Emotional and Social Development in Middle Childhood

• Emotional and Social Development occurs during middle childhood.

Learning Objectives

• Personality changes occur during Erikson's stage of industry versus inferiority.
• School-age children's self-concept and self-esteem, and factors that affect their achievement-related attributions.
• Changes occur in self-conscious emotions, emotional understanding, and emotional self-regulation in middle childhood.
• Changes occur in moral understanding during middle childhood, including children's understanding of diversity and inequality.
• Peer sociability and friendship change in middle childhood.
• There are varied categories of peer acceptance.
• Ways exist to help rejected children.
• Changes occur in gender-stereotyped beliefs and gender identity during middle childhood.
• Parent-child communication and sibling relationships change in middle childhood.
• Factors influence children's adjustment to divorce and blended family arrangements.
• Maternal employment and life in dual-earner families affect school-age children.
• Common fears and anxieties in middle childhood.
• Factors relate to child sexual abuse, its consequences for children's development, and its prevention and treatment.
• Factors foster resilience in middle childhood.

Introduction

• Industriousness is a facet of the "school years".
• Expanded social understanding, sizing up strengths, weaknesses, personality characteristics
• Reliance develops on friends for understanding and emotional support.
• Shifts occur in the parent-child relationship.

Erikson's Theory: Industry vs. Inferiority

• Industry is a sense of competence at skills and tasks, and combines several developments.
• Industry includes:
  • Positive but realistic self-concept
  • Pride in accomplishment
  • Moral responsibility
  • Cooperative participation with agemates
• Inferiority:
  • Pessimism and lack of confidence in own ability to do well
  • Others' negative responses can contribute

Changes in Self-Concept

• Skills are emphasized.
• Trait-based self-descriptions are qualified.
• Perspective taking improves.
• Social comparisons are made.
• Frequent reference to social groups.
• Cultural variations in content of self-concept.

Influences on Self-Esteem

• Culture, gender, and ethnicity
• Child-rearing practices
• Attributions:
  • Mastery-oriented
  • Learned helplessness
• Process praise vs. person praise

Culture, Gender, and Ethnicity and Self-Esteem

• Media influence
• Gender stereotypes:
  • Girls are less confident about appearance and athletic abilities.
  • Girls are higher in language arts and friendship self-esteem.
  • Boys are higher in math and science self-esteem.
• African-American children have slightly higher self-esteem than European-American children.
• Self-esteem is supported by neighborhoods and schools where a child's socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnicity are well-represented.

Role of Parenting in Self-Esteem

• Authoritative child-rearing style is best.
• Styles linked to poor self-esteem:
  • Controlling, disapproving parenting
  • Indulgent parenting
• Excessive praise and self-focus can overly inflate children's self-esteem.
• Striving for worthwhile goals is best to encourage.
• Achievement fosters self-esteem and vice versa.

Achievement-Related Attributions

• Mastery-oriented
  • Reason for Success: Ability
    • Reason for Failure: Controllable factors, such as insufficient effort
    • Seek information on how best to increase ability through effort.
• Learned helplessness
  • Reason for Success: External factors
    • Reason for Failure: Ability cannot be changed by effort
    • Seek positive evaluations, ability no longer predictive of performance.

Influences on Learned-Helplessness Attributions

• Person praise emphasizes a child's traits.
• Person praise teaches children that abilities are fixed.
• Parents believe a child is incapable.
• Other factors:
  • Unsupportive teachers
  • Gender stereotypes
  • Cultural values

Fostering a Mastery-Oriented Approach

• Process praise:
  • Emphasizes behavior and effort
  • Suggests competence develops through effort
• Attribution retraining encourages:
  • Exerting more effort
  • Using more effective strategies
• Focus should be mastering a task for its own sake.
• Focus should be on individual improvement, not compared to others.

