Psych 205 Ch 8,9,10

Actions that are deliberately hurtful or destructive to another person. (e.g., verbal insults, social exclusion, and physical assault) Generally, antisocial behavior diminishes over the preschool years, especially as social understanding increases.

Antisocial behavior

• Overregularization: the application of rules of grammar even when exceptions occur, making the language seem more "regular" than it actually is. **applying the grammar rules when shouldn't** • Pragmatics: the practical use of language that includes the ability to adjust language communication according to audience and context.

Acquiring Grammar

Children need physical activity to develop muscle strength and control. Peers provide an audience, role model, active social play that correlates with peer acceptance, healthy self-concepts, which regulate emotions. Rough-and-Tumble Play: Play that mimics aggression through wrestling, chasing, or hitting, but in which there is no intent to harm. More common among boys than girls and flourishes best in ample space with minimal supervision (Pellegrini, 2013). Rough-and-tumble play helps the prefrontal cortex develop, as children learn to regulate emotions, practice social skills, and strengthen their bodies (Pellis & Pellis, 2011).

Active Play

1. Judges and biological parents are reluctant to release children for adoption. 2. Most adoptive parents prefer infants, but few maltreating adults recognize how hard child-care can be until they have tried, and failed, to provide for their children. 3. Some agencies screen out families not headed by heterosexual couples. 4. Some professionals seek adoptive parents of the same ethnicity and/or religion as the child.

Adoption Difficult

• Maturation and myelination allow children to move with greater speed, agility, and grace as they age. • Brain growth, motivation, and guided practice undergird all motor skills.

Advancing Motor Skills

Most common -> Milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts (almonds, walnuts, peanuts), soy, wheat, fish, and shellfish. • Diagnostic standards for allergies vary (which explains the range of estimates), and treatment varies even more (Chafen et al., 2010). • Exposure to food allergies can begin before birth in the womb. • Many childhood food allergies are outgrown, but ongoing allergies make a balanced diet even harder. • Children who eat more fruit and fewer fast foods are less likely to have asthma, nasal congestion, watery eyes, and itchy skin allergies (Ellwood et al., 2013)

Allergies and Food

• All forms of artistic expression blossom during early childhood: 2- to 6-year-olds. • Kids love to express themselves, especially if their parents applaud their performances, display their artwork, and otherwise communicate approval. • It communicates thoughts and self-expression (Papandreou, 2014). • Cultural and cohort differences are apparent in all artistic skills.

Artistic Expression

The authors cite four reasons that this well-designed app is helpful: 1. The app required parents and children to discuss math together. 2. The app had stories but few distracting noises or animations. 3. The app gave math-phobic parents a way to talk about numbers and shapes with their children. 4. The app followed each story with questions that encouraged memory and reflection (both of which aid executive function).

Bedtime Math and Bedtime Reading

Behaviorists believe that virtually all roles, values, and morals are learned. Gender distinctions are the product of ongoing reinforcement and punishment, as well as social learning beginning in early childhood. Adults are unaware that they are reinforcing traditional masculine or feminine behavior. People model themselves after people they perceive to be nurturing, powerful, and like themselves, which starts with their parents. Children follow the examples they see, unaware that their very existence is the reason for that behavior.

Behaviorism Theory

• As the prefrontal cortex matures, social understanding develops. • Children gradually become better at controlling their emotions when they are with other people. This is directly connected to brain development as time passes and family experiences continue • Gradual self-control and development of the prefrontal cortex is apparent.

Brain Growth

The new initiative that Erikson described results from myelination of the limbic system, growth of the prefrontal cortex, and a longer attention span—all results of neurological maturation. About age 4 or 5 the prefrontal cortex matures and coordinates and regulates all sensations. Emotional regulation and cognitive maturation develop together, each enabling the other to advance (Bell & Calkins, 2011; Lewis, 2013; Bridgett et al., 2015). The entire brain works to regulate emotions: It is an error to think that emotions arise from only one part. Funny TikTok "Don't Eat It Toddler Challenge"

Brain Maturation

• Children who are slow in language development are also slow in theory of mind, a finding that makes developmentalists suggest that underlying deficits—genetic or neurological—may be crucial for both. • Theory of mind activates several brain regions (Koster-Hale & Saxe, 2013).

