1. Mid-Late Childhood Psychosocial Development: Chapter 13
PowerPoint Slides developed by
Adapted from slides prepared by Martin Wolfger and Michael James
Ivy Tech Community College-Bloomington
Human Development & Learning

2. Hail Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

3. The Nature of the Child

4. Erikson’s Psychosocial Crises
Age
Crisis
Relations
Themes
Virtue
Malignancies
I (0-1)
trust vs mistrust
mother
to get, to give in return
HOPE
sensory maladjustment -- withdrawal
II (2-3) -- toddler
autonomy vs shame and doubt
parents
to hold on, to let go
WILL
impulsivity -- compulsion
III (3-6)
preschool
initiative vs
guilt
Family/siblings
to play, to go after
PURPOSE
(courage)
ruthlessness—
inhibition
IV (7-12 or so) - school-age child
Industry vs. inferiority
Neighborhood/school
to complete, to make things together
COMPETENCE
narrow virtuosity-inertia

5. Erikson’s Insights Industry versus inferiority
The fourth of Erikson’s eight psychosocial crises
Children attempt to master many skills, developing a sense of themselves as either industrious or inferior, competent or incompetent.

6. Industry and Inferiority
Industrious children at this age actively master culturally valued skills and abilities (e.g. reading, math, collecting, categorizing, counting)
Children work on regulating their temper
Effortful control: The ability to regulate one’s emotions and actions through effort, not simply through natural inclination.

7. Freud on Latency Latency:
Emotional drives are quiet and unconscious sexual conflicts are submerged.
Children acquire cognitive skills and assimilate cultural values by expanding their world to include teachers, neighbors, peers, club leaders, and coaches.
Sexual energy is channeled into social concerns.

8. Self-Concept
Shift in self-understanding from the physical to the psychological
A 6-year old may describe herself as “a fast runner and good at drawing”
An 11-year-old will describe herself as “pretty smart, friendly , and helpful to my friends.”
As they get older, children discover their strengths and weaknesses.
School-age children recognize themselves as individuals, distinct from what their parents think of them

9. Self-Concept Social comparison
Comparing one’s attributes to those of other people
Helps children value themselves and abandon the imaginary, rosy self-evaluation of preschoolers.

10. Self-esteem An individual’s overall and specific self-evaluation.
More emotionally oriented.
Self-criticism and self-consciousness rise from ages 6 to 11
Materialism increases; self-esteem dips

12. Coping and Overcoming
Resilience: The capacity to adapt well despite significant adversity and to overcome serious stress.
Important:
Resilience is dynamic - a person may be resilient at some periods but not at others.
Resilience is a positive adaptation to stress - if rejection by a parent leads a child to establish a closer relationship with another adult, that child is resilient.
Adversity must be significant - Resilient children overcome conditions that overwhelm many of their peers.

13. Cumulative Stress

14. Gathering Strengths Child’s working model
Developing friends, activities, and skills
School success and after-school activities
Community, church, and government programs
Education
Easygoing temperament and high IQ
Being academically gifted is NOT essential for resilience.

15. Social Support and Religious Faith
A network of supportive relatives is a better buffer than having only one close parent.
Grandparents, teachers, unrelated adults, peers, and pets can lower stress.
Community institutions (e.g. churches, libraries) can also be crucial sources of social support.

16. Families and Children Shared and Nonshared Environments Environment:
Influence of shared environment (e.g., children raised by the same parents in the same home) shrinks with age
Effect of nonshared environment (e.g., friends or schools) increases

17. Families and Children
Children raised in the same households by the same parents do not necessarily share the same home environment.
Changes in the family affect every family member differently (e.g. depending on age and/or gender).
Most parents respond to each of their children differently.

18. Family Function and Family Structure
Family function: The way a family works to meet the needs of its members.
Children need families to:
provide basic material necessities
encourage learning
help them develop self-respect
nurture friendships
foster harmony and stability

19. Family Function and Family Structure
Family structure: The legal and genetic relationships among relatives living in the same home; includes nuclear family, extended family, stepfamily, and so on.

