Chapter 10: Emotional and Social Development in Middle Childhood

The extent to which children hold racial and ethnic biases varies, depending on the following personal and situational factors:

- A fixed view of personality traits: children who believe that people's personality traits are fixed rather than changeable often judge others either as "good" or "bad." Ignoring motives and circumstances, they readily form prejudices based on limited information - Overly high self-esteem: children with very high self-esteem are more likely to hold racial and ethnic prejudices. - A social world in which people are sorted into groups: the more adults highlight group distinctions and the less interracial contact children experience, the more likely white children will express in-group favoritism and out-group prejudice

self concept

During the school years, children refine their self-concept, organizing their observations of behaviors and internal states into general dispositions - Older school-age children are far less likely than younger children to describe themselves in extreme, all-or-none ways - Trait-based self-descriptions result from cognitive advances- specifically, the ability to combine typical experiences and behaviors into psychological dispositions - Children also become better at perspective taking- inferring other's attitudes toward themselves- and incorporate those attitudes into their self-definitions

industry versus inferiority

Eriksons Theory: _________ ____ ________ - children whose previous experiences have been positive enter middle childhood prepared to focus their energies on realistic accomplishment Industry versus inferiority: in Erikson's theory, the psychological conflict of middle childhood, which is resolved positively when experiences lead children to develop a sense of competence at useful skills and tasks In most of the world, the transition to middle childhood is marked by the beginning of formal schooling The danger at this stage is inferiority, reflected in the pessimism of children who lack confidence in their ability to do things well Erikson's sense of industry combines several developments of middle childhood: a positive but realistic self-concept, pride in accomplishment, moral responsibility, and cooperative participation with age-mates

immediate consequences of divorce

Family conflict often rises in newly divorced household as parents try to settle disputes over children and possessions - Mother-headed households typically experience a sharp drop in income - The transition from marriage to divorce typically leads to high maternal stress, depression, and anxiety and to a disorganized family life - Fathers who see their children only occasionally are inclined to be permissive and indulgent, making the mother's task of managing the child even more difficult - The more parents argue and fail to provide children with warmth, involvement, and consistent guidance, the poorer children's adjustment - Preschool and young school-age children often blame themselves for a marital breakup and fear that both parents may abandon them Some older children, especially the oldest in the family, display more mature behavior, willingly taking on extra household tasks and emotional support of a depressed, anxious mother. But id these demands are too great, these children may eventually become resentful and engage in angry, acting-out behavior - Exposure to stressful life events and inadequate parenting magnifies the problems of temperamentally difficult children - Children of both sexes show demanding, attention-getting behavior

As school-age children make social comparisons and characterize themselves in terms of stable dispositions, their gender identity expands to include the following self-evaluations, which greatly affect their adjustment:

Gender typicality: the degree to which the child feels he or she "fits in" with same-sex peers Gender contentedness: the degree to which the child feels comfortable with his or her gender assignment Felt pressure to conform to gender roles: the degree to which the child feels parents and peers disapprove of his or her gender-related traits

self-understanding

In middle childhood, children begin to describe themselves in terms of psychological traits, compare their own characteristics with those of their peers, and speculate about the causes of their strengths and weaknesses

divorce

Individuals with less education experience substantially greater marital instability - Because educational and economic disadvantage increases family fragility, divorce rates are higher among African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans than among European Americans Among developed nations, the US has one of the highest divorce rates - Children of divorce spend an average of 5 years in a single-parent home - About 10 percent of US children live with one parent and a married or cohabiting stepparent - Divorce is a transition that leads to a variety of new living arrangements, accompanied by changes in housing, income, and family roles and responsibilities - Although divorce is stressful for children and increases the risk of adjustment problems, most adjust favorable

