MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

Although early childhood is the optimal time to begin teaching the skills described in the first section of this chapter, learning must continue through the later developmental periods.

Entering Middle Childhood

One of the major differences between early childhood and middle childhood is that children dramatically reduce the amount of time they spend with parents and other adults and increase the time they spend with peers. As a consequence of decreased adult supervision, children find themselves with greater personal responsibility for their behavior and often need to work out disputes for them­selves. These conflict management experiences are an opportunity for children to master new cognitive and social skills. Other differences include expanded social context in which to function and increased responsibility for participa­tion in their own education.

Stage Theories of Middle Childhood

Piaget observed that from age seven or eight to approximately nine to eleven, the imaginary play of early childhood gives way to play with largely unquestioned rules. Rule-based games are an opportunity for the child to experience the give-and-take of negotiation, settling disagreements, and making and enforcing rules. In this way, the child comes to understand that social rules provide a structure for cooperating with others. (See Selman’s reciprocal reflective level in Table 16.2.) Erikson viewed this time of life as the period when children confront the task of learning to be com­petent at activities valued by adults and peers; success in this endeavor creates a sense of industry, and failure results in a sense of inferiority.

According to Kegan, the second order of consciousness begins approximately between the ages of seven and ten when children are able to construct “durable categories.” The mental organization that characterizes durable categories means changing physical objects from being principally about one’s momen­tary perceptions of them to being about their having ongoing rules about what elements may be properties regardless of the individual’s perceptions. Children develop the ability to see that the phenomenon being considered (thing, other, self) has its own properties, which are elements of a class or category, and that all classes have durable rules regulating both the concept of class membership as well as membership itself. For example, “self” is a class that has as members the properties of preference, habit, and ability, and these properties are aspects of the person in an ongoing way rather than a momentary desire. Having durable categories means seeing other people as having property-bearing selves that are distinct from self. A child’s desires change from being primarily about her current impulses to being about ongoing, time-enduring needs or prefer­ences, which may contain current wishes.

Sense of Self. The sense of self acquired in early childhood must now be fur­ther developed or revised to fit the new context. In addition to spending more time with many other children and with far fewer adults involved, the child in the elementary classroom is primarily engaged in structured learning tasks. The change from an adult-centered to a peer-centered environment requires the child to reconcile the sense of self-identity acquired within the family context with the new self-concepts being formed as a consequence of different rela­tionships. The child’s relationship with parents also changes as the parents begin to rely on discussion and explanation of cause and consequence to influ­ence the child’s behavior.

Table 16.4. Erikson's Psychosocial Stages in Development.

Source: Adapted from Erikson, 1950.

Bingham and Stryker (1995) suggest that the stages of social-emotional devel­opment for girls may differ somewhat from boys. They describe five stages of development for girls that parallel those posed by Erikson, but differ in empha­sis at sensitive time points. Through age eight, girls have the task of developing

the hardy personality. Accomplishing this task means feeling in control of one’s own life, being committed to specific activities, and looking forward to chal­lenging growth activities. Stage 2 finds the nine- through twelve-year-old form­ing an identity as an achiever. This involves developing a durable core of oneself as a person who is capable of accomplishment in a number of areas, such as intellectual, social, and so on. The stage of skill building for self-esteem occurs between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. Girls develop feelings of being worthy, entitled to assert their needs and wants, and confidence concerning the ability to cope with life. From ages seventeen to twenty-two, the task becomes creating strategies for self-sufficiency, both emotional and financial. Here, girls take on responsibility for taking care of themselves based on a sense of autonomy. The adult task is finding satisfaction in work and love and being content with per­sonal accomplishments and social or personal relationships.

Influence of Friends. Around age ten or eleven, children change to a “social- relational moral perspective” (see Table 16.2), wherein shared feelings and harmony with people close to them are more important than individual self­interest. This perspective marks growth of the inclination and the ability to inter­act with other children without adult supervision. One problem with this growing ability is that children now depend more on peers to define right and wrong and less on such authorities as parents and teachers.

Self-Esteem. Social acceptance is an important goal of middle childhood. At this age, children become aware of their relative status among peers and have concerns about rejection.

There is evidence that social comparison affects a child’s self-evaluation more strongly with increasing age. This fits well with the decreasing self-esteem that occurs during middle childhood, as children begin to compare their performance with that of their peers and to define themselves accordingly. They also begin to think of the interpersonal implications of their own characteristics (“I always do my homework and know the answers in class, so other kids call me nerdy”).

