Part III. Early Childhood: Psychosocial Development. Chapter Ten

Kathleen Stassen Berger Part III Chapter Ten Early Childhood: Psychosocial Development Emotional Development Play Challenges for Parents Moral ...
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Kathleen Stassen Berger

Part III

Chapter Ten

Early Childhood: Psychosocial Development Emotional Development Play Challenges for Parents Moral Development Becoming Boys and Girls

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Emotional Development • Learning when and how to express emotions is the preeminent psychosocial accomplishment between ages 2 and 6. • emotional regulation: ability to control when and how emotions are expressed 2

Initiative Versus Guilt • Initiative: – saying something new – extending a skill – beginning a project

• Guilt makes child afraid to try new activities. • If parents dismiss child’s emotional expressions, children may not learn emotional regulation. 3

• self-esteem: person’s evaluation of his or her own worth – intelligence – attractiveness – overall

• self-concept: person’s understanding of who he or she is in relation to: – self-esteem – personality – various traits 4

• Guilt more mature emotion than shame. – comes from within the person

• Shame can be based on what one is, rather than on something one has done. – comes from outside and depends on others’ awareness

• Both help children develop moral values, a topic discussed later in this chapter. 5

Motivation • intrinsic motivation: drive or reason to pursue a goal that comes from inside a person – the need to feel smart or competent

• extrinsic motivation: drive or reason to pursue a goal that arises from the need to have one’s achievements rewarded from outside – receiving material possessions or another person’s esteem 6

An Experiment in Motivation • In a classic experiment, preschool children are given markers and paper and assigned to one of three groups: – no award – expected award (told before they had drawn anything) – unexpected award (after they had drawn)

• The interpretation was that extrinsic motivation (condition 2) undercut intrinsic motivation. 7

Externalizing and Internalizing Problems • externalizing problems: expressing powerful feelings through uncontrolled physical or verbal outbursts • internalizing problems: turning one’s emotional distress inward – feeling excessively guilty – ashamed – worthless

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• Although inborn brain patterns important, the quality of early caregiving makes a difference in children’s ability to regulate their emotions.

• A parent who comforts them and helps to calm them down is teaching emotion regulation. 9

Play • Play: – most productive and enjoyable activity that children undertake – universal – changes between ages 2 and 6

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Peers and Parents • Young children play best with peers – Provide practice in: • Emotional regulation • Empathy • Social Understanding

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Cultural Differences in Play • Play varies by culture, gender, and age. • Play is an ideal means for children to learn whatever social skills are required in the social context. – Chinese children fly kites. – Alaskan natives tell dreams and stories. – Lapp children pretend to be reindeer. 12

Five Kinds of Play – Solitary play • Child plays alone, unaware of any other children playing nearby.

– Onlooker play • Child watches other children play.

– Parallel play • Children play with similar toys in similar ways, but not together.

– Associative play • Children interact, observing each other and sharing material, but not mutual and reciprocal.

– Cooperative play • Children play together, creating and elaborating a joint activity or taking turns. 13

Rough-and-Tumble Play • rough-and-tumble play: mimics aggression through: – wrestling – chasing – hitting

• no intent to harm 14

Drama and Pretending • Sociodramatic play allows children to: – explore and rehearse social roles enacted around them. – test their ability to explain and to convince playmates of their ideas. – practice regulating their emotions by pretending to be afraid, angry, brave. – develop a self-concept in a nonthreatening context. 15

Challenges for Parents • Parents differ a great deal in what they believe about children and how they should act toward them. • Tend to follow the child-rearing patterns of their own parents. • Need to decide on a parenting style. 16

Parenting Styles • Expressions of warmth – very affectionate or cold and critical

• Strategies for discipline – how they explain, criticize, persuade, ignore, and punish

• Communication – listen patiently; others demand silence

• Expectations for maturity – parents vary in standards for responsibility and selfcontrol 17

Three Patterns of Parenting • Authoritarian: Characterized by high behavioral standards, strict punishment of misconduct, and little communication. • Permissive: Characterized by high nurturance and communication but little discipline, guidance, or control. • Authoritative: Parents set limits but listen to the child and are flexible. 18

Neglectful/Uninvolved Parenting • Fourth style of parenting • Sometimes mistaken for permissive- but in contract this type of parenting is very careless. • These parents are strikingly unaware in what their child is doing.

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Cultural Variations • Chinese, Caribbean, and African American parents are often stricter. • Japanese mothers tend to use reasoning, empathy and expressions of disappointment. • Specific discipline methods and family rules are less important then: – parental warmth – support – concern

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Children, Parents, and the New Media What do children see? –

Good guys as violent as bad guys •



their violence depicted as justified

Good guys are male and White •



except when all characters are Black or Latino

Females of all ethnic groups are usually depicted as: •

Victims or girlfriends 21

Moral Development • Children develop increasingly complex moral values, judgments, and behaviors. • In early childhood, children try to: – – – –

please their parents. avoid punishment. make friends. exclude enemies.

• The emotional development and the theory of mind make morality possible. 22

Moral Development

• empathy: ability to understand emotions and concerns of another person • antipathy: feelings of dislike or even hatred for another • antisocial behavior: feelings and actions that are deliberately hurtful or destructive to another 23

Types of Aggression • instrumental aggression: hurtful behavior intended to get or keep something that another has • reactive aggression: impulsive retaliation for another person’s intentional or accidental action • relational aggression: nonphysical acts aimed at harming social connection between victim and others • bullying aggression: unprovoked, repeated physical or verbal attack, esp. those who are unlikely to defend themselves

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Physical Punishment • Young children are slapped, spanked, or beaten more often than children over age 6 or under age 2. • Many parents remember being spanked themselves and think spanking works well. – Some researchers agree; some do not.

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• psychological control: disciplinary technique involving threatening to withdraw love and support – relies on child’s feelings of guilt and gratitude to parents

• time-out: disciplinary technique in which a child is separated from other people for a specified time – Social punishment 26

Becoming Boys and Girls • Identity as male or female important feature of a child’s self-concept. – first question asked about a newborn is “Boy or girl?” – Children become more aware of gender every year.

• parents select gender-distinct: – – – –

clothes blankets diapers pacifiers, etc. 27

Sex and Gender • sex differences: biological differences between males and females – organs – hormones – body type

• gender differences: differences in the roles and behavior of males and females prescribed by the culture

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Psychoanalytic Theory • phallic stage: Freud’s third stage of development; period from ages 3-6 – penis becomes the focus of concern and pleasure

• Oedipus complex: unconscious desire of young boys to replace their father and win mother’s exclusive love • superego: judgmental part of the personality that internalizes the moral standards of the parents

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Electra complex: unconscious desire of girls to replace their mother and win father’s exclusive love identification: attempt to defend one’s selfconcept by taking on behaviors and attitudes of someone else; specifically the same-sex parent

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Behaviorism • Belief that all roles are learned and therefore result from nurture, not nature. • Gender distinctions are the product of ongoing reinforcement and punishment. 31

Cognitive Theory •

gender schema: cognitive concept or general belief based on one’s experiences

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Sociocultural Theory • androgyny: balance within a person of traditionally male and female psychological characteristics

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Gender and Destiny • Since human behavior is plastic, what gender patterns should children learn?

• Answers vary among developmentalists, mothers, fathers, and cultures. • If children respond to their own inclinations, some might choose behavior, express emotions, and develop talents that are taboo, even punished in certain cultures. 34