21. Households
Household: Composed of people who live together in the same home
Two or more people who are related to one another (most common)
One person living alone
Nonrelatives living together
Family household: Includes a least one parent and at least one child under age 18
Accounts for about two-thirds of the households in the United States

22. Two-Parent Families
Nuclear family: A family that consists of a father, a mother, and their biological children under age 18.
Tend to be wealthier, better educated, healthier, more flexible, and less hostile
Biological parents tend to be very dedicated to their offspring
Similar advantages occur for children who are adopted

23. Stepfamilies
Stepparent must find a role that is not as intimate as that of the biological parents but that allows some involvement with the children.
Easier if the children are young (under age 3)
Difficult if the children are teenagers
Blended family: A stepparent family that includes children born to several families, such as the biological children from the spouses’ previous marriages and the biological children of the new couple.
Tend to be wealthier than single-parent families
Dissolve more often than do first marriages
Jealousy, stress and conflict can arise
Adjust to the authority of another adult

24. Single-Parent Families
Single-parent family: A family that consists of only one parent and his or her children under age 18.
Children in single-mother families fare worse in school and in adult life than most other children.
Single-mother households are often low-income and unstable, move more often and add new adults more often.
Single-fathers have a slightly higher income and tend to be slightly older than single mothers.

25. Many Relatives at Home
Extended family: A family consisting of parents, their children, and other relatives living in one household.
Polygamous family: A family consisting of one man, several wives, and the biological children of the man and his wives.

26. Cultural Differences in Family Structure

27. Family Trouble
Dysfunctional family: A family that does not support all its members
Three factors increase the likelihood of dysfunction:
Low Income
Instability
Low Harmony

28. Low Income
Family stress model: the crucial question to ask about any risk factor (e.g. poverty, divorce, job loss, eviction) is whether or not it increases the stress on a family
The family-stress model contends that the adults’ stressful reaction to poverty is crucial in determining the effect on the children.
Also reaction to wealth…

29. Instability Children in middle childhood prefer continuity
Upsetting changes include moving to a new home, being sent to a new school, and changes in the family structure)
Changing neighborhoods is stressful. Growing self-awareness makes it harder to make new friends.
Disruptions correlated negatively with income.
Adults might not realize that these transitions affect schoolchildren

30. Harmony Children feel a need for harmony
Parents who habitually fight are more likely to divorce, move, and otherwise disrupt the child’s life.
In general, a child’s interpretation of a family situation, determines how that situation affects him/her. (social-cognitive connection)

31. Harmony
The more important correlate with children’s psychological and academic correlate was not the severity of the marital strife, but the children’s feelings of self-blame or vulnerability.
In general, children feel much less vulnerable if they feel they have some control over family circumstances.

33. The Consequences of Divorce
Only half of children in the U.S. will pass through childhood living with both parents each of whom has been married only once
School-age children tend to blame themselves for the breakup
By the age of 10, children feel pressure to choose sides, taking the position of either the mother or the father. Because of this, they experience some degree of divided loyalty.
For many children, there are minimal long-term consequences.

34. After the divorce/separation…
Both children and parents may show several types of psychological maladjustments for 6 months to 2 years
Anxiety
Depression
Sleep disturbances
Phobias

35. Rediscovering the Status Quo
After 18 months to 2 years, most children return to their predivorce psychological adjustment
Twice as many children of divorced parents require psychological counseling as do children from intact families
For some children, living in a home with unhappy marriage and which is high in conflict has stronger negative consequences than divorce
How children react to divorce depends on several factors, one of which is economic standing of the family the child is living with.
How children react to divorce depends on several factors. One is the economic standing of the family the child is living with. In many cases, divorce brings a decline in both parents' standards of living. When this occurs, children may be thrown into poverty.