Brain and Context

A characteristic of preoperational thought in which a young child focuses (centers) on one idea, excluding all others. Example à A child insist that tigers and lions are not cats. Example à A child insist that daddy is a father, not a brother.

Centration

-Child maltreatment: Intentional harm to or avoidable endangerment of anyone under 18 years of age. - Child neglect: Failure to meet a child's basic physical, educational, or emotional needs. - Child abuse: Deliberate action that is harmful to a child's physical, emotional, or sexual well-being. Note: Neglect is worse than abuse. It also is "the most common and most frequently fatal form of child maltreatment" (Proctor & Dubowitz, 2014, p. 27). -Substantiated maltreatment: Harm or endangerment that has been reported, investigated, and verified.

Child Maltreatment

• Teachers focus mostly on teaching social/emotional and cognitive skills. • The physical space and the materials are arranged to allow exploration and artistic expression. • Teachers follow the children's lead and teach what they are interested in and acts as a facilitator on learning rather than direct instruction. • Relationships and powerful interactions help to foster learning and development. • Academic skills may be learned through play-based activities.

Child-Centered Programs

Gender schema: A cognitive concept or general belief based on one's experiences—in this case, a child's understanding of sex differences. Children tend to perceive the world in simple, egocentric terms. Therefore, they categorize male and female as opposites. Example -> I am a girl so I must think/act like a girl. Example -> I am a boy so I must think/act like a boy.

Cognitive Theory

• Corpus callosum : A long, thick band of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain and allows communication between them. • Lateralization: Literally, sidedness, referring to the specialization in certain functions by each side of the brain, with one side dominant for each activity. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. Note: The entire human body is lateralized.

Connected Hemispheres

The principle that the amount of a substance remains the same (i.e., is conserved) even when its appearance changes

Conservation

use large muscles to balance and coordinate

Gross motor skills

1. Punished behavior is suppressed, not forgotten. This temporary state may (negatively) reinforce punishing behavior. Ex: Child swears, Parent spanks, (Swearing stops or increases) 2. Physical punishment does not replace the unwanted behavior. Ex: Child yelling, Parent spanks, yelling stops (but continue to throw or punch things) 3. Punishment teaches discrimination among situations. Ex: Child swears, Parent spanks, Swearing stops (only in parent presence) 4. Punishment can teach fear. Ex: Child act out, Teacher punishes (Avoid school, Become Anxious, Afraid to communicate needs) 5. Physical punishment may increase aggression by modeling violence as a way to cope with problems. Ex: Parents spank or abuse child (child spanks or abuses others) 6. Causes unwanted behaviors to appear in place of another Ex: Parent punish child at home (child then becomes upset or disobedient at school)

Controversy Punishments

Corporal punishment: Punishment that physically hurts the body, such as slapping, spanking, etc. Children who are physically punished are more likely to be disobedient and to become bullies, delinquents, and then abusive adults (Gershoff et al., 2012). They also learn less in school and quit before college (Straus & Paschall, 2009). Children who are not spanked are more likely to develop self-control. As spanking increases, so does misbehavior (Gershoff, 2013). The correlation between spanking and later aggression holds for children of all ethnic groups, in many nations (Lansford et al., 2014).

Corporal Punishment

Play is subverted currently by three factors: 1. The current push toward early mastery of academic skills 2. The "swift and pervasive rise of electronic media" 3. Adults who lean "more toward control than freedom" (Chudacoff, 2011, p. 108).

Developmentalist Fears about Play

Parents differed on four important dimensions: 1. Expressions of warmth. Some parents are warm and affectionate; others are cold and critical. 2. Strategies for discipline. Parents vary in how they explain, criticize, persuade, and punish. 3. Expectations for maturity. Parents vary in expectations for responsibility and selfcontrol. 4. Communication. Some parents listen patiently; others demand silence.

Diana Baumrind

• The average body mass index (BMI, a ratio of weight to height) is lower at ages 5 and 6 than at any other time of life. • During each year of early childhood, wellnourished children grow about 3 inches (about 7½ centimeters) and gain almost 4½ pounds (2 kilograms). By age 6, the average child in a developed nation: • is at least 3½ feet tall (more than 110 centimeters). • weighs between 40 and 50 pounds (between 18 and 23 kilograms). • looks lean, not chubby. • has adultlike body proportions (legs constitute about half the total height).

