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Chapter 11:

Socioemotional Development in Middle and Late Childhood 

Emotional and    Personality Development

•         During middle and late childhood

–        Defining oneself shifts to using internal characteristics or personality traits

–        Social comparison of the self increases

–        Self-perception may not be a reality

–        High self-esteem & positive self-concept are very important to child’s well-being

–        One study: efforts to increase student self-esteem did not effect academic performance 

•         Persons with high self-esteem are more likely to have negative or positive outcomes in interactions

•         Four ways to improve child’s self-esteem:

–        Identify causes of low self-esteem

–        Provide emotional support and social approval

–        Help child achieve (teach skills)

–        Help child cope (teach to address not avoid)

•         Children’s social worlds include school: teachers and environment affect child’s self-esteem and effort

•         Important emotional changes in elementary school years

–        Increased ability to understand emotions

–        Understanding that situations can result in more than one emotion

–        Tendency to attend to events leading to emotional reactions

–        Greater increases in ability to suppress or hide emotional reactions

•         Goleman (1995), emotional intelligence has 4 areas:

–        Developing emotional self-awareness

–        Managing emotions

–        Reading emotions

–        Handling relationships

•         Children and stress

–        Older children are better at reframing situations

–        By age 10, they use many cognitive strategies to cope

–        Hopelessness and despair harm moral development

•         Kohlberg advanced Piaget’s view of moral development in children

Kohlberg’s Three Levels and Six Stages of Moral Development

•         Kohlberg:

–        Used dilemmas to identify moral development

–        Levels were age-related

–        Stages occurred in sequence

–        Before age 9, most children use level 1

–        Most adolescents reason at stage 3

–        Early adulthood: few use postconventional ways

•         Research on Kohlberg’s theory:

–        No 10-year-olds use level 4

–        62% of 36-year-olds used stage 4

–        Stage 5 did not appear until age 20–22

•         Criticisms of Kohlberg’s theory:    

–        Too much emphasis on thought

–        Not enough emphasis on moral behavior

–        Need other means of measuring moral reasoning

–        Dismissed family and peer relations as influences of moral values

–        Some cultures influence moral values that conflict with Kohlberg’s

•         Bandura: people engage in harmful conduct after they justify morality of their actions to themselves

•         Others criticisms of Kohlberg’s theory:

–        Children focus on consequences of actions 

–        Recent research: Kohlberg’s results have male bias – females socialized as more care-oriented

–        Need distinction between moral reasoning and social conventional reasoning

–        Moral behavior can be negative and antisocial

–        Altruism is unselfish effort

•         Prosocial behavior is positive aspect of moral behavior like empathy

Gender

•         Men and women living in highly developed countries see themselves as more similar than those living in less developed countries  

•         Females more resistant to infections; their  blood vessels are more elastic

•         Women have about twice as much body fat  

•         Male hormones promote growth of longer bones to make them taller  

•         Male and female brains are different in development and functioning

•         Males

–        Hypothalamus (sexual behavior) and parietal lobe (visuospatial skills) are larger

–        Do slightly better in math and science

–        Show less self-regulation 

•         Females

–        Bands of tissues between brain’s hemispheres (communication) are larger

–        Areas of brain for emotional expression
are larger

–        Significantly better readers

–        Have better writing skills

Families

•         Parent–child interaction time

–        Much less with children age 5-12 than before age 5

–        Even less with parents with little education

–        Centers on scheduling, discipline and temper control, regulating behaviors

–        Discipline often easier in middle and late childhood as children mature

–        Coregulation approach is best

•         Society and families are changing:

–        Almost half of all children from a divorced family will have a stepparent within 4 years 

–        Most difficult adjustments for child are in blended family

–        Adjustment problems include academic problems and low self-esteem – especially for adolescents

•         Dual-earner families create latchkey children:

–        Coming home to unsupervised self-care

–        5-6 full days a week in summer without parent

–        At higher risk for delinquency involvement

•         Latchkey experiences vary by

–        Parenting styles

–        Child-care arrangements

–        Effects of peer pressure

•         After-school programs are associated with better academic achievement and social adjustment

•         Five types of out-of-school care:

–        Before- and after-school programs

–        Extracurricular school activities

–        Father care

–        Nonadult care (older sibling or other)

Peers

•         Why friendship and more time spent with peers  is important in middle and late childhood:

–        Companionship (familiar playmate)

–        Stimulation (excitement, etc.)

–        Physical support (time, assistance)

–        Ego support (feedback, etc.)

–        Social comparison

–        Intimacy/self-disclosure, affection

–        Not all friendships are alike 

•         In childhood, friends are usually similar in age, sex, race, attitudes, aspirations, etc.

•         Identifying 5 types of peer status

•         Popular children

•         Average children

•         Neglected children (not disliked)

•         Rejected children (disliked by peers)

•         Controversial children

•         Social skills affect being well liked:

•         Giving out reinforcements

•         Careful listening

•         Keeping communication lines open

•         Showing enthusiasm and concern

•         Being self-confident, not conceited

•         Neglected child has low rate of peer interactions

•         Social cognition is important to peer relationships

•         Rejected children

•         Have serious social adjustment problems

•         Often find that rejection increases antisocial
behavior over time

•         Best predictor of delinquency or dropping out from school may be aggression toward peers

•         Bullying

•         Has many forms

•         Ranges in effects on both victims and bullies

•         Child victims often tend to

•         Be lonely and have difficulty making friends

•         Be seen as “different”

•         Have overly protective parents

•         Lose interest in school, have excessive absences

•         Suffer low self-esteem and depression

•         Child bullies

•         Have low grades in school

•         Come from homes with intrusive, demanding, or unresponsive parents

•         Tend to use alcohol and/or tobacco

Schools

•         High school

–        By graduation, student has spent 12,000 hours
in classroom 

–        A small society for socialization by rules that define and limit behaviors, feelings, and attitudes

•         School  provides

–        Direct instruction

–        Constructivist, exploratory learning

–        Accountability teaching/learning

–        Changes homechild to schoolchild

•         These can be positive and negative based on effects of other factors

•         Minority and low-SES children

–        Face more barriers to learning

–        Live in high-risk neighborhoods with affect on learning

•         Low-SES parents

–        Are poorly educated

–        Do not set high educational goals for children

–        Are unable to buy educational materials

•         Most low-SES area schools tend to have

–        Fewer resources and older buildings

–        Lower achievement test scores and graduation rates

–        Fewer students going on to college

•         Minority students:

–        Segregation is still a factor in the U.S.

–        Almost one-third of all African American and Latino students attend schools with minority group populations of 90% or more

–        Less likely to be in college prep courses

–        More likely to be in remedial or special education programs

–        African Americans are twice as likely to be suspended from school than any other group

–        90% of U.S. teachers are white

–        Asian students take more advanced math and science courses than any other group

•         Student success depends on teachers

–        Pushing high academic standards

–        Using creative strategies for learning in  ethnically diverse classrooms:

•         Make a “jigsaw” classroom

•         Encourage positive personal contacts

•         Encourage perspective taking

•         Encourage critical thinking, use emotional intelligence on cultural issues, reduce bias

•         Make school and community a team

•         Parents’ attitudes affect student learning