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Middle Childhood Notes

Middle Childhood (7-12 years)

Setting the Context

  • Middle childhood spans from 7 to 12 years.
  • Piaget's Theory: Logical thinking emerges around age 7 or 8, enabling children to reason conceptually about concrete objects, but not in a scientific abstract manner.
  • Erikson's Theory: The psychosocial crisis during this stage is industry versus inferiority, where children strive to meet adult expectations and work towards desired goals.

Physical Development

Brain Development

  • Frontal lobes grow slowly and steadily, driving advancements in middle childhood achievements.
  • Cerebral Cortex: Continuous development enhances cognitive functions.
  • Myelin Sheath: The insulation around nerve fibers improves, speeding up neural transmission.
  • Synaptogenesis: The formation of new synapses supports learning and adaptation.
  • Neurons in visual and motor cortices refine, improving motor skills and visual processing.

Motor Skills and Health

  • Motor skills expand, but contemporary elementary school children are often less physically proficient compared to previous generations.
  • Significant individual differences in motor skills are observed throughout childhood.
  • The correlation between physical coordination and fitness tends to decrease during the teenage years.
  • Childhood activity levels are related to caregiver activity levels.
  • Physically active preschoolers tend to exhibit better working memory skills.

Obesity and Health

  • Lifelong weight struggles are often associated with a high body mass index (BMI) in preschool years.
  • Obesity Definition: BMI at or above the 95th percentile.
  • Obesity is related to negative emotional effects on children.

Facts About Child Obesity

Several statements about child obesity are often debated:

  • Myth: Children become obese solely due to excessive eating and lack of exercise.
  • Myth: Parents are entirely responsible for child obesity due to overfeeding.
  • Fact: Childhood obesity rates have been increasing, although there are recent signs of decline in the youngest age groups.
  • Myth: School-based anti-obesity programs that measure BMI and inform families are consistently effective.
  • Fact: Obese children are more prone to bullying and may experience psychological problems.

Trends in US Obesity Rates

  • Overall obesity rates continue to rise.
  • Obesity rates are beginning to decline for the youngest age group, but remain unacceptably high.

Cognitive Development

Memory: An Information-Processing Perspective

  • Intellectual growth is viewed through an information-processing lens.
  • Information is processed via working memory, which includes a growing memory bin and a maturing executive processor.
  • Development of concrete operations and theory-of-mind capacities influences cognitive abilities.
  • School-related executive functions become more refined.
  • Information rehearsal increases, aiding memory retention.
  • The ability to understand and selectively attend to relevant information improves.
  • Inhibition skills develop, becoming a continual socialization goal.

Using Information-Processing Theory

  • Younger Children:
    • Use prompts to aid memory.
    • Expect difficulty in inhibiting impulsivity.
    • Encourage physical activity and collaborative play.
  • Middle Childhood:
    • Teach study skills and selective attention strategies.
    • Include scaffolding organizational strategies for school and life.
    • Expect difficulty in multitasking.
    • Reduce distractions to improve focus.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

  • ADHD is the most widely diagnosed childhood disorder in the United States.
  • Diagnosis typically occurs in elementary school, with higher prevalence among boys.
  • Executive Function Deficits: Involve issues with working memory, inhibition, impulsivity, selective attention, and task completion under pressure.
  • Primarily Genetic Causes: ADHD has strong genetic components.
  • Delayed maturation of frontal lobes or lower brain center impairment can contribute to ADHD.
  • Lower dopamine output may be a factor.
  • ADHD can partly stem from a poor child–environment fit.

Helping Children with ADHD

  • Psycho-stimulant medications can help manage symptoms.
  • Parent training provides strategies for managing behavior.
  • White background noise can reduce distractions.
  • Exercise can improve focus and reduce hyperactivity.

Emotional Development

Emotion Regulation

  • Emotion regulation involves skills for controlling feelings.
  • Tendencies and self-esteem distortions influence emotional responses.
    • Externalizing Tendencies: Denying reality.
    • Internalizing Tendencies: Learned helplessness.

Self-Awareness

  • Self-esteem becomes a significant issue during middle childhood as children develop a tendency to feel good or bad about themselves.
  • Harter’s Five Areas Related to Self-Esteem:
    • Scholastic competence
    • Behavioral conduct
    • Athletic skills
    • Peer likeability
    • Physical appearance

Self-Esteem Distortions

  • Externalizing Problems: Children act out emotions, are impulsive, and may be aggressive; they may ignore real problems and have unrealistically high self-esteem, leading to continued failure due to a lack of perceived need for improvement.
  • Internalizing Problems: Children are intensely fearful and anxious; they may interpret failure in everything and have overly low self-esteem, causing them to give up and stop working towards success.