Growth Pattern Facts

children's tendency to think about the world entirely from their own personal perspective.

Egocentrism

Emotional regulation: The ability to control when and how emotions are expressed. By age 6, most children can be angry, frightened, sad, anxious, or proud without the explosive outbursts of temper, terror, or tears of 2- year-olds. Depending on a child's training and temperament, some emotions are easier to control than others. Even difficult temperament children can learn to regulate their emotions.

Emotional Development

Effortful control: The ability to regulate one's emotions and actions through effort, not simply through natural inclination. Controlling outbursts is no easy feat and is even more difficult when people of any age are in pain, tired, or hungry. Effortful control, executive function, and emotional regulation are similar constructs, with much overlap. ØExecutive function emphasizes cognition -> Effortful control emphasizes temperament ØExecutive function and Effortful control both -> undergird the ability to express emotions appropriately.

Emotional regulation -> Effortful Control

The ability to understand the emotions and concerns of another person, especially when they differ from one's own. Empathy leads to Compassion; Compassion leads to Kindness.

Empathy

• Observable dangers and restricted exploration are not the only reasons some children are slow to develop motor skills. • Children who breathe heavily polluted air exercise less- How does this impact those with asthma?? • Environmental substances directly impair brain development in young children, especially those in lowSES families. Many sources suggest that environmental pollutants of all kinds are especially harmful early in life. Two main reasons: 1. Children take in more air, food, and water per pound of body weight. 2. Children heir organs are still developing.

Environmental Hazards

Initiative versus guilt: children undertake new skills and activities and feel guilty when they fail at them. Initiative includes saying something new, expanding an ability, beginning a project, expressing an emotion. For both genetic and behavioral reasons, parents who blame their children and who have poor emotional regulation themselves are likely to have children who do not learn how to regulate their own emotions (Bridgett et al., 2015).

Erik Erickson: Initiative vs Guilt (3-6 y/o)

Evolutionary theory holds that sexual passion is one of humankind's basic drives, because all creatures have a powerful impulse to reproduce. This evolutionary drive may explain why, already in early childhood, boys have a powerful urge to become like the men, and girls like the women. This will prepare them, later on, to mate and conceive a new generation. Genes dictate that young boys are more active (rough-and-tumble play) and girls more domestic (playing house) because that prepares them for adulthood. Example -> Fathers' defend against predators / Mothers' care for the home and children.

Evolutionary Theory

• Carbon monoxide • Nitric oxide / nitrogen dioxide • Ozon • Sulfur dioxide • Black carbon • Wood smoke • Car exhausts • Cigarettes smoke • Lead in the water and air • Pesticides in the soil or clothing • Bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic • E-waste

Examples of Environmental Hazards

ØSevere deficits in social skills and self-esteem ØPhysical or intellectual damage. ØMaltreated children tend to hate themselves and then hate everyone else. ØEmotional problems ØAdult drug abuse ØSocial isolation/ withdrawn ØPoor health ØIrrationally angry ØUnstable employment ØMental illnesses

Examples of Malnutrition

• Executive function or Executive control: The cognitive ability to organize and prioritize the many thoughts that arise from the various parts of the brain, allowing the person to anticipate, strategize, and plan behavior. Three Components: 1. Working memory 2. cognitive flexibility 3. Inhibitory control—which is the ability to focus on a task and ignore distractions.

Executive Function

A drive, or reason to pursue a goal, that arises from the need to have one's achievements rewarded from outside (e.g., praise, material possessions, reinforcement, money, rewards) If an extrinsic reward stops, the behavior may stop unless it has become a habit.

Extrinsic Motivation

The speedy and sometimes imprecise way in which children learn new words by tentatively placing them in mental categories according to their perceived meaning. Essentially, learning a word after one exposure

Fast-Mapping

• Fine motor skills are harder to master than gross motor skills. • These skills still require concentration at age 6. • Many fine motor skills involve two hands and thus both sides of the brain: Brain lateralization is needed. • Children learn whatever motor skills their culture teaches.

