Socioemotional Development in Early Childhood

Emotional Development

Erikson's third stage: Initiative versus Guilt - children begin to assert their power and control over the world through directing play and other social interaction.

Self Understanding and Understanding others

Self-understanding - young children begin to understand that they have permanent qualities (e.g. skin, gender, family members) and they tend to describe themselves in concrete (not abstract) and physically observable traits

Understanding others - theory of mind helps children understand that others have emotions and desires and they learn to understand how to interpret these

  • self-conscious emotions allow children to refer to themselves and be aware of themselves as distinct from others
  • increase in ability to talk about one's own and others' emotions in many number of terms ranging from positive to negative

Emotion regulation is built through peer relationships - moody and emotionally negative children experience rejection by their peers while positive children are more popular

Parenting
(diagram printout)

Punishment
corporal punishment:

  • may represent out-of-control models of handing stressful situations
  • can instill fear and rage
  • tells the child what not to do but not what to do
  • may lead to abuse
    Reasoning is recommended

Coparenting - the support that parents give each other in raising a child - is helpful for development of self-control

Emotion-coaching parents - monitor their children’s emotions, view their children’s negative emotions as opportunities for teaching, assist them in labeling emotions, and coach them in how to deal effectively with emotions (often authoritative)

Emotional-dismissing parents - view their role as to deny, ignore, or change negative emotions (often authoritarian)

Moral Development

Moral reasoning occurs in 3 stages

  • age 4-7 : heteronomous morality - justice and rules are unchangeable properties beyond people's control (emphasizes immanent justice)
  • age 7-10 : period of transition showing features of both first and third stage
  • age 10+ : autonomous morality - rules and laws are created by people and judgement of action considers actor's intentions thus consequences

Moral behavior - reinforcement, punishment, and imitation explain the development of moral behavior

Peer relationships - negotiating rules and roles develops negotiation and interaction skills

Importance of play

  • helps master anxiety and release energy
  • satisfies exploratory drive
  • language development
  • importance of symbolic and imaginative play (Vygotsky)

Types of play

  • sensorimotor and practice play - with toys and objects
  • pretense/symbolic play - using an object/symbol as a substitute to something else
  • social play - implies coordinated interaction (mutually agreed upon intentions and goals)
  • constructive play - manipulating the environment to create things

Gender - the characteristics of people as females and males

  • gender identity often acquired by age 3

Social Influences (3 main social theories of gender)

  • social role theory - gender differences result from the contrasting roles of men and women
  • psychoanalytic theory of gender (Freud) - because child renounces sexual attraction to parent of opposite sex, they identify with same-sex parent and unconsciously adopt their characteristics
  • social cognitive theory of gender - gender development occurs through observation and imitation of gender behavior + rewards and punishment for gender appropriate/inappropriate behavior

Parental Influences

  • Mother's socialization strategies - teach daughters to be obedient and restrict their autonomy; teach sons to be responsible
  • Father's socialization strategies - pays more attention to activities with son; more promotion of son's intellectual development

Peer Influences

  • peers reward and punish gender behavior
  • gender composition of groups - age 3-12 children tend to play with same-sex peers
  • group size - boys tend to associate in larger clusters and more group-goal/organized games than girls
  • interaction in same-sex groups - boys tend to have rough and tumble play + seeking dominance; girls tend to have "collaborative discourse" consisting of reciprocity

Cognitive Influences

  • gender schema theory - children gradually develop gender schemas of what is gender appropriate or not in their culture
  • observation, imitation, rewards, punishment

girls do better in reading and writing thus might enjoy being at school more than boys