Emotional Development

• Self-conscious emotions of pride and guilt are governed by personal responsibility.
• Emotional understanding:
  • Explains emotion using internal states
  • Appreciates mixed emotions
  • Empathy increases
• Emotional self-regulation:
  • Motivated by increased social interactions
  • Increasingly prefer verbal expression to acting out
• Emotional self-efficacy

Coping Strategies

• Problem-centered coping:
  • Appraises situation as changeable
  • Identifies difficulty
  • Decides what to do
• Emotion-centered coping:
  • Used when problem-centered coping does not work.
  • Internal, private, and aimed at controlling distress when little can be done about outcome.

Changes in Moral Understanding

• Flexible moral rules: Lying not always bad, and truthfulness not always good. Considers intentions and context.
• Better understanding of varied reasons for deception.
• Gains in recursive perspective taking.
• Links moral imperatives and social conventions.
• Violations of purposeful social conventions are regarded as closer to moral transgressions.

Understanding Individual Rights

• Challenges adult authority within personal domain.
• Notions of personal choice:
  • Views denials of personal choice as wrong
  • Approves of limits on personal choice, typically favoring kindness and fairness

Understanding Diversity and Inequality

• In-group favoritism emerges first, followed by out-group prejudice.
• By early school years:
  • Associates power and privilege with white people
  • Acquires negative attitudes toward minorities
• With age overt prejudice declines.
  • Focuses on inner traits
  • Implicit prejudice may persist

Factors Contributing to Prejudice

• There is a fixed view of personality traits
• Overly high self-esteem
• Social world in which people are sorted into groups

Reducing Prejudice

• Diverse children working toward common goal.
• Long-term intergroup contact and collaboration improves:
  • Neighborhoods
  • Schools
  • Communities
• Belief should be fostered in changeability of human traits.
• Volunteering is recommended.

Peer Groups

• Peer groups organize on basis of proximity and similarity.
• Peer culture:
  • Vocabulary, dress code, gathering place
• Can involve relational aggression and exclusion

Friendships in Middle Childhood

• Personal qualities and trust become important.
• More selective in choosing friends: Tend to select friends similar to self.
• Fairly stable, can last several years.
• Multiple contexts support endurance of friendships.
• Type of friends affects development and behavior.

Peer Acceptance

• Social preferences, classmates peers "like most" or "like least" are powerful predictors of psychological adjustment.
• There is only moderate correspondence between social preferences and perceived popularity.
• Early influences: children's characteristics combined with parenting practices.
• Well-adjusted: popular-prosocial children and most neglected children.

Categories of Peer Acceptance

• Popular: Many positive votes. Popular-prosocial or Popular-antisocial
• Rejected: Many negative votes. Rejected-aggressive (often bullies), Rejected-withdrawn (often victimized)
• Controversial: Mix of votes: both liked and disliked.
• Neglected: Seldom mentioned, positively or negatively.
• Average: Average number of votes; approximately one-third of typical classroom.

Biology and Environment: Bullies and Their Victims

• Bullies:
  • Most are boys.
  • Physically, verbally, relationally aggressive.
  • Socially powerful, admired by peers
• Victims:
  • Passive when active behavior expected.
  • Lack defenders
  • Inhibited temperament
  • Physically frail
  • Overly protective, controlling parents
• Interventions:
  • Help victimized children form friendships.
  • Community codes against traditional and cyberbullying.
  • Teaching child bystanders to intervene.

Helping Rejected Children

• Coach positive social skills.
• Promote perspective taking and social problem solving.
• Alter peers' negative opinions.
• Intervene in negative parenting practices.

Gender Typing

• Gender stereotypes:
  • Extended to include personality traits and school subjects.
  • More flexible view of what males and females can do.
• Gender identity (third to sixth grade):
  • Boys' "masculine" identification strengthens.
  • Girls become more androgynous; explore more options.
  • Aware of society's greater regard for "masculine" traits.

Gender Identity

• Self-evaluations affect adjustment:
  • Gender typicality
  • Gender contentedness
  • Felt pressure to conform to gender roles
• Gender-atypical children's self-worth declines:
  • Interventions needed to support parental and peer acceptance.