Fine Motor Skills

• Fine motor skills—like many other biological characteristics, such as bones, brains, and teeth—mature about six months earlier in girls than in boys. • By contrast, boys often are ahead of girls in gross motor skills. • These gender differences may be biological, or they may result from practice:

Fine Motor Skills

American sociologist Mildred Parten described five stages of play, each more advanced than the previous one: 1. Solitary: A child plays alone, unaware of other children playing nearby. 2. Onlooker: A child watches other children play. 3. Parallel: Children play in similar ways but not together. 4. Associative: Children interact, sharing toys, but not taking turns. 5. Cooperative: Children play together, creating dramas or taking turns.

Five Stages of Play

A characteristic of preoperational thought in which a young child ignores all attributes that are not apparent. • In preoperational thought, a thing is whatever it appears to be— is evident. Example à A girl given a short haircut might look in the mirror and cry as she thinks she has turned into a boy.

Focus on appearance

1. Centration 2. Focus on appearance 3. Static reasoning 4. Irreversibility

Four limitations that make logic difficult

• Head Start: A federally funded early-childhood intervention program for low-income children of preschool age. • Initially, were child-centered, they have become increasingly teacher-directed as waves of legislators have approved and shaped them. • In 2016, new requirements were put in place, requiring programs to be open at least 6hrs/daily and180 days a year and giving special supports to children who are homeless, or have special needs, or are learning English.

Head Start

• Quality of home learning is CRUCIAL!!!! Educational institutions for 3- to 5-year-olds are called: preschools • Nursery schools • Day-care centers • Pre-primary programs • Pre-K classes • Kindergartens Note: Quality in any educational settings are CRUCIAL!!!

Homes and Schools

Identification: An attempt to defend one's self-concept by taking on the behaviors and attitudes of someone else. Children cope with their guilt about their strong impulses toward their parents through identification processes. They began to identify with the same-sex parent. Consequently, young boys copy their fathers' mannerisms, opinions, and actions, and girls copy their mothers'.

Identification Process

Intrinsic motivation: A drive, or reason to pursue a goal, that comes from inside a person, such as the desire to feel smart or competent. Intrinsic motivation is thought to advance creativity, innovation, and emotional well-being (Weinstein & DeHaan, 2014). Intrinsic motivation is evident in every child. Young children play, question, exercise, create, destroy, and explore "just because.

Intrinsic Motivation

• Neurons have only two kinds of impulses: on-off or, in neuroscience terms, activate-inhibit. • Each is signaled by biochemical messages from dendrites to axons to neurons. • The consequences are evident in executive function and emotional regulation. • Activation and inhibition are necessary lifelong. • Impulse control: The ability to postpone or deny the immediate response to an idea or behavior. • Perseveration: The tendency to persevere in, or stick to, one thought or action for a long time

Impulsiveness and Preservation

The process by which axons become coated with myelin, a fatty substance that speeds the transmission of nerve impulses from neuron to neuron. • Myelin helps every part of the brain... organizes the very structure of network connectivity . . . and regulates the timing of information flow through individual circuits" (Fields, 2014, p. 266).

Myelination

Induction: A disciplinary technique in which the parent tries to get the child to understand why a certain behavior was wrong. Listening, not lecturing, is crucial because 3-year-olds confuse causes with consequences. They cannot answer "Why did you do that?" or appreciate a long explanation (lacks theory of mind). Explain what was observed. Explain why it was wrong. Explain the consequences. Associate with moral development ... BUT KEEP IT SIMPLE!! Children whose parents used induction when they were 3-year-olds became children with fewer externalizing problems in elementary school (Choe et al., 2013b).

