Emotional and Social Development in Early Childhood

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Emotional and Social Development in Early
Childhood
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ERIKSONS THEORY INITIATIVE VERSUS GUILT

• In Eriksons theory, initiative versus guilt
  is the psychological conflict of early childhood.
  
• It is resolved positively through play
  experiences that foster a healthy sense of
  initiative and through development of a
  conscience that is not overly strict.

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SELF-DEVELOPMENT

• Foundations of
• Self-Concept
• Self-concept is the set of attributes, abilities,
  attitudes, and values that an individual believes
  defines who he or she is.
• Preschoolers usually describe themselves with
  concrete terms such as name, physical appearance,
  possessions, and everyday behaviors.
• By age 31/2 , they can also describe themselves
  in terms of typical emotions and attitudes.

• Preschoolers do not yet make explicit reference
  to internal traits.
• Childrens struggles over objects seem to be
  positive efforts at forming boundaries between
  self and others.
• A firmer sense of self also permits children to
  cooperate for the first time in resolving
  disputes over objects, in playing games, and in
  solving problems.

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Emergence of Self-Esteem

• Self-esteem is an aspect of self-concept that
  involves judgments about ones own worth and the
  feelings associated with those judgments.
• Evaluations of our own competencies affect
  emotional experiences, future behavior, and
  long-term psychological adjustment.

• Preschoolers sense of self-esteem is not as well
  defined as that of older children or adults. They
  usually rate their own ability as extremely high
  and underestimate the difficulty of a task.
• A high sense of self-esteem contributes greatly
  to preschoolers initiative during a period in
  which they must master many new skills.
• Criticism can undermine a preschoolers
  self-esteem and enthusiasm for learning.

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Self-Conscious Emotions

• Preschoolers depend on adults messages to know
  when to feel self-conscious emotions.
• Young children are likely to feel shame and guilt
  for any act that can be described as wrongdoing,
  even if it was accidental.
• The presence of an audience seems to be necessary
  for preschoolers to experience self-conscious
  emotions.

• Self-conscious emotions involve injury to or
  enhancement of the sense of self. As childrens
  self-concepts become better developed, they
  experience self-conscious emotions more often.
• Intense shame is associated with feelings of
  personal inadequacy and is linked to
  maladjustment. In contrast, guilt is related to
  good adjustment, perhaps because guilt helps
  children resist harmful impulses.

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FOUNDATIONS OF MORALITY

• By age 2, children show concern with deviations
  from the way objects should be and people should
  act. In response to this awareness, parents hold
  their children more responsible for their
  behavior.
• All theories of moral development recognize
  that conscience begins to take shape during the
  preschool years.

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• The general direction of moral growth proceeds
  as follows
• At first, the childs morality is externally
  controlled by adults.
• Gradually it becomes regulated by inner
  standards. Truly moral individuals have developed
  compassionate concern for others and principles
  of good conduct, which they follow in a variety
  of situations.

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GENDER TYPING

• Gender typing is the process of developing
  gender roles, or gender-linked preferences and
  behaviors valued by the larger society.

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Gender-Stereotyped Beliefs and Behaviors

• Around age 2, children begin to label their own
  sex and that of other people. Children then start
  to sort out what the categories mean in terms of
  behaviors and activities.
• Boys tend to be more active, assertive, and
  aggressive, while girls tend to be more fearful,
  dependent, compliant, and emotionally sensitive.

• Over the preschool years, childrens
  gender-stereotyped beliefs become stronger, so
  much so that they operate like blanket rules
  rather than flexible guidelines.
• Most preschoolers do not yet realize that
  characteristics associated with gender do not
  determine whether a person is male or female.

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Genetic Influences on Gender Typing

• Eleanor Maccoby argues that hormonal differences
  between males and females have important
  consequences for gender typing.
• Hormones lead to rough, noisy movements among
  boys and calm, gentle actions among girls.
• As children begin to interact with peers, they
  choose same-sex partners whose interests and
  behaviors are compatible with their own.
• Environmental forces build on hereditary
  influences to promote the development of gender
  roles.