Family Relationships

• Parent-child relationships:
  • Child rearing easier when established authoritative style.
  • Coregulation: gradually shift control to child.
• Sibling relationships:
  • Rivalry: parental comparisons contribute.
  • Companionship, assistance, and emotional support.
• Parental encouragement of warm sibling ties is vital.

Only Children

• Higher in self-esteem, achievement motivation, and educational attainment.
• Closer relationships with parents, who may exert more pressure to achieve.
• Less well accepted in peer group
• Lack of practice in conflict resolution.

Parental Divorce

• Immediate consequences:
  • Family conflict
  • Drop in income in mother-headed households
  • Maternal stress, inconsistent discipline, and loss of routines
  • Child reactions vary with age, sex, and temperament
• Long-term consequences:
  • Improved adjustment after two years
  • Declines in academic achievement, self-esteem, and social competence
  • Emotional and behavioral problems
  • Problems with intimate relationships

Helping Children Adjust (To Divorce)

• Shield child from conflict
• Provide continuity and familiarity in daily life
• Use authoritative parenting style
• Promote regular contact with father (or noncustodial parent)
• Explain the divorce and respond to child's feelings.

Helping Children Adjust to Divorce

• Parent-training programs
• Divorce mediation increases out-of-court settlements
• Cooperation and involvement of both parents
• Joint custody grants parents equal say. Requires and promotes effective coparenting
• Child support must be provided

Blended Families

• 60% of divorced parents remarry.
• Mother-stepfather:
  • Most common
  • Boys tend to adjust quickly
  • Girls often adapt less favorably
  • Older children and adolescents display more acting-out behavior
• Father-stepmother:
  • Often leads to reduced noncustodial father-child contact
  • Children in father custody often react negatively
  • Girls and stepmothers slower to adapt

Maternal Employment and Dual-Earner Families

• Benefits:
  • Higher self-esteem
  • Fewer gender-stereotyped beliefs
  • Higher achievement
  • Greater father involvement
• Drawbacks:
  • Heavy employment demands associated with ineffective parenting

Child Care for School-Age

• Self-care children regularly look after themselves and increases with age and SES.
• Implications depend on age and how time is spent.
• After-school programs that benefit school performance and adjustment include:
  • Well-trained, supportive staff
  • Generous adult-child ratios
  • Skill-building and enrichment activities

School-Age Fears and Anxieties

• Common fears:
  • Academic failure
  • Peer rejection
  • Personal harm
  • Threats to parents' health
  • Frightening media events
• School refusal:
  • Maternal separation (ages 5-7)
  • Particular aspects of school (ages 11-13)
• Harsh living conditions promote severe anxieties.

Impact of Ethnic and Political Violence on Children

• Post-traumatic stress symptoms
• Greatest risk factors for maladjustment:
  • Separation from parents
  • Chronic danger, war, social crises
  • Extended exposure to violence
• Protections against lasting problems:
  • Parental affection, reassurance, modeling
  • Education and recreation programs, school-based interventions

Child Sexual Abuse

• Characteristics of victims:
  • Most cases reported in middle childhood
  • More often girls
• Characteristics of abusers:
  • Usually male; a parent or known by parent
  • Often deny their own responsibility, blaming victim
  • Internet and mobile phones used to commit abuse
• Contextual factors:
  • Poverty
  • Marital instability and weakening family ties
• Consequences:
  • Anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, adult mistrust, anger and hostility
  • Sleep disturbances, loss of appetite
  • Promiscuity, choice of abusive partners as adults
• Prevention and treatment:
  • Trauma-focused therapy
  • Prevention through education

Fostering Resilience

• Personal characteristics:
  • Easy temperament
  • Mastery-oriented in new situations
• Warm parental relationship
• Supportive adult outside family
• Community resources:
  • Good schools, social services, youth organizations, and recreation centers

Children's Eyewitness Testimony

• Stressors that can compromise child's accuracy:
  • Emotional trauma
  • Unfamiliar courtroom situation and questioning
  • Fear of punishment
• Questioning must be unbiased and age-appropriate
• Preparation: practice interviews and role play
• Alternatives to minimize emotional trauma:
  • Testifying over closed-circuit TV
  • Impartial expert witnesses