Induction

the thought in which a child thinks that nothing can be undone. A thing cannot be restored to the way it was before a change occurred. Example à If a 3 y/o boy sees someone flatten a ball of play dough, he will not understand that the dough can easily be reformed into a ball. Example à If the sequence of events was reversed, such as, the water from the tall beaker was poured back into its original beaker, then the same amount of water would exist. Example à Hot cannot switch to cold and cold cannot switch back to hot

Irreversibility

• In almost all families of every income, ethnicity, and nation, parents want to protect their children while fostering their growth. Yet far more children die from violence—either accidental or deliberate—than from any specific disease. • Worldwide, injuries cause millions of premature deaths among adults as well as children. • In some nations, malnutrition, malaria, and other infectious diseases combined cause more infant and child deaths than injuries do, but those nations also have high rates of child injury. • In accidents overall, 2- to 6-year-olds are more often seriously hurt than 6- to 10-yearolds

Injuries and Abuse

- Injury control/harm reduction: Practices that are aimed at anticipating, controlling, and preventing dangerous activities; these practices reflect the beliefs that accidents are not random and that injuries can be made less harmful if proper controls are in place. Accident implies that an injury is random, unpredictable; if anyone is at fault, it's a careless parent or an accident-prone child. Instead, injury control suggests that the impact of an injury can be limited if appropriate controls are in place, and harm reduction implies that harm can be minimized.

Injury Control

• Several programs designed for children from low-SES families were established in the United States decades ago. • In the early 1960s, millions of young children in the United States were thought to need a "head start" on their formal education to foster better health and cognition before first grade.

Intervention Programs

• Brain maturation, myelination, scaffolding, and social interaction make early childhood ideal for learning language. • Early childhood is a sensitive period for language learning—for rapidly mastering vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. • Language comes easily partly because preoperational children are not self-critical about what they say. Egocentrism has advantages; this is one of them.

Language Learning: A Sensitive Period

• Private speech: The internal dialogue that occurs when people talk to themselves (either silently or out loud). • Language advances thinking by facilitating social interaction, which is vital to learning. • Social mediation: Human interaction that expands and advances understanding, often through words that one person uses to explain something to another.

Language as a tool

1. Code-focused teaching -> in order for children to read, they must "break the code" from spoken to written words. (e.g., "A, alligators all around" or "B is for baby"). 2. Book-reading -> vocabulary and print-awareness develop when adults read to children. 3. Parent education -> Adult vocabulary expands children's vocabulary. 4. Preschool programs -> Children learn from teachers, songs, excursions, and other children.

Listening, Talking, and Reading Strategies

• Sleep becomes more regular. • Emotions become more nuanced and responsive. • Temper tantrums subside. • Uncontrollable laughter and tears are less common.

Maturation of the Prefrontal Cortex

• Children learn through guided participation, because mentors teach them. • Children learn because their mentors do the following: 1. Present challenges. 2. Offer assistance (without taking over). 3. Add crucial information. 4. Encourage motivation.

Mentors of social learning

schools that offer earlychildhood education based on the philosophy of Maria Montessori, which emphasizes careful work and tasks that each young child can do. • Contemporary Montessori schools still emphasize individual pride and achievement, presenting many literacy-related tasks (e.g., outlining letters and looking at books) • Specific materials differ from those that Montessori developed, but the underlying philosophy is the same

Montessori Schools

• Many young children consume more than enough calories, but they do not always obtain adequate iron, zinc, and calcium. • Eating a wide variety of fresh foods may be essential for optimal health. • Sugar is a major problem!!!! • The American Heart Association recommends no more than 6 teaspoons of natural and added sugars, such as high-fructose corn syrup, in early childhood. -The most immediate harm from sugar is cavities and decaying teeth before age 6.

Nutritional Deficiencies

• Small appetites are often satiated by unhealthy snacks, crowding out needed vitamins. • As family income decreases, malnutrition and obesity increase. • Immigrant elders do not realize that traditional diets in low-income nations are healthier than foods advertised in developed nations. Thus, many of those regions are adopting Western diets. • Childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the twenty-first century. • There are many explanations for the connection between obesity and low SES. • A life-span explanation links childhood stress to adult obesity. • For all children, appetite decreases between ages 2 and 6.

Nutritional Impact

Note: Correlation, not causation! Emotional regulation in preschool predicts academic achievement and later success. Maturation matters. 3 y/o are poor at impulse control. They improve by age 6. Learning matters. In the zone of proximal development, children learn from mentors, who offer tactics for delaying gratification. Culture matters. Studies show that some children are much better at patience and waiting compared to others. The process is reciprocal and dynamic.