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Environmental Influences on Gender Typing

• The Family
• Many parents state that they want their children
  to play with gender-appropriate toys, and they
  also believe that boys and girls should be raised
  differently.
• Parents reward sons for active and assertive
  behavior. In contrast, they more often direct
  play activities and provide help to a daughter,
  encouraging dependency.

• Parents who hold nonstereotyped values and apply
  them in their daily lives have less gender-typed
  children.
• Of the two sexes, boys are more gender-typed
  because parentsparticularly fathersare less
  tolerant of cross-gender behavior in their sons
  than in their daughters.

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Environmental Influences on Gender Typing cont.

• Teachers
• Teachers often encourage children to conform to
  gender roles.
• Girls get more encouragement to participate in
  adult-structured activities at preschool.
• Peers
• By age 3, same-sex peers positively reinforce one
  another for gender-typed play by praising,
  imitating, or joining in the activity of an
  agemate who shows a gender-appropriate
  response.
• When preschoolers engage in gender-inappropriate
  play, theyespecially boysreceive criticism
  from peers.
• Children also develop different styles of social
  influence in sex-segregated peer groups.
• Over time, children form beliefs about peers
  play preferences, which contribute further to
  gender segregation.

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Environmental Influences on Gender Typing cont.

• Television
• In TV programs, women appear less often than men
  and continue to be portrayed in traditionally
  stereotypic roles.
• Gender roles are especially stereotypic in
  entertainment programs for children and youths.
• The Broader Social Environment
• Childrens everyday environments contain many
  examples of gender-typed behavior.
• In addition to imitating the gender-linked
  responses they observe, children also start to
  view themselves and the surrounding world in
  gender-biased ways.

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Gender Identity

• Gender identity is the image of oneself as
  relatively masculine or feminine in
  characteristics.
• Androgyny is a type of gender-role identity in
  which the person scores high on both masculine
  and feminine personality characteristics.
• Masculine and androgynous children and adults
  have a higher sense of self-esteem, whereas
  feminine individuals often think poorly of
  themselves.

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Gender Identity cont.

• Emergence of Gender Identity
• According to social learning theory, preschoolers
  first acquire gender-typed responses through
  modeling and reinforcement, and later they
  organize these behaviors into gender-linked ideas
  about themselves.
• Cognitive-developmental theory asserts that
  children first acquire gender constancy before
  they develop gender-typed responses.
• Gender constancy is the understanding that sex
  remains the same even if clothing, hairstyle, and
  play activities change. It is not present in most
  children until the end of the preschool years.
• Lack of early gender constancy results, in part,
  from the lack of opportunity to learn about
  genital differences between the sexes.
• At present, researchers disagree on just how
  gender constancy contributes to gender-role
  development. But they do know that once children
  begin to reflect on gender roles, they form basic
  gender categories that strengthen gender-typed
  self-images and behavior.

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Gender Identity cont.

• Gender Schema Theory
• Gender schema theory is an information-processing
  approach to gender typing that combines social
  learning and cognitivedevelopmental features to
  explain how environmental pressures and
  childrens cognitions work together to shape
  gender-role development.
• Young children organize their experiences into
  gender schemas, or masculine and feminine
  categories, which they use to interpret their
  world and guide their behavior.
• Gender schemas are so powerful that when children
  see others behaving in gender-inconsistent
  ways, they often cannot remember the behavior or
  distort their memory to make it gender
  consistent.

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Gender Identity cont.
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Reducing Gender Stereotyping in Young Children

• Adults can reduce gender-stereotyping in young
  children by removing stereotyping from their own
  behavior and from the alternatives they provide
  children.
• Adults can explain to children that interests and
  skills, not gender, should determine a persons
  occupations and activities. Research shows that
  such reasoning is very effective in reducing
  childrens tendency to view the world in a
  gender-biased fashion.