Children of all ages whose friendships have positive, cooperative features are high in self-esteem and prosocial behavior, are popular with peers, have few emotional problems, are well behaved, and experience good academic adjustment, including positive attitudes toward school. Despite greater reliance in middle childhood on peer opinion and values, parents remain an important influence on the child. In fact, high self-esteem has been linked to authorita­tive parenting. This approach to parenting includes a close affectionate rela­tionship, which makes the child feel important; clearly defined limits and consequences for transgression, to give the child the sense that norms are real and significant; and respect for individuality, because the child needs to express individuality. Parents show respect for their children by reasoning with them and taking their point of view into account. The key to a child’s high self­esteem is the feeling, transmitted in large part by the family and valued teachers, that she has the ability to control her own future by controlling both herself and her environment.

Conversely, a child with negative friendship relationships (characterized by rivalries and put-downs) is likely to be a low achiever both academically and socially.

Perspective Taking. With rule-based games, children must keep in mind an overall set of task conditions as well as engage in social perspective taking. Thus, they must take into consideration the wishes, thoughts, and actions of other children along with their own. At this age, children make inferences about the perspectives of other people and are aware that other people can do the same about them. But they often have difficulty in simultaneously focusing on their own perspective while trying to assume the perspective of another. As a result, they frequently adhere to the correctness of either their own view or that of an authority (adult or older child seen as an authority). Becoming skilled in negotiating conflictful social interaction with peers while playing a game depends on a child’s growing ability to understand how others think (social perspective taking) and feel (social-emotional competence).

Cooperation. In middle childhood, children begin wrestling with such issues as morality and rules of fairness. (See Table 16.2.) According to Kohlberg (1976), children around the age of seven or eight enter the stage of development called “instrumental morality,” or self-regulation, which includes cooperative behavior. In this sense, cooperating means working toward a common goal while coordi­nating one’s own feelings and perspective with another’s. The motive for coop­eration is mutual affection and trust, which develops into the ability to take the perspective of another. Given that children may show characteristics of earlier stages of development depending on the circumstance, middle childhood young­sters may still have a somewhat egocentric point of view, in which they have dif­ficulty distinguishing between their own interests and those of other children.

Middle childhood also sees emerging belief in equity: if a group member works harder and contributes more to a project, that member deserves more of the rewards. This is justice as an exchange system, in which you should receive as much as you give. Sometimes the temptation of an appealing reward, how­ever, causes even older children to attempt to get as much as they can from the outcome without regard to how much they contribute (Damon, 1977).

Self-Control. To encourage a child’s self-regulation, the goal of the adult (par­ent or teacher) should be to increasingly appeal to the child’s cooperation rather than obedience. Although adult-child relationships are not equal in power, an adult who respects the child’s thoughts, opinions, and endeavors can permit and encourage the child to think about and question causes, potential outcomes, and general explanations.

The Role of Conflict

If a relationship is threatened (on the playground, for example), preadolescents engage in fewer conflicts with friends than with acquaintances. However, in the classroom or places where continued interaction is not at risk, the preadolescent disagrees more with friends than nonfriends. The type of conflict most com­monly occurring depends on gender: boys’ disagreements often involve power issues, whereas for girls the subject of disagreement is usually interpersonal matters. Children who are aggressive also engage in conflicts that differ accord­ing to gender: boys have goals of instrumentality (getting what they want, whether it be a material object or a privileged position) and dominance, whereas girls are likely to engage in relationship aggression; they are displaying behavior intended to damage another child’s friendship or feeling of inclusion by the peer group.

Preadolescents commonly believe that one person is responsible for any given conflict, and they feel that resolution should come from that person. Thus, it becomes important for adults to engage both (or all) participants in a dispute in what Shure and Spivack (1978) refer to as problem-solving dialoguing—a form of questioning, similar to scaffolding, that helps a child develop an alter­native solution and consequential thinking. This process results in clearly defin­ing the problem, searching for the original problem (one child’s version of the conflict may not include the first action that occurred), and emphasizing the child’s ability (not the adult’s) to solve the problem.

The Creative Response to Conflict Program. A well-respected conflict resolu­tion program widely used with children in middle childhood is the program developed by Creative Response to Conflict (CRC) in Nyack, New York.¹ CRC employs age-appropriate classroom activities in five thematic areas: affirmation, communication, cooperation, problem solving, and bias awareness. In addition, CRC emphasizes the importance of actively training and involving school staff, parents, and other community members as part of a holistic approach to chang­ing culture and climate.

For middle-years children, advances in development allow for the use of more complex and collaborative approaches to skill development—for instance, ask­ing students to respond to a conflict scenario by brainstorming and problem solving in cooperative groups. Unlike young children, who have trouble getting outside their own identities, middle-years children can engage easily and inde­pendently in role-plays, which require them to separate their own thoughts and actions from those of the characters they play.

This movement away from egocentrism also makes the