Other Brain Maturation

When a person imitates an action that is not a relevant part of the behavior to be learned. Over-imitation is common among 2 to 6 year olds when they imitate adult actions that are irrelevant and inefficient

Over-imitation

Authoritarian parenting: An approach to child rearing that is characterized by high behavioral standards, strict punishment for misconduct, and little communication from child to parent. Permissive parenting: An approach to child rearing that is characterized by high nurturance and communication but little discipline, guidance, or control. (Also called indulgent parenting.) Authoritative parenting: An approach to child rearing in which the parents set limits but listen to the child and are flexible. Neglectful/uninvolved parenting: An approach to child rearing in which the parents are indifferent toward their children and unaware of what is going on in their children's lives.

Parenting Styles

vPrimary prevention: a social network of customs and supports that help parents, neighbors, and professionals protect every child. vSecondary prevention: involves spotting warning signs and intervening to keep a risky situation from getting worse. vTertiary prevention: limits harm after maltreatment has occurred. Reporting is the first step; investigating and substantiating is second. Note: The priority must be child protection. In every case, permanency planning is needed.

Preventing Maltreatment

Three levels of prevention apply to every health and safety issue: 1. Primary prevention: Actions that change overall background conditions to prevent some unwanted event or circumstance, such as injury, disease, or abuse. à sidewalks, pedestrian overpasses, streetlights, and traffic circles 2. Secondary prevention: Actions that avert harm in a high-risk situation, such as stopping a car before it hits a pedestrian. à School crossing guards, flashing lights on school buses ,salt icy roads, warning signs before blind curves, speed bumps, and walk/don't walk signals 3. Tertiary prevention: Actions, such as immediate and effective medical treatment, that are taken after an illness or injury and that are aimed at reducing harm or preventing disability. à speedy ambulances, emergency room procedures, follow-up care, and laws against hit-and-run drivers

Prevention

A young child's pride usually includes being proud of gender, size, and heritage. Proud to be a big boy or big girl. Praise for being "a big kid" is welcomed. Being a "Crybaby" is an insult. Pride in doing something better than a younger child is expressed -- Bragging is common. Believe that whatever they are is good and may even feel superior to children of another nationality or religion. If their parents or other adults' express prejudice against people of another group, they may mirror those prejudices.

Pride and Prejudice

Actions that are helpful and kind but are of no obvious benefit to oneself.

Prosocial Behavior

Protective Optimism: helps young children try new things, and thus, preschooler's initiative advances learning. Protects them from guilt and shame. Initiative is a driving force for young children, as it should be.

Protective Optimism

Phallic stage: Freud's third stage of development, when the penis becomes the focus of concern and pleasure. At ages 3 to 6 Sensitivity now becomes concentrated in the genitals and masturbation (in both sexes) becomes a new source of pleasure as they are aware of anatomy differences. Oedipus Complex - is a boy's unconscious sexual or romantic desires towards his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred towards the rival father. Electra Complex - is a girl's unconscious sexual or romantic desires towards her father and jealousy and hatred towards the rival mother. Id = Pleasure Principle Ego = Reality Principle Superego =The Moral Voice of Reason

Psychoanalytic Theory

Psychological control: A disciplinary technique that involves threatening to withdraw love and support and that relies on a child's feelings of guilt and gratitude to the parents. Children's shame, guilt, and gratitude are used to control their behavior. Psychological control may reduce academic achievement and emotional understanding, just as spanking is thought to do. Example Statements: 1. My child should be aware of how much I have done for him/her." 2. "I let my child see how disappointed and shamed I am if he/she misbehaves." 3. "My child should be aware of how much I sacrifice for him/her." 4. "I expect my child to be grateful and appreciate all the advantages he/she has."

Psychological Control

a program of early-childhood education that originated in the town of Reggio Emilia, Italy, and that encourages each child's creativity in a carefully designed setting. • Do not provide large-group instruction with lessons. • Children are encouraged to master skills that are not usually taught in North American schools until age 7 (e.g., writing, using tools, cooking, gardening, drawing). • Activities chosen by individual children and learning is documented via scrapbooks, photos, and daily notes.