36. The Peer Group
Culture of children: The particular habits, styles, and values that reflect the set of rules and rituals that characterize children as distinct from adult society.
Fashion
Language

37. Friendship
School-age children value personal friendship more than peer acceptance.
Gender differences
Girls talk more and share secrets.
Boys play more active games.
Friendships lead to psychosocial growth and provide a buffer against psychopathology.

38. Friendship Older children: Demand more of their friends
Change friends less often
Become more upset when a friendship ends
Find it harder to make new friends
Seek friends who share their interests and values

39. Friendship
Avoidance of opposite sex becomes very pronounced during middle childhood
Children’s friendships are almost entirely sex-segregated
When sexes interact it is called “border work”, is often romantic, and helps emphasize clear boundaries between sexes

40. Boys and Friendship Larger networks of friends than girls do
Tend to play in groups
Strict DOMINANCE HIERARCHY
Differences in status within the group are usually pronounced, with an acknowledged leader and a hierarchy of members.
Members of higher status can safely question/oppose lower ranking members
Limiting aggression among group members
Attempt to maintain and improve status in hierarchy
Restrictive play (play interrupted when status challenged)
Strict DOMINANCE HIERARCHY, which is composed of rankings that represent the relative social power of those in a group hierarchy.
Attempt to maintain and improve status in hierarchy, which makes for a style of play known as restrictive play where interactions are interrupted when status is challenged.

41. Girls and Friendships
Focus on one or two “best friends” of relatively equal status
Conflicts solved by compromise, ignoring situation, or giving in; goal is to maintain equal-status relationships, with no dominance hierarchy.
Can be confrontational with other girls who are not their friends
Language is less confrontational and direct than boys’.

42. Social Awareness
Social cognition: The ability to understand social interactions, including the causes and consequences of human behavior.
Begins in infancy and continues to develop in early childhood
Social cognition is well established by middle childhood
Children with impaired social cognition are likely to be rejected

43. Rejected Children
Aggressive-rejected children: Children who are disliked by peers because of antagonistic, confrontational behavior
Withdrawn-rejected children: Children who are disliked by peers because of their timid, withdrawn, and anxious behavior
Neglected: ignored but not shunned.

44. Bullying
SCHOOL- THE BULLY
160,000 U.S. schoolchildren stay home from school each day because they are afraid of being bullied
About 10 to 15 percent of students bully others at one time or another.
Roots of bullying seem to be a combination of nature and nurture. Families that provide insecure attachment, stressful homes, ineffective discipline, or hostile siblings intensify children’s aggression. 27

45. Bullies and Victims
Bullying: Repeated, systematic efforts to inflict harm through physical, verbal, or social attack on a weaker person.
Bully-victim: Someone who attacks others and who is attacked as well
Also called a provocative victim because he or she does things that elicit bullying, such as stealing a bully’s pencil

46. Successful Efforts to Eliminate Bullying
The whole school must be involved, not just the identified bullies.
Intervention is more effective in the earlier grades.
Evaluation of results is critical.

48. Heinz’ Dilemma
A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?[1]

49. Morality in Middle Childhood
KOHLBERG’S LEVELS OF MORALITY
Lawrence Kohlberg (1963): Described stages of morality that stem from three levels of moral reasoning, with two stages at each level
Preconventional moral reasoning: Emphasizes rewards and punishments
Conventional moral reasoning: Emphasizes social rules
Postconventional moral reasoning: Emphasizing moral principles

50. Criticisms of Kohlberg
Kohlberg ignored culture and gender.
Kohlberg’s levels could be labeled personal (preconventional), communal (conventional), and worldwide (postconventional)  family is not included.
The participants in Kohlberg’s original research were all boys.

51. What Children Value
Children develop their own morality, guided by peers, parents and culture
Concrete operational cognition gets them to think about morality and to try to be ethical.
When child culture conflicts with adult morality, children often align themselves with peers.