Identifying Self-Esteem Distortions

  • Externalizing Issues:
    • Denial of responsibility for poor performance.
    • Belief in invulnerability to physical risks.
    • Blaming others for relationship issues.
    • Overestimation of physical appearance.
    • Entitlement to disregard rules.
  • Internalizing Issues:
    • Feelings of stupidity and inability to succeed academically.
    • Belief in lack of physical skills and willpower.
    • Feelings of inadequacy in relationships.
    • Negative self-perception of physical appearance.
    • Belief in inability to change negative behaviors.

Promoting Realistic Self-Esteem

  • Enhancing self-efficacy by helping children believe in their ability to succeed.
  • Emphasizing effort over innate ability.
  • Helping children set realistic goals.
  • Providing honest, compassionate feedback.
  • Offering explicit opportunities for success.
  • Creating an efficacy-enhancing environment.
  • Providing information about concrete skills needed for success.

Morality

  • Variations exist in the ability to be ethical and kind.
  • Gender differences may exist in sensitivity to others’ emotional pain and prosocial behavior.
  • Girls may be more attuned physiologically to distress in others.
  • Boys may express prosocial behaviors differently.

Prosocial Behavior

  • Sharing, helping, and caring actions.
  • Empathy: Directly feeling someone’s emotion.
  • Sympathy: Feeling for another person.
  • Emotion-regulation skills support prosocial behavior.

Moral Considerations

  • Moral considerations can influence whether prosocial acts are performed.
  • Merit vs. Need: Balancing deservingness with requirements.
  • Fairness and Friendship: Navigating loyalty and impartiality.
  • Moral Disengagement: Rationalizing selective caregiving.

Socializing Moral Children

  • Stimulate theory of mind.
  • Use induction (inductive discipline).
  • Adopt a mind-minded caregiving/parenting style.
  • Remain alert to children’s feelings/emotions.

Guilt and Prosocial Acts

  • Children must have theory of mind and the capacity to empathize with another person’s distress.
  • Producing Prosocial Children:
    • Praise generous behavior and label caring actions.
    • Identify feelings and moral issues when a child hurts another (induction).
    • Avoid teasing and shaming.
    • Model tolerance and moral principles.
    • Encourage empathy for all those who suffer.

Aggression

  • Any hostile or destructive act.
  • Types of Aggression:
    • Proactive: Deliberate harm.
    • Reactive: Impulsive response.
  • Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: Frustration leads to aggression.
  • Forms of Aggression:
    • Direct: Physical or verbal harm.
    • Relational: Damaging relationships.

Pathway to Problematic Aggression

  • Step 1: A toddler’s exuberant or difficult temperament evokes harsh discipline, such as power assertion/shaming.
  • Step 2: The child is rejected by teachers and peers in school, leading to poor school performance, compounding the tendency to lash out.
  • Result: A hostile worldview.
  • Reactive-aggressive children may exhibit hostile attributional bias, interpreting social situations negatively.

Taming Excessive Aggression

  • Avoid punitive, shaming discipline.
  • Encourage socialization of prosocial behavior.
  • Understand that early acting-out, risk-taking behavior may be predictive of adult competence in the right person–environment fit.

Social Development

Friendships

  • Friendships are vital during middle childhood.
  • Friendships help protect and enhance the developing self.
  • Friendships teach emotional management and conflict management skills.
  • Reciprocated friendships promote well-being.

Popularity

  • Differs from friendship; involves competition to rise in peer ranks.
  • May be enhanced by relational aggression.
  • Fades when social circles are selected.
  • Categories:
    • Popular children
    • Average children
    • Rejected children

Decoding Popularity

  • Elementary School: Friendly, outgoing, prosocial, kind.
  • As Early as Third Grade: High levels of relational aggression may contribute to popularity (in the U.S.).

Rejection

  • Occurs when children are disliked due to externalizing or internalizing problems or differences.
  • Occurs when children do not fit in with the dominant group.
  • Bidirectional process.
  • Later Life:
    • Unpopular, friendless children may suffer later-life emotional problems.
    • Rejected, different children may excel as adults or older children.

Bullying

  • Bullying involves one or more children (or adults) harassing or targeting a specific child for systematic abuse.
  • Bully-Victims: Exceptionally aggressive children (with externalizing disorders) who repeatedly bully and get victimized.
  • Cyberbullying: Systematic harassment conducted through electronic media.
  • Bystander Behavior: Applauding or passively watching as someone is being victimized, thus encouraging a bully’s behavior.

Abandoning the Bystander Role

  • What provokes the courage to abandon the bystander role?
  • Personal attributes and wider context of life.
  • Moral Distress: Recognition of the wrongfulness of bullying.
  • Belief that bullying is wrong.
  • No prioritization of being popular.
  • Bullying prevention programs are not always effective.