Reggio Emilia

-Reported maltreatment: Harm or endangerment about which someone has notified the authorities. The 4-to-1 ratio of reported versus substantiated cases occurs because: 1. Each child is counted only once, so four verified reports about a single child result in one substantiated case. 2. Substantiation requires proof. Most investigations do not find unmistakable harm or a witness. 3. Many professionals are mandated reporters, required to report any signs of possible maltreatment. 4. Some reports are "screened out" as belonging to another jurisdiction, such as the military or a Native American tribe, who have their own systems. 5. A report may be false or deliberately misleading; though few are (Sedlak & Ellis, 2014).

Reported Maltreatment

Temporary support that is tailored to a learner's needs and abilities and aimed at helping the learner master the next task in a given learning process.

Scaffolding

Self-concept: A person's understanding of who he or she is, in relation to self-esteem, appearance, personality, and various traits. For all aspects of self-concept and emotional regulation, culture and family matter.. (e.g., children may be encouraged to laugh/cry/yell, or the opposite, to hide their emotions).

Self-Concept

Biology determines whether an embryo is male or female. Those XX or XY chromosomes normally shape organs and produce hormones. Genes create sex differences, which are biological, not gender differences, which are culturally prescribed. Sex differences: Biological differences between males and females, in organs, hormones, and body type. Gender differences: Differences in the roles and behaviors of males and females that are prescribed by the culture.

Sex and Gender

Before first grade, children learn to: • Count objects, with one number per item (called one-to-one correspondence). • Remember times and ages (bedtime at 8 P.M., my baby brother is 3 y/o) • Understand sequence (first child wins, last child loses). • Know which numbers are greater than others (e.g., 7 is greater than 4). • Understand how to make things move, from toy cars to soccer balls. • Appreciate temperature effects, from ice to steam.

Stem Learning

• Developmentalists find that a person's interest in such vocations begins with learning about numbers and science (counting, shapes, fractions, molecular structure, the laws of motion) in early childhood.

Stem learning

Vygotsky emphasized another side of early cognition—that each person's thinking is shaped by other people. His focus on the sociocultural context contrasts with Piaget's emphasis on the individual.

Social Learning

Play can be divided into two kinds Pretend play when a child is alone and Social play that occurs with playmates. As they become better playmates, children learn emotional regulation, empathy, and cultural understanding which is best established by playing with peers. Remember: solitary pretending may not advance various skills; dramatic pretending with peers does.

Social Play

On her first day of school, Mia sits at the lunch table eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She notices that a few boys are eating peanut butter and jelly, but not one girl is. When her father picks her up from school, Mia runs up to him and exclaims, "Peanut butter and jelly is for boys! I want a turkey sandwich tomorrow." [quoted in C. Miller et al., 2013, p. 307]

Sociocultural Example

By age 6, children are astute "gender detectives," seeking out ways that males and females differ in their culture and then trying to follow the lead of others of their sex. Cultures socialize young girls and boys differently

Sociocultural Theory

Sociodramatic play: Pretend play in which children act out various roles and themes in stories that they create. Through such acting, children: Ø Explore and rehearse social roles. Ø Learn to explain their ideas and persuade playmates. Ø Practice emotional regulation by pretending to be afraid, angry, brave, and so on. Ø Develop self-concept in a nonthreatening context.

Sociodramatic Play

In the United States, young children are slapped, spanked, or beaten more often than are infants or older children, and more often than children in Canada or western Europe. Spanking is more frequent: in the southern United States than in New England ... high-SES fathers in New England routinely do. by mothers than by fathers. among conservative Christians than among nonreligious families. among African Americans than among European Americans. among European Americans than among Asian Americans. among U.S.-born Hispanics than among immigrant Hispanics. in low-SES families than in high-SES families

Spanking

A characteristic of preoperational thought in which a young child thinks that nothing changes. • Whatever is now has always been and always will be. • The world is stable, unchanging, always in the state in which they currently encounter it. Example à A child cannot believe that a picture of their parents as babies are their parents.

Static reasoning

• The relationship between stress and brain activity depends partly on the age of the person and partly on the degree of stress. • Both too much and too little impair learning. • Generally, a balance between arousal and reassurance is needed, again requiring speedy coordination among many parts of the brain. • Studies of maltreated children suggest that excessive stress-hormone levels in early childhood permanently damage brain pathways, blunting or accelerating emotional responses lifelong (Evans & Kim, 2013; Wilson et al., 2011).

