Chapter 6: Early Childhood

Psychosocial Development
 • Emotional regulation
• The ability to control when and how emotions
are expressed

Emotional • Self concept

• A person’s understanding of who they are, in
Developme relationship to self-esteem, appearance,
personality, and various traits
nt • Effortful control
• The ability to regulate one’s emotions and
actions through effort, not simply through
natural inclination
 Initiative
vs Guilt
• Erikson’s third psychosocial
crisis, in which young
children undertake new
skills and activities and feel
guilty when they do not
succeed at them.
 Maturation matters
• Three-year-olds are poor at impulse control.
They improve by age 6.

Brain Learning matters

• In the zone of proximal development, children

Maturati learn from mentors, who offer tactics for delaying

gratification.

on Culture matters
• In the US, many parents tell their children not to
be afraid; in Japan they tell them not to brag; in
the Netherlands, not to be moody. Children
regulate their emotions in accord with their
culture.
Motivation
• Intrinsic
• A drive, or reason to pursue a goal, that comes from
inside a person, such as the joy of reading a good book.
• Extrinsic
• A drive, or reason to pursue a goal, that arises from the
wish to have external rewards, perhaps by earning money
or praise.
 Play
• Solitary
• A child plays alone, unaware of other children
playing nearby.
• Onlooker
• A child watches other children play.
• Parallel
• Children play in similar ways but not together
• Associative
• Children interact, sharing toys, but not taking
turns.
• Cooperative
• Children play together, creating dramas or
taking turns
Social play

Rough and tumble Sociodramatic

Play that seems to be rough, as in play wrestling Pretend play in which children act out various
or chasing, but in which there is no intent to roles and themes in plots or roles that they
harm. create.
Children and
Screen Time
Styles of Expressions of Strategies for

Caregiving: warmth
• Some parents are
discipline
• Parents vary in how

Baumrind’s
warm and they explain,
affectionate; others criticize, persuade,
are cold and critical. and punish

Categories
Expectations for Communication
maturity • Some parents listen
• Parents vary in patiently; others
expectations for demand silence.
responsibility and
self-control.
Styles
of
Parenti
ng
 • Corporal Punishment
Punishment • Discipline techniques that hurt the body (corpus)
or Discipline? of someone, from spanking to serious harm,
including death.
 Psychological Control
Alternatives to • A disciplinary technique that involves threatening to
withdraw love and support, using a child’s feelings of
Spanking guilt and gratitude to the parents.

Time-Out
• A disciplinary technique in which a person is
separated from other people and activities for a
specified time.

Induction
• A disciplinary technique in which the parent tries to
get the child to understand why a certain behavior
was wrong. Listening, not lecturing, is crucial.
 Boys or Girls
and
Sex vs. Gender
Sex differences
• Biological differences between males and
females, in organs, hormones and body shape.

Gender differences
• Differences in male and female roles,
behaviors, clothes, and so on that arise from
society, not biology.
Freud:
Psychoanalyti
c Theory
• Phallic Stage
• Freud’s third stage of
development, when the penis
becomes the focus of concern
and pleasure.
• Oedipus Complex
• The unconscious desire of
young boys to replace their
fathers and win their mothers’
exclusive love.
Cognitive
Theory
Teaching
Right and Wrong
• Empathy
• The ability to understand the emotions and
concerns of another person, especially
when they differ from one’s own.
• Antipathy
• Feelings of dislike or even hatred for
another person.
• Prosocial Behavior
• Actions that are helpful and kind but that
are of no obvious benefit to the person
doing them.
• Antisocial Behavior
• Actions that are deliberately hurtful or
destructive to another person.
Aggression

Instrumental Aggression

• Hurtful behavior that is intended to get something that another person has

Reactive Aggression

• An impulsive retaliation for another person’s intentional or accidental hurtful action.

Relational Aggression

• Nonphysical acts, such as insults or social rejection, aimed at harming the social connection between the victim
and other people

Bullying Aggression

• Unprovoked, repeated physical or verbal attack, especially on victims who are unlikely to defend themselves
 • Injury Control/Harm Reduction
• Reducing the potential negative consequences
of behavior, such as safety surfaces replacing

Harm to cement at a playground.

• Primary Prevention
• Actions that change overall background

Childre
conditions to prevent some unwanted event or
circumstance, such as injury, disease, or abuse.
• Secondary Prevention
• Actions that avert harm in a high-risk situation,

n such as using seat belts in cars.

• Tertiary Prevention
• Actions, such as immediate and effective
medical treatment, after an adverse event
(such as illness or injury)
 Child Maltreatment
• Intentional harm to or avoidable endangerment of anyone under
18 years of age.

Child Abuse
Maltreatment • Deliberate action that is harmful to a child’s physical, emotional, or
sexual well-being.

Child Neglect
• Failure to meet a child’s basic physical, educational, or emotional
needs.

Substantiated Maltreatment
• Harm or endangerment that has been reported, investigated, and
Child

verified.

Reported Maltreatment
• Harm or endangerment about which someone has notified the
authorities.
 Warning Signs and Consequences of Maltreatment

post-traumatic stress
foster care kinship care
disorder (PTSD)
• An anxiety disorder that • When a person (usually a • A form of foster care in
develops as a delayed child) is cared for by which a relative, usually a
reaction to having someone other than the grandmother, becomes
experienced or witnessed parents. the approved caregiver.
a shocking or frightening
event. Its symptoms may
include flashbacks,
hypervigilance, anger,
nightmares, and sudden
terror.
 Child
Abuse and
Prevention