step parents

Mother-Stepfather Families - Boys tend to adjust quickly, welcoming a stepfather who is warm and who refrains from exerting his authority too quickly - Mothers' frictions with sons also declines as a result. of greater economic security, another adult to share household tasks, and an end to loneliness - Girls often react with sulky, resistant behavior when a new stepfather disrupts the close tie they have established with their mother Father-Stepmother Families - Remarriage of noncustodial fathers often leads to reduced contact with their biological children, especially when fathers remarry quickly - When fathers have custody, children typically react negatively to remarriage - Girls have a hard time getting along with their stepmothers. But the longer girls live in father-stepmother households, the more positive their interaction with stepmothers become

social comparison

judgments of one's own appearance, abilities, and behavior in relation to those of others - 4-6 year-olds can compare their own performance to that of a single peer, older children can compare multiple individuals, including themselves - Parental support for self-development continues to be vitally important - Self-descriptions now include a wider range of school and community settings - As children move into adolescence, although parents and other adults remain influential, self-concept is increasingly vested in feedback from close friends

helping rejected children

- A variety of interventions exist to improve the peer relations and psychological adjustment of rejected children. Most involve coaching, modeling, and reinforcing positive social skills. - Another approach focuses on training in perspective taking and in solving social problems - Many rejected-aggressive children are unaware of their poor social skills and do not take responsibility for their social failures - Rejected-withdrawn children are likely to develop a learned-helpless approach to peer difficulties - As rejected children gain in social skills, teachers must encourage peers to alter their negative opinions

blanded families

- About 60% of divorced parents remarry within a few years - Others cohabit, or share a sexual relationship and a residence with a partner outside of marriage - Blended, or reconstituted, family: a family structure resulting from remarriage or cohabitation that includes parent, child, and step relatives - For some children, this expanded family network is positive, bringing greater adult attention - But children in blended families usually have more adjustment problems than children in stable, first-marriage families

only child

- Although sibling relationships bring many benefits, they are not essential for healthy development - Compared to children with siblings, only children are higher in self-esteem, do better in school, and attain higher levels of education - _______ _______ tend to be less well-accepted in the peer group, perhaps because they have not had opportunities to learn effective conflict-resolution strategies through sibling interactions

reducing prejudice

- An effect way to reduce prejudice is though intergroup contact, in which racially and ethnically different children have equal status, work toward common goals, and become personally acquainted - Sharing thoughts and feelings with close, cross-race friends, in turn, reduces even subtle, unintentional prejudices - Long-term contact and collaboration among neighborhood, school, and community groups may be the best way to reduce prejudice - Finally, inducing children to view others' traits as changeable, by discussing with them the many possible influences on those traits, is helpful

self-conscious emotions

- As school-age children integrate social expectations into their self-concepts, self-conscious emotions of pride and guilt become clearly governed by personal responsibility - Children experience pride in a new accomplishment and guilt over a transgression, even when no adult is present - Pride motivates children to take on further challenges, whereas guilt prompts them to make amends and to strive for self-improvement

some common problems

- Children have a variety of stressful experiences they could undergo that puts them at risk for future problems

Emotional Development

- Greater self-awareness and social sensitivity support advances in emotional competence in middle childhood - Gains take place in experience of self-conscious emotions, emotional understanding, and emotional self-regulation

child care in school aged children

- High-quality child care is vital for children's well-being, even in middle childhood - Self-care children: children who are without adult supervision for some period of time after school - Younger school-age children who spend many hours alone more adjustment difficulties - As children become old enough to look after themselves, those whose parents engage in authoritative child rearing, monitor their activities through telephone calls, and assign regular after-school chores appear responsible and well-adjusted

peer relations

- In middle childhood, the society of peers becomes an increasingly important context for development - The capacity for recursive perspective taking permits more sophisticated understanding of self and others, which, in turn, contributes to peer interaction - Physical aggression declines while verbal and relational aggression continue as children organize into peer groups

long term consequences of divorce

- Most children show improved adjustment by 2 years after divorce - Yet overall, children and adolescents of divorced parents continue to score slightly lower than children of continuously married parents in academic achievement, self-esteem, social competence, and emotional and behavior problems - Young people who experienced parental divorce display higher rates of early sexual activity and adolescent parenthood - The overriding factor in positive adjustment following divorce if effective parenting

joint custody

- One approach to helping divorced families is divorce mediation, a series of meetings between divorcing adults and a trained professional aimed at reducing family conflict, including legal battles over property division and child custody - Joint custody, which grants parents equal say in important decisions about the child's upbringing, is becoming increasingly common - Many single-parent families depend on child support from the noncustodial parent to relieve financial strain - All US states have procedures for withholding wages from parents who fail to make child support payments