Stress and the Brain

Teacher-directed preschools stress academics, often taught by one adult to the entire group. • The curriculum includes learning the names of letters, numbers, shapes, and colors according to a set timetable; every child naps, snacks, and goes to the bathroom on schedule as well. • Goal is to make children "ready to learn." • Inspired by behaviorism, emphasizes step-by-step learning and repetition, with reinforcement (praise, gold stars, prizes) for accomplishment.

Teacher-Directed Programs

• Theory of mind: A person's theory of what other people might be thinking. • In order to have a theory of mind, children must realize that other people are not necessarily thinking the same thoughts that they themselves are. • Theory of mind is an emergent ability, slow to develop but typically evident in most children by about age 4. • How can you tell when theory of mind develops? Hint: curiosity overcomes obedience

Theory of Mind

• Theory-theory: the idea that children attempt to explain everything they see and hear by constructing theories. • Exactly how do children seek explanations? They ask questions, and, if they are not satisfied with the answers, they develop their own theories.

Theory-Theory

• Preoperational intelligence: (2 to 6 y/o) Includes language and imagination (which involve symbolic thought). Logical, operational thinking is not yet possible. • Symbolic thought: A major accomplishment of preoperational intelligence that allows a child to think symbolically, including understanding that words can refer to things not seen and that an item can symbolize something else. • Animism: belief that natural objects and phenomena are alive, moving around, and having sensations and abilities that are humanlike.

Thinking During Early Childhood

A disciplinary technique in which a child is separated from other people for a specified time. Time-out is favored by many experts. Researchers argue "misbehavior is motivated by wanting to escape from the situation . . . time-out reinforces the misbehavior" (Larzelere & Cox, 2013, p. 289).

Time-Outs

• Ex: Children listened to a story about a raccoon that saw its reflection in the water, and then they were asked what reflection means. Five answers: 1. "It means that your reflection is yourself. It means that there is another person that looks just like you." 2. "Means if you see yourself in stuff and you see your reflection." 3. "Is like when you look in something, like water, you can see yourself." 4. "It mean your face go in the water." 5. "That means if you the same skin as him, you blend in." (Hoffman et al., 2014, pp. 471-472)

Vocab-difficult to measure

• Often the first sign is delayed development, such as slow growth, immature communication, lack of curiosity, or unusual social interactions. • Maltreated young children may seem fearful, easily startled by noise, defensive and quick to attack, and confused between fantasy and reality. -Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): An anxiety disorder that develops as a delayed reaction to having experienced or witnessed a profoundly shocking or frightening event, such as rape, severe beating, war, or natural disaster. Its symptoms include flashbacks, hyperactivity, hypervigilance, displaced anger, sleeplessness, nightmares, sudden terror or anxiety, and confusion between fantasy and reality.

Warning Signs

Each major developmental theory strives to explain the ideas that young children express and the roles they follow. No consensus has been reached. That challenges caregivers because they know they should not blindly follow the norms of their culture, yet they also know that they need to provide guidance regarding male-female differences and everything else.

Which is theory best?

• After learning a word, children use it to describe other objects in the same category. • Bilingual children who don't know a word in the language they are speaking often insert a word from the other language, code-switching in the middle of a sentence. • Some words are particularly difficult for every child. • Every language has difficult concepts that are expressed in words.

Words and the Limits of Logic: Logical extension

Immaturity of the prefrontal cortex makes young children impulsive; they plunge into danger. • Their curiosity is boundless; their impulses are uninhibited. • Falls are more often fatal for the youngest (under 24 months). • Preschoolers have high rates of poisoning and drowning.

Young Children Vulnerable

Vygotsky's term for the skills—cognitive as well as physical—that a person can exercise only with assistance, not yet independently

Zone of proximal development

vPermanency planning: An effort by child-welfare authorities to find a long-term living situation that will provide stability and support for a maltreated child. A goal is to avoid repeated changes of caregiver or school, which can be particularly harmful to the child. vFoster care: A legal, publicly supported system in which a maltreated child is removed from the parents' custody and entrusted to another adult or family, who is reimbursed for expenses incurred in meeting the child's needs. kinship care A form of foster care in which a relative of a maltreated child, usually a grandparent, becomes the approved caregiver.

other Preventions of maltreatment