The School Years: Psychosocial Development

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Part IV
Chapter Thirteen

• The School Years Psychosocial Development

The Peer Group Families and Children The Nature
of the Child
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The School Years Psychosocial Development

• In middle childhood, children break free from the
  closely supervised and limited arena of younger
  years. They venture forth in the neighborhood,
  experiencing friendships and other social
  complexitiesit is a time for interplay between
  expanding freedom and guiding forces,they
  experience coping strategies and inner strengths.

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The Peer Group

• getting along with peers is crucial during middle
  childhood
• difficulties with peers can cause serous
  problems, and being well-liked is protective
• there is developmental progression in peer
  relationships

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The Peer Group

• social comparison
• the tendency to assess ones abilities,
  achievements, social status, and other attributes
  by measuring them against those of other people,
  especially ones peers

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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
• deviancy training
• the process whereby children are taught by their
  peers to avoid restrictions imposed by adults

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The Peer Group

• Childrens Moral Codes
• Age 7 to 11 are
• years of eager, lively searching on the part of
  childrenas they try to understand things, to
  figure them out, but also to weigh the rights and
  wrongsthis is the time for growth of the moral
  imagination, fueled constantly by the
  willingness, the eagerness of children to put
  themselves in the shoes of others (Cole, 1997)

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The Peer Group

• Childrens Moral Codes
• school-age children are more likely to behave
  prosocially than are younger children (Eisenberg
  Fabes, 1998)
• social efficacy
• people come to believe that they can affect their
  circumstances this belief then leads to action
  that changes the social context

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The Peer Group

• Stages of Moral Reasoning
• Kohlbergs described three levels of moral
  reasoning
• preconventional moral reasoning
• rewards and punishments
• conventional moral reasoning
• social rules
• postconventional moral reasoning
• moral principles

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The Peer Group

• What Children Value
• moral specifics vary between and within nations
  and within one ethnic group in one region
• children seek respect from each other
• childrens moral precepts are not necessarily the
  ones that adults endorse

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The Peer Group

• What Children Value
• Three common values among 6 to 11 year-olds are
• protect friends
• dont tell adults what is happening
• dont be too different from your peers
• which explains both apparent boredom and overt
  defiance

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The Peer Group

• Social Acceptance
• aggressive-rejected
• rejected by peers because of antagonistic,
  confrontational behavior
• withdrawn-rejected
• rejected by peers because of timid, withdrawn,
  and anxious behavior

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The Peer Group

• Social Awareness
• social cognition
• the ability to understand social interactions,
  including the cause and consequences of human
  behavior
• effortful control
• the ability to regulate ones emotions and
  actions through effort, not simply through
  natural inclination

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The Peer Group

• Friendship
• school-age children value personal friendships
• friendship lead to psychosocial growth
• peer acceptance (popularity) and close friendship
  (mutual loyalty) both affect social interaction
  and emotional health among 5th graders

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The Peer Group

• Friendship
• becomes more intense and intimate as children
  grow older
• studies found that children had about the same
  number of friends no matter what their home
  background
• those from violent homes had fewer closer friends
  and were lonelier

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The Peer Group

• Friendship
• becomes more intense and intimate as children
  grow older
• older children tend to choose best friends whose
  interests, values, and background are similar to
  their own
• older children tend to choose
• best friends whose interests,
• values, and backgrounds are
• similar to their own

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The Peer Group

• Bullies and Victims
• isolated attacks, occasional insults, and
  unexpected social slights occur in childhood
• defining terms
• 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 wellalso called provocative victims because
  they do things that elicit bullying, such as
  taking a bullys pencil

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The Peer Group

• Can bulling be stopped?
• most children find ways to halt ongoing
  victimization by
• ignoring
• retaliating
• defusing
• avoiding

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The Peer Group

• Can bulling be stopped?
• Olweus used an ecological-systems approach
• sent pamphlets to parents
• showed videos to students
• trained school staff
• increased supervision during recess
• classroom discussion on how to stop bullying
• befriend lonely children

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Families and Children

• genes affect temperament as well as ability
• peers are vital and schools and cultures
  influence what, and how much, children learn