Support for Blended Families

- Parenting education and couples counseling can help parents and children adapt to the complexities of blended families - Effective approaches encourage stepparents to move into their new roles gradually by first building a warm relationship with the child, which makes more active parenting possible - The divorce rate for second marriages is higher than for first marriages - Parents with antisocial tendencies and poor child-rearing skills are particularly likely to have several divorces and remarriages, and their children have greater adjustment difficulties

gender stereotypes beliefs

- Research in many countries reveals that stereotyping of personality traits increases steadily in middle childhood, becoming adultlike around age 11 - Children derive these distinctions from observing sex differences in behavior as well as from adult treatment - Elementary teachers tend to stereotype their students which may contribute to boys; reduced academic engagement and lower school grades relative to girls' - Although school-age children are aware of many stereotypes, they also develop a more open-minded view of what males and females can do - By the end of middle childhood, most children regard gender typing as socially rather than biologically influenced - Nevertheless, acknowledging that people can cross gender lines does not mean that children always approve of doing so

emotional self-regulation

- School-age children's improved ability to appraise situations and reflect on thoughts and feelings means that, compared with preschoolers, they more often use these internal strategies to manage emotion - When emotional self-regulation has developed well, school-age children acquire a sense of emotional self-efficacy: a feeling of being in control of their emotional experience

maternal employment

- Today, whether single or married, more than three-fourths of US mothers with school-age children are employed - When employed mothers remain committed to parenting, children develop favorable, displaying higher self-esteem and less gender-stereotypes beliefs - Stable maternal employment begun in early childhood is linked to higher achievement and fewer behavior problems, especially for children of low-income mothers - Employed mothers who feel economically more secure are more likely to engage in warm, involved parenting - In dual-earner households, maternal employment often leads fathers to take on greater child-rearing responsibilities - But when employment places heavy demands on parents' schedules or is stressful for other reasons, children are at risk for lower-quality parenting, poorer cognitive development, and increased behavior problems

child sexual abuse

- Until recently, child sexual abuse was considered rare, and adults often dismissed children's claims of abuse - About 61,000 cases in the US were confirmed in the most recently reported year Characteristics of Abusers and Victims Sexual abuse is committed against children of both sexes, but more often against girls Most cases are reported in middle childhood, but for some victims, abuse begins early in life and continues for many years In the vast majority of cases, the abuser is male, often a parent or someone the parent knows well If the abuser is a nonrelative the person is usually someone the child has come to know and trust Reported cases are linked to poverty and marital instability Consequences The adjustment problems of child sexual abuse victims, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, mistrust of adults, and anger and hostility, are often severe and can persist for years after the abusive episodes Younger children frequently react with sleep difficulties, loss of appetite, and generalized fearfulness In adolescence, abused young people often become promiscuous, and as adults, they show increased arrest rate for sex crimes and prostitution Prevention and Treatment Because sexual abuse typically appears in the midst of other serious family problems, specialized trauma-focused therapy with both children and parents is usually needed Educational programs that teach children to recognize inappropriate sexual advances and identify sources of help reduce the risk of abuse

4 broad factors protect against malajustment

1. The child's personal characteristics, including an easygoing temperament and a mastery-oriented approach to new situations 2. A warm parental relationship 3. An adult outside the immediate family who offers a support system 4. Community resources, such as good schools, social services, and youth organizations and recreation centers

problem-centered coping

1st step: a strategy for managing emotion that involves appraising the situation as changeable, identifying the difficulty, and deciding what to do about it

emotion-centered coping

2nd step after 1 doesn't work: - a strategy for managing emotion that is internal, private, and aimed at controlling distress when little can be done about an outcome

