The Play Years: Psychosocial Development

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Part III
Chapter Ten

• The Play Years Psychosocial Development

Emotional Development Parents Becoming Boys and
Girls
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The Play Years Psychosocial Development

• 2 to 6-year-old transformation
• maturation and motivation are crucial so are
  emotion and experiences.
• psychosocial development is multifaceted,
  involving genes, gender, parents, peers, and
  culture

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Emotional Development

• Learning when and how to express emotions is the
  preeminent psychosocial accomplishment between
  the ages of 2 and 6 years
• Emotional Regulation
• the ability to control when and how emotions are
  expressed

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Emotional Development

• Initiative Versus Guilt
• Ericksons third psychosocial crisis
• children begin new activities and feel guilty
  when they fail
• Self-esteem
• how a person evaluates his or her own worth,
  either in specific (e.g., intelligence,
  attractiveness) or overall
• Self-concept
• a persons understanding of who he or she is
• includes appearance, personality, and various
  traits

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Emotional Development

• Pride
• typical 3 5-year-olds have immodest and quite
  positive self-concepts, holding themselves in
  high self-esteem.
• longer attention spanthey have a purpose for
  what they do
• self-esteem and concentration are connected with
  maturation (but are not the cause)
• feeling proud of oneself is the foundation for
  practice and then mastery

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Emotional Development

• Guilt
• people blame themselves because they have done
  something wrong
• Shame
• people feel that others are blaming them
• Guilt and shame often occur together, but dont
  necessarily go hand in hand

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Emotional Development

• Intrinsic Motivation
• goals or drives that come from inside a person,
  such as the need to feel smart or competent
• this differs with external motivation, the need
  for rewards from outside, such as material
  possessions or someone elses esteem

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Emotional Development

• Psychopathology
• illness or disorder (-pathology) that involves
  the mind (psycho-)
• the first signs in children usually involve
  emotions that seem to overwhelm the child
• emotional regulation begins with impulse control

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Emotional Development Balance

• Externalizing problems
• difficulty with emotional regulation that
  involves outward expression of emotions in
  uncontrolled ways
• Internalizing problems
• difficulty with emotional regulation that
  involves turning ones emotional distress inward,
  as by feeling excessively guilty, ashamed, or
  worthless

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Emotional Development

• Neurological damage in development
• Prenatally
• If a pregnant woman is stressed, ill, or a heavy
  drug user
• Infancy
• if an infant is chronically malnourished,
  injured, or frightened
• extensive stress can kill some neurons and stop
  others from developing properly

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Emotional Development

• early care can prevent or worsen innate problems
  with emotional control
• the harm of poor caregiving is evident in
  maltreated 4 6-year-olds.
• if neglect or abuse occurs in the first few years
  it is more likely to cause internalizing or
  externalizing problems

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Emotional Development

• Empathy
• the ability to understand the emotions of another
  person, especially when those emotions differ
  from ones own
• Antipathy
• feelings of anger, distrust, dislike, or even
  hatred toward another person

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Emotional Development

• Prosocial behavior
• feelings and acting in ways that are helpful and
  kind, without obvious benefit to one self
• Antisocial behavior
• feelings and acting in ways that are deliberately
  hurtful or destructive to another person

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Emotional Development

• Aggression
• The gradual regulation of emotions and emergence
  of antipathy is nowhere more apparent than in the
  most antisocial behavior of all, active
  aggression, which occurs when a childs dislike
  erupts into action."

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Emotional Development

• Instrumental aggression
• hurtful behavior that is intended to get or keep
  something that another person has
• Reactive aggression
• an impulsive retaliaton for another persons
  intentional or accidental actions, verbal or
  physical
• Bullying aggression
• unprovoked, repeated physical or verbal attack,
  especially on victims who are unlikely to defend
  themselves

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Emotional Development

• Bullying
• not always physical can be verbal or relational
  when the goal is to disrupt a childs friendship
• physical aggression declines over the preschool
  and school-age years, but verbal attacks may
  increase

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Parents

• the primary influence on the young childs
  emotions--including brain maturation and culture
• parents differ a great deal in what they believe
  about children and how they act with them

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Parenting Style

• Parents differ on four important dimensions
• expressions of warmth
• strategies for discipline
• communication
• expectations for maturity

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Parenting Styles

• Authoritarian parenting
• high behavioral standards, punishment of
  misconduct, and low communication
• Permissive parenting
• high nurturance and communication but rare
  punishment, guidance, or control
• Authoritative parenting
• the parents set limits but listen to the child
  and are flexible

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Parents

• Discipline and Punishment
• discipline varies a great deal from family to
  family, culture to culture
• ideal parents anticipate misbehavior and guide
  their children towards patterns that will help
  them lifelong
• disciplinary techniques do not work quickly or
  automatically to teach desired behavior

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Parents

• Discipline and Punishment
• first step is clarity
• what is expected
• each family needs to decide its goals and make
  them explicit for the child
• second step is to remember
• what the child is able to do
• parents forget how immature childrens control
  over their bodies and minds is

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Parents

• Discipline and Punishment
• time-out
• withdrawal of love
• induction

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Parenting Media

• The Importance of Content
• most young children spend more than three hours a
  day using some sort of media

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Parenting Media Content

• What do children see?
• Attempts to limit or restrict childrens watching
  have limited success
• Evidence from every perspective confirm that
  violence is pervasive
• Children who watch violence on television become
  more violent

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Becoming Boys and Girls

• Sex differences
• biological differences between males and females,
  in organs, hormones, and body type
• Gender differences
• differences in the roles and behavior of males
  and females that originate in the culture

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Becoming Boys and Girls

• Psychoanalytic Theory
• Phallic stage
• Freuds third stage of development, when the
  penis becomes the focus of concern and pleasure
• Oedipus complex
• the unconscious desire of young boys is to
  replace their father and win their mothers
  exclusive love

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Becoming Boys and Girls

• Behaviorism
• virtually all roles are learned and therefore
  result from nurture, not nature
• gender distinctions are the product of ongoing
  reinforcement and punishment

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Becoming Boys and Girls

• Cognitive Theory
• focuses on childrens understanding
• children develop concepts about their experience
• developing a gender schema, a type of cognitive
  schema or general beliefthe understanding of sex
  differences

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Becoming Boys and Girls

• Sociocultural Theory
• traditional cultures enforce gender distinctions
  with dramatic stories, taboos, and terminology
• adult activities and dress are strictly separate
  by gender, girls and boys attend sex-separated
  schools and virtually never play together

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Becoming Boys and Girls

• Sociocultural Theory
• Androgyny
• a balance, within a person,
• of traditionally male and
• female psychological
• characteristics

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Becoming Boys and Girls

• Epigenetic Theory
• that our traits and behaviors are the result of
  interactions between genes and early experiences
• gender differences based in genetics are
  supported by recent research in neurobiology
• there are dozen of biological differences between
  the male and female brain

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Becoming Boys and Girls

• Gender and Destiny
• lead in two opposite directions
• gender differences are rooted in biology
• biology is not destiny--children are shaped by
  their experiences
• given nature and nurture, both these conclusions
  are valid