Now Entering The Good Stuff. . .
Middle childhood reflects glamour, success and even power, in which the main challenge of middle childhood is to establish self competence. Children develop more mature behaviors during this age period and face the challenge of industry vs. inferiority. This is when children judge themselves and focus on successfully meeting the challenges posed by adults.
A New Sense Of SelfAs children move from early childhood to middle childhood and then to adolescence, their sense of self undergoes many changes. Children tend to compare themselves to their peers to see if they share any relation, which is known as social comparison. The increased time they spend with their peers and their greater ability to understand other points of views lead children to start asking questions about themselves, such as "Am I good at sports?" or "Am I a good friend?" (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2013). The many comparisons children make in a wide variety of settings provide them with a new overall sense of themselves!
Controlling The EmotionsSelf-regulation is one of the major challenges of human development. In order to function successfully within their environment and attain desired goals, individuals must learn to control their attention, behaviors, and emotions (Coleman, Hardy, Albert, Raffaelli, & Crocket, 2006). As children develop through early childhood and into middle childhood, most show clear improvements in self-control of anger and other negative emotions. This change co-occurs with improvements in attention and memory as well as the acquisition of social and behavioral strategies for managing their anger. One of the most important components to healthy social-emotional development is the acquisition of skills to regulate anger and other negative emotions (Jungmeen & Deater-Decker, 2011). Children who are easily distracted and have difficulty maintaining attention are less able to engage attention to self-regulate negative emotions when they occur. Children with high levels of anger in early childhood are more prone to develop externalizing and internalizing problems in middle childhood and adolescence (Jungmeen & Deater-Decker, 2011).
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Self-concept grows throughout childhood, starting in the early ages, children start to realize that they are independent individuals and progressing to a firm understanding of who they are and what they like. During middle school, children also begin to develop a better sense of how they fit into their social environment (Lightfoot et al., 2013).
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All The Types Of Relationships
Once children begin to spend significant amounts of time among their peers, they must learn to create a satisfying place for themselves within a social group. In creating a social life, all children must learn to deal with issues of social status, come to terms with the possibility that they may not be likes, and deal with peer conflicts. Whenever a group of children exists over a period of time, a social structure emerges, which are relationships between individuals. These structures are described in one of two ways:
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The Care You Provide Matters!
Care-giving interactions play a major role in this transition. Young children initially rely on interactions with their caregivers for assistance with basic tasks, such as soothing of emotional distress and focusing of attentions. Care-giving interactions expose children to new regulatory skills and strategies and, as such, provide valuable opportunities for practicing and strengthening nascent regulatory abilities (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2013).
A Parent's Role
Middle childhood is also a time of significant change in the relationship between children and their parents. As a child grows older, parents expect their children to display new behavioral competencies and share their control over their children's lives with their children. Parents also affect their children's peer relationships both directly and indirectly by choosing neighborhoods, schools, & monitoring their activities. Children whose parents divorce are more likely than other children to have problems in a range of areas, in which can be short or long term effects (Lightfoot, Cole, & Cole, 2013).
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Reference's
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Cole, M., Cole, S., & Lightfoot, C. (2013). The Development Of Children (7th ed.). New York, New York: Worth.
Colman, R., Hardy, S., Albert, M., Raffaelli, M., & Crockett, L. (2006). Infant and Child Development. Early Predictors of Self-Regulation in Middle Childhood, 421-437. Retrieved November 1, 2015, from www.interscience.wiley.com Jungmeen, K., & Deater-Deckard, K. (2011). Dynamic changes in anger, externalizing and internalizing problems: Attention and regulation. The Journal Of Child Psychology And Psychiatry, 52(2), 156-166. |