Fostering a Mastery-Oriented Approach

An intervention called attribution retaining encourages learned-helpless children to believe that they can overcome failure by exerting more effort and using more effective strategies - Children are given tasks difficult enough that they will experience some failure, followed by repeated feedback that helps them revise their attributions - Another approach is to encourage low-effort students to focus less on grades and more on mastering a task for its own sake and on individual improvement

fears and anxities

As children begin to understand the realities of the wider world, the possibility of personal harm and media events often trouble them - Other common worries include academic failure, physical injuries, separation from parents, parents' health, the possibility of dying, and peer rejection As long as fears are not too intense, most children handle them constructively, and they decline with age - Phobia: an intense, unmanageable fear that leads to persistent avoidance of the feared situation - Some children with phobias and other anxieties develop school refusal: severe apprehension about attending school, often accompanied by physical complaints such as dizziness, nausea, and stomachaches - Most cases of school refusal appear around ages 11-13, in children who usually find a particular aspect of school frightening - Severe childhood anxieties may arise from harsh living conditions

culture, gender, and ethnicity

Asian children tend to be reserved in positive self-judgements but generous in praise of others Gender-stereotyped expectations also affect self-esteem - In an investigation, being overweight was more strongly linked to negative body image for third-grade girls than for boys By the end of middle childhood, girls feel less confident than boys about their physical appearance and athletic abilities - At the same time, girls exceed boys in self-esteem dimensions of close friendship and social acceptance - Children and adolescents who attend schools or live in neighborhoods where their SES and ethnic groups are well-represented feel a stronger sense of belonging and have fewer self-esteem problems

4

By ages 6-7, children have formed at least ____broad self-evaluations: - academic competence, - social competence, - physical/athletic - competence, and physical appearance

7 -8

By ages ___ - ___ , children no longer say that truth telling is always good and lying is always bad but consider prosocial and antisocial intentions and the context of the behavior - During the school years, children construct a flexible appreciation of moral rules - They take into account an increasing number of variable-not just the action and its immediate impact, but also the actor's intentions and the context of their behavior - As children construct more advanced ideas about justice, they clarify and link moral imperatives and social conventions

moral development

By middle childhood, children have had time to internalize rules for good conduct - This leads to children to become considerable more independent and trustworthy - Children do not just copy their morality from others but actively think about right and wrong - An expanding social world, the capacity to consider more information when reasoning, and gains in recursive perspective taking lead moral understanding to advance greatly in middle childhood

Understanding Diversity and Inequality

By the early school years, children associate power and privilege with white people and poverty and inferior status with people of color - Children seem to pick up mainstream beliefs from implicit messages in the media and elsewhere in their environment

gender identity

Children who were more strongly gender-types relative to their agemates in early childhood usually remain so in middle childhood - From 3rd to 6th grade, boys tend to strengthen their identification with masculine personality traits, whereas girl's identification with feminine traits declines - Girls are more androgynous - Parents are more disapproving when sons, as opposed to daughters, cross gender lines - School-age children who experience rejection because of their gender-atypical traits suffer profoundly

gender typing

Children's understanding of gender roles broadens in middle childhood, and their gender identities change as well

To assess peer acceptance, researchers usually use self-reports that measure social preferences. These self-reports yield five general categories of peer acceptance:

Popular children: who get many positive votes (are well-liked) Rejected children: who get many negative notes (are disliked) Controversial children: who receive many votes, both positive and negative (are both liked and disliked) Neglected children: who are seldom mentioned, either positively or negatively Average children: who receive average numbers of positive and negative votes and account for about 1/3 of children in a typical elementary school classroom Perceived popularity: children's judgements of whom most of their classmates admire

child-rearing practices

School-age children with a strong sense of attachment security and whose parents use an authoritative child-rearing style feel especially good about themselves : Controlling parents-those who too often help or make decisions for their child-communicate a sense of inadequacy to children : Having parents who are repeatedly disapproving and insulting is also linked to low self-esteem : Indulgent parenting is associated with unrealistically high self-esteem : Research confirms that children do not benefit from compliments that have no basis in real accomplishment - The best way to foster a positive, secure self-image is to encourage children to strive for worthwhile goals - Achievement fosters self-esteem, which contributes to further effort and gains in performance

