Ch. 8

Introduction

  • During early childhood (ages 3-6), children develop

    • A confident self-image

    • More effective emotion control

    • New social skills

    • The foundations of morality

    • A sense of gender identity

Erikson’s Theory: Initiative vs. Guilt

  • Initiative:

    • New sense of purposefulness

    • Eagerness to try new tasks, join activities with peers

    • Play permits trying out new skills.

    • Strides in conscience development

  • Guilt:

    • Overly strict conscience causes too much guilt

    • Related to parental threats, criticism, and punishment

Self-Conscious Emotions

  • Increasingly sensitive to praise and blame as self-concept develops:

    • Intense shame linked to maladjustment

    • Appropriate, moderate guilt supports good adjustment

  • Supportive parents focus on improving performance

    • Varies across cultures

The inverse power of praise

  • The worse thing you can do to a child (even though it’s well-meaning) is praise them due to ego inflating and creating a need to seek outside validation

  • The IPP is when you praise a child for a specific skill which can result in them shutting down/produce a identity crisis when they encounter challenges

  • It’s best to praise effort rather than their abilities as it encourages the child that practice makes better and encouraging them to keep pushing and explore

Emerging Sense of Self

Self-Concept

  • Observable characteristics:

    • appearance, possessions, behavior

  • Typical emotions and attitudes:

    • “I like/don’t like…”

  • Does not yet reference personality traits (“I’m shy”)

Self-Esteem

  • Positive self-evaluation

  • Social comparison

  • Child usually overrates ability, underestimates task difficulty

  • Supported by parent scaffolding and praise of effort

Emotional understanding

  • Caregivers:

    • Teach emotions

    • Scaffold emotional thought

  • Preschoolers correctly judge

    • Causes and consequences of emotions

    • Signs of emotions

  • Can interpret, predict, change others’ feelings

Gender: Cognitive Influences

  • Socioemotional differences

  • Differences in aggression

  • Gender schema theory: children gradually develop gender schemas of what is gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate in their culture

  • Gender incongruency: baseline dissatisfaction with biological sex

  • Differential gender socialization

Gender-typed Play

  • Preschoolers prefer same-sex peers and gender-typed activities

    • Boys: active, competitive large-group play

    • Girls: quieter activities involving cooperative roles

  • Same-sex peers:

    • Positively reinforce one another’s gender-typed play

Gender dysphoria

  • Dissatisfaction with biological sex; strong identification as the other sex

  • High distress

  • Approx 1.5% of biological boys, 2% of biological girls

  • Emerges in early childhood; deepens in adolescence in 20-40%

Gender dysphoria:

  • Transgender identity

  • Efforts to suppress or deny = heightened distress

  • Professionals recommend therapies that:

  • Permit children to follow gender-identity inclinations

  • Help parents protect children from negative reactions

Make Believe Play:

  • Sociodramatic play helps children:

    • Understand others’ feelings and regulate their own

    • Negotiate roles and rules; compromise

    • Development of self-concept

Rough-and-Tumble Play

  • Characterized by vigorous physical activity

  • Boys engage more frequently

  • Associated with sociodramatic play

  • Both sexes can benefit from this style of play due to influencing the following:

    • Sensory experience

    • Physical touch

Imaginary Companions

  • Emergence of imaginary companions

  • Representations of real people

Early Childhood Friendships

  • A friend is someone who “likes you”, plays with you, shares toys

  • Friendships change frequently; concept not long-term

Child-Rearing (Parenting) Styles

  • Authorative

    • High demands/high expectations

    • High responsiveness/empathetic (discipline over punishment)

  • Authoritarian

    • High demands

    • Low responsiveness/punishment over discipline (focus on obedience)

  • Permissive

    • Low demands

    • High responsiveness

  • Uninvolved

    • Low demands

    • Low responsiveness

Outcomes of Child-Rearing Styles

  • Authoritative: self-control, social and moral maturity, high self esteem

  • Authoritarian: anxiety, unhappiness, low self-esteem, anger, defiance

  • Permissive: impulsivity, disobedience, poor school achievement

  • Uninvolved: depression, poor emotional regulation, school achievement difficulties, antisocial behavior (willingly harm others, disregard others’ rights, etc.)

Affiliation Motivation: Relatedness is just as basic as a core foundational need for humans in the same way water, food, and shelter is

Cultural Variations in Child-Rearing

  • Chinese:

    • Withholding praise in context of reasoning

    • More controlling in teaching and scheduling child’s time

  • Hispanic/Asian Pacific Islander/Caribbean:

    • Firm respect for parental authority

    • High parental warmth

  • African-American

    • Strict, “no-nonsense” discipline

    • Often paired with warmth and reasoning

  • Indian

    • Log Kya Kahenge (what will people say)

    • Parental control

What about Gentle Parenting? Free Range Parenting?

Differential Parenting: When parents parent one child differently from another child

Differential gender socialization: Raising boys and girls differently

Parenting Styles Review

⭐ Shining Star:

Authoritative Parenting

  • High warmth + high structure

  • Responsive but maintains clear expectations

  • Best long-term outcomes (research-supported)

Gentle Parenting

  • Advocates say it’s basically authoritative.

  • Critics say it can become overly permissive.

  • Emphasizes emotional validation and negotiation.

⚠ Key limitation:

Some situations are not negotiable (e.g., public behavior, safety issues). Parenting must balance responsiveness with responsibility.

Adoption & Attachment

Important Clarification

Adoption ≠ inherently traumatic.

But adoption trauma is more common than people realize.

Key Concepts

1. Adoption Begins With Disruption

  • Even newborns show stress when separated from biological mothers.

  • Babies recognize voice, smell, and sensory patterns from in utero development.

2. Attachment & Stress Response

  • If born into chronic stress, a child’s nervous system develops around stress.

  • May become stuck in fight/flight/freeze patterns.

3. “The Body Never Forgets”

  • Trauma can be stored in the body (implicit memory).

  • Even if episodic memory fades, the nervous system response remains.

  • Explains phobias without conscious memory of the cause.

4. Disenfranchised Grief

Grieving someone or something you didn’t directly “have.”

Examples:

  • Celebrity deaths

  • Fictional characters

  • Biological family never known

Adopted individuals may grieve:

  • Biological parents

  • Unknown identity

  • “What could have been”