Developmental Psychology

Social and Emotional Development During the early stages of childhood, children are usually allowed to explore the environment around them. By giving children this freedom, it helps in the growth of self-confidence and learn social skills. When children get older, they may begin defining themselves physically and emotionally. Erik Erikson said that children during the early childhood stage usually enter the initiative vs guilt stage and will usually go through this until the age of 5. Children are allowed to play and interact with other children and adults, will partake in conversations and various activities through the day. Since there are a lot of environments that a child may be exposed to as well as a variety of activities that a child can participate in, children will learn about developing initiative. 5.4 Learning Theories Many learning theorists have attempted to emphasize the idea of gender roles and how they are learned inside and outside the home. Parents will reward children who achieve gender appropriate activities. Parents have taken the role of being pretty critical of gender behavior. Parents will sometime say that their female child shouldn’t climb trees or wrestle with other children because that is something that boys would do. The same thing applies to males. Male children are not known for playing with dolls or having tea parties. Parents may have problems when their children do things that typically the other sex does. 5.5 Parent-Child Relationships There is no single parenting style that works for all families. The study of different parenting styles has proven to affect a child’s behavior. A lady, by the name of Diana Baumrind had observed nursery schools and the parents of the students and interviewed them at their residence. It was through Baumrind’s observations that she saw that there were 4 different qualities that varied between parenting styles. The four qualities are • Parental Warmth • Ability to control a child’s actions • Quantity and/or quality of communication between parents and children • Parental expectations of age appropriate behavior There are three different but specific styles of parenting that Baumrind determined by the interviews she conducted with parents. • Authoritarian Parents : These types of parents tend to have strict rules and will use punishments to reinforce the rules put into place. A parent’s standards may be high while communication is low on the spectrum. Authoritative parents do not usually have warmth towards their children, and usually do not explain the reasoning behind having so many rules. The children of these types of parents will usually be obedient without the opportunity to truly be independent in the future. • Permissive Parents : These parents are very much the opposite of authoritarian parents. Permissive parents rarely set rules, and their child’s behavior is rarely punished. Expectations are low, while communication is high which is the complete opposite of authoritarian parents.

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