esteem  Coopersmith: Parental attitudes associated with development of high self-esteem.  High self-esteem; accepting of children  Enforced clearly-defined limits  Respect for children’s rights and opinions

Self-Regulated Behaviors  Emotionally Disturbed (ED) children: Cannot control their over-impulsive or aggressive behaviors toward others.

Understanding Emotion  Fear: unpleasant emotion aroused by impending danger, pain or misfortune.  Phobia: excessive, persistent and maladaptive fear response.  Stress: process involving the recognition of and response to a threat or danger.

Coping  The responses we make in order to master, tolerate, or reduce stress  Problem-focused  Emotion-focused

Locus of control  Our perception of who or what is responsible for the outcome of events and behaviors in our lives.  Trauma: any extremely stressful event that affects a child’s emotional and psychological well-being.

Continuing Family Influences

Mothers and Fathers  Employed Mothers  77% of all mothers work.  Caregiving Fathers

Sibling Relationships  Average of three children under age 18 in household  Stepsiblings, half-brothers, half-sisters, adopted siblings, nonrelated “siblings”

Children of Divorce  Wallerstein and Kelly tasks for child:  Accept divorce  Get back to previous routine  Resolve the loss of the family  Resolve anger and self-blame; forgive  Accept permanence of divorce  Believe in relationships

Single-Parent Families  Bray and Heatherington:  If children have a good relationship with the single parent and income stress is not a factor, they are inclined to be better adjusted than if they remain in a two-parent home that is a divided and hostile environment.

Stepfamilies  75-80% of divorced parents remarry.  Reconstituted or blended families

Later Childhood: The Broadening Social Environment

The World of Peer Relationships  Peer relationships assume a vital role in children’s development.

Developmental Functions of Peer Groups  Arena in which children can exercise independence from adult control  Experience relationships with equal footing with others  Position of children is not marginal  Peer groups transmit informal knowledge.

Gender Cleavage  The tendency for boys to associate with boys and girls with girls  Children fashion coherent gender-based identity.  Maccoby - Factors for segregation:  Differing styles for interacting  Girls have difficulty influencing boys

Popularity, Social Acceptance and Rejection  Group: two or more people who share a feeling of unity and are bound together in relatively stable patterns of social interactions

Values  Criteria people use in deciding the relative merit and desirability of things  Sociogram: depicts patterns of choice among members of a group.

Physical Attractiveness  Culturally defined

Behavioral characteristics  Popular:  Successful  Unpopular:  Social isolates  Introverted  Overbearing, aggressive

Social Maturity  Increases during early school years

Racial Awareness and Prejudice  Prejudice: a system of negative conceptions, feelings and action orientations regarding the members of a particular religious, racial, or nationality group

The World of School

Developmental Functions  Teach specific cognitive skills  Share with family responsibility for transmitting cultural goals and values  Serve as “sorting and sifting” agency selecting young people for upward social mobility

Motivating Students  Motivation: the inner states and processes that prompt, direct, and sustain activity.  Intrinsic: undertaken for its own sake.  Extrinsic: undertaken for some purpose other that its own sake.  Causality: factors that produce given outcomes.

Social Class  The higher the social class:  Greater number of grades children complete  Greater participation in extracurricular activities  Higher scores on achievement tests  Lower rates of failure, truancy, suspensions and dropping out

Middle-Class Bias  Middle-class teachers, unaware of prejudice, find lower socioeconomic status students unacceptable  Subcultural Differences  Different experiences and attitudes  Educational Self-Fulfilling Prophecies  Teacher expectation effects