emotional understanding

School-age children's understanding of mental activity means that they are likely to explain emotion by referring to internal states, such as happy or sad thoughts - Children become more aware of circumstances likely to spark mixed emotions - Appreciating mixed emotions helps children realize that people's expressions may not reflect their true feelings - As with self-understanding, gains in emotional understanding are supported by cognitive development and social experiences, especially adults' sensitivity to children's feelings and willingness to discuss emotions

self-esteem

The capacity to view the self in terms of stable dispositions permits school-age children to combine their separate self-evaluations into a general psychological image of themselves-an overall sense of self-esteem - Children attach greater importance to certain self-evaluations than to others - Self-esteem generally remain high during elementary school but becomes more realistic and nuanced as children evaluate themselves in various areas

Fostering Resilience in Middle Childhood

Throughout middle childhood, and other periods of development, children encounter challenging and sometimes threatening situations that require them to cope with psychological stress - Each taxes children's coping resources, creating serious risks for development - Only a modest relationship exists between stressful life experiences and psychological disturbance in childhood

understanding individual rights

When children challenge adult authority, they typically do so within the person domain - As their grasp of moral imperatives and social conventions strengthens, so does their conviction that certain choices, such as hairstyle, friends, and leisure activities, are up to the individual - Notions of personal choice, in turn, enhance children's moral understandings - Older school-age children place limits on individual choice - High-quality friendships may play an important role in facilitating children's moral sensibilities

friendship

Whereas peer groups provide children with insight into larger social structures, friendships contribute to the development of trust and sensitivity - During the school years, friendship becomes more complex and psychologically based - Friendship has become a mutually agreed-on relationship in which children like each other's personal qualities and respond to one another's needs and desires - Once a friendship forms, trust becomes its defining feature - School-age friendships are more selective. By age 8-9, children name only a handful of good friends - Girls tend to be more exclusive in their friendships - Children tend to select friends similar to themselves in age, sex, race, ethnicity, and SES - Friendship opportunities encouraged by children's environments also affect their choices - Through friendships, children come to realize that close relationships can survive disagreements if friends are secure in their liking for each other and resolve disputes in ways that meet both partners' needs - When aggressive children make friends their aggressive tendencies begin to worsen

out-group

___ ____prejudice requires a more challenging social comparison between in-group and out-group - Unfortunately, many minority children show a reverse pattern; out-group favoritism, in which they assign positive characteristics to the privileged white majority and negative characteristics to their own group - With age, children pay more attention to inner traits - Consequently, voicing of negative attitudes toward minorities declines after age 7-8 - Yet even in children aware of the injustice of discrimination, prejudice often operates unintentionally and without awareness

peer acceptance

____ _________ efers to likeability-the extent to which a child is viewed by a group of agemates, such as classmates, as a worthy social partner - Better-accepted children tend to be socially competent and, as a result, have more friends and more positive relationships with them - Peer acceptance is a powerful predictor of psychological adjustment - Earlier influences-children's characteristics combined with parenting practices- may largely explain the link between peer acceptance and adjustment

In-group

____-______favoritism emerges first; children simply prefer their own group, generalizing from self to similar others - The ease with which a trivial group label supplied by an adult can induce in-group favoritism is striking

parent-child

______ -________ relationship changes but children's well-being continues to depend on the quality of family interaction - the amount of time children spend with parents declines dramatically - Children's growing independence means that parents must deal with new issues - Child rearing becomes easier for parents who establish and authoritative style during the early years - Reasoning is more effective with school-age children because of their greater capacity for logical thinking and their increased respect for parents' expert knowledge - Although school-age children often press for greater independence, they know they need their parent's support - A positive parent-child relationship is linked to improved emotional self-regulation in children, reducing the negative impact of stressful events

