Chapter 10: Socioemotional Development in Middle and Late Childhood

1. Chapter 10: Socioemotional Development in Middle and Late Childhood McGraw-Hill © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

2. Emotional and Personality Development

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Kohlberg’s Three Levels and Six Stages of Moral Development Fig. 11.1

8. 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

9. Stage 1 70 Stage 2 Stage 3 60 Stage 4 Stage 5 50 40 Mean percentage of moral reasoning at each stage 30 20 10 0 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 Age in years Age and Percentage of Individuals at Each Kohlberg Stage Fig. 11.2

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 250 200 Average national reading score 150 100 50 0 Boys Girls National Reading Scores for Fourth-Grade Boys and Girls Fig. 11.3

14. 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

15. Families

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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)

19. Peers

20. 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.

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. Belittled about religion or race Belittled about looks or speech Males Hit, slapped, or pushed Females Subject of rumors Subject of sexual comments or gestures 0 5 10 15 20 25 Bullying Behavior Among U.S. Youth Percentage experiencing bullying Fig. 11.4

25. Schools

26. 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

27. 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

28. 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

29. 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

30. Japan 5 Taiwan 4 U.S. 3 Mean rating 2 1 0 Effort Ability Mothers’ Belief’s About the Factors Responsible for Children’s Math Achievement in Three Countries Fig. 11.5

31. The End