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Families and Children

• parental practices make a difference in how
  children develop
• or do they?
• some developmental researchers have expressed
  doubts, suggesting that genes, peers, and
  communities are so powerful that there may be
  little room left

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Families and Children

• Shared and Nonshared Environment
• shared environment
• household influences that are the same for two
  people, such as children reared together
• nonshared environment
• when siblings have different friends and
  different teachers

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Families and Children

• Family Function and Dysfunction
• family structure
• the legal and genetic relationship (nuclear,
  extended, step) among relatives in the same home
• family function
• the way a family works to meet the needs of its
  memberschildren need families to provide basic
  material necessities, encourage learning, develop
  self-respect, nurture friendships, and foster
  harmony and stability

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Families and Children

• Family Function and Dysfunction
• school-age children thrive if their families
  function for them in five ways
• provide basic necessities
• encourage learning
• develop self-respect
• nurture peer relationships
• ensure harmony and stability

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Families and Children

• Diverse Structures
• household
• defined by the U.S. Census as all the people who
  live together in the same home
• structure
• nuclear family
• a family that consists of a father, a mother, and
  their biological children under the age of18
• single-parent family
• a family that consists of only one parent and his
  or her biological children under age18
• extended family
• a family of three or more generations living in
  one household

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Families and Children

• Connecting Structure and Function
• family structure and family function are
  intertwined
• blended family
• a family that consists of two
• adults and the children of the
• prior relationships of one or
• both parents and/or the new
• partnership

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Families and Children

• Family Trouble
• low income and high conflict
• financial stress and family fighting often
  co-occur because they feed on each other
• Family Income
• correlates with both function and structure
• family-stress model holds that the crucial
  question to ask about any risk factor is how
  does
• low income
• divorce
• unemployment
• increase the stress on families

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Families and Children

• Harmony and Stability
• ideally parents should form an alliance, learning
  to cooperate and protect the children
• in any family the childs well-being can decline
  if family members fight, or are physically or
  verbally abusive to each other
• no structure inevitably either harms children or
  guarantees good family function

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The Nature of the Child

• Psychoanalytic Theory
• stresses that school-age children are eager to
  learn about their expanding social universe
• latency
• Freuds terms for middle childhood, during which
  childrens emotional drives and psychosocial
  needs are quiet (latent). Freud thought that
  sexual conflicts from earlier stages are only
  temporarily submerged, to burst forth again at
  puberty

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The Nature of the Child

• Psychoanalytic Theory
• Industry versus inferiority
• the fourth of Eriksons eight psychosexual
  developmental crises, during which children
  attempt to master many skills, developing a sense
  of themselves as either industrious or inferior,
  competent or incompetent

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The Nature of the Child

• Self-Concept
• social comparison, effortful control, loyalty,
  and appreciation of peers and parents typically
  capture the nature of school-age children
• self-criticism and self-consciousness tend to
  rise from ages 6 to12, as self-esteem dips for
  children who live with unusual stresses

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The Nature of the Child

• Self-Concept
• if children are already stressed they tend to
  have lower academic achievement
• cultural differences make self-esteem more
  complex
• many cultures expect children to be modest

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The Nature of the Child

• Coping and Overcoming
• the school-age childs expanding social world and
  developing cognition can bring disturbing problems

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The Nature of the Child

• Resilience and Stress
• resilience the capacity to develop optimally by
  adapting positively to significant adversity
• resilience is dynamic, not a stable trait
• resilience is a positive adaptation to stress
• adversity must be significant

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The Nature of the Child

• Social Support and Religious Faith
• a strong bond with a loving and firm parent can
  see a child through many difficulties
• parenting practices can buffer stress and
  adversity
• the social world of school-age children allows
  for new possibilities for social support

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The Nature of the Child

• Social Support and Religious Faith
• a self-righting characteristic that seems evident
  in all humans and naturally deals with problems
• well-equipped, well-intentioned school-age
  children must connect to at least one other
  person
• an example of self-righting is a childs use of
  religionwhich provides social support via an
  adult from the same community

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The Nature of the Child

• Social Support and Religious Faith
• faith can be psychologically protective
• parents can provide religious guidance
• many children believe that prayer is
  communication, expecting prayer will make them
  fell betterwhen they are sad or angry
• religious beliefs become increasingly useful as
  school-age children cope with problems