Learned helplessnes

________ __________ attribution of success to external factors, such as luck, and failure to low ability, which is fixed and cannot be improved by trying hard. - Focus on obtaining positive and avoiding negative evaluations of their fragile sense of ability - Do not develop the metacognitive and self-regulatory skills necessary for high achievement

process praise

________ __________ implies that competence develops through effort When girls do not do well, they tend to receive messages from teacher and parents that their ability is at fault, and negative stereotypes undermine their interest and effort - Asian parents and teachers are more likely than their American counterparts to view effort as key to achievement - Asians also attend more to failure than to success because failure indicates where corrective action is needed. Americans, in contrast, focus more on success because it enhances self-esteem.

Adult

________ communication plays a key role in the different attributions of mastery-oriented and learned-helpless children - When a child succeeds, adults can offer person praise, which emphasizes the child's traits, or process praise, which emphasizes behavior and effort. - Person praise teachers children that abilities are fixed, which leads them to question their competence and retreat from challenges

middle

_________ childhood on, individual differences in self-esteem become increasingly stable - Positive relationships among self-esteem, valuing of various activities, and success at those activities emerge and strengthen

Controversial

_________ children display a blend of positive and negative social behaviors They're hostile and disruptive but they also engage in positive, prosocial acts

Attributions

___________ are our common, everyday explanations for the causes of behavior The combination of improved reasoning skills and frequent evaluative feedback permits 10-12 year-olds to separate all these variables in explaining performance - children's ________ affect their goals

Mastery-oriented

____________ _____________: attributions that credit success to ability, which can be improved through effort, and failure to factors that can be changed or controlled, such as insufficient effort or a difficult task - Seek information on how best to increase their ability through effort. Hence, their performance improves over time

siblings

_____________ rivalry tends to increase in middle childhood - As children participate in a wider range of activities, parents often compare siblings' traits and accomplishments - For same-sex siblings who are close in age, parental comparisons are more frequent, resulting in more antagonism - To reduce rivalry, siblings often strive to be different from one another - Although conflict rises, school-age siblings continue to rely on each other for companionship and support But for siblings to reap these benefits, parental encouragement of warm, considerate sibling ties is vital - When siblings get along well, the older sibling's academic and social competence tends to "tub off on" the younger sibling, fostering more favorable achievements and peer relations - Destructive sibling conflict is associated with negative outcomes, including conflict-ridden peer relationships, anxiety, depressed mood, and later substance use and delinquency

coregulation

________________________ a form of supervision in which parents exercise general oversight while letting children take charge of moment-by-moment decision making Coregulation grows out of a warm, cooperative relationship between parent and child based on give-and-take

popular-antisocial children

a subgroup of popular children who are admired for their socially adept yet belligerent behavior. Includes "tough" boys-athletically skilled but poor students who cause trouble and defy authority-and relationally aggressive boys and girls who enhance their own status by ignoring, excluding, and spreading rumors about other children

Rejected-withdrawn children

a subgroup of rejected children who are passive and socially awkward - As rejected children are excluded, their classroom participation declines, their feelings of loneliness rise, their academic achievement falters, and they want to avoid school - Both types of rejected children are at risk for peer harassment

Rejected-aggressive children

a subgroup of rejected children who show high rates of conflict, physical and relational aggression, and hyperactive, inattentive, and impulsive behavior - Compared with popular-antisocial children, they are more extremely antagonistic - Rejected aggressive children also act as bullies, and rejected-withdrawn children are especially likely to be victimized

Popular-prosocial children

a subgroups of popular children who combine academic and social competence and are both well-liked and admired

Recursive perspective thinking

children must consider simultaneously the viewpoints of two or more people

peer groups

collectives of peers who generate unique values and standards for behavior and social structure of leaders and followers - ______ _______ organize on the basis of proximity and similarity in sex, ethnicity, academic achievement, popularity, and aggression - The practices of these informal groups lead to a "peer culture" which binds peers together, creating a sense of group identity - Children do exclude, often using relationally aggressive tactics

industriousness

the energetic pursuit of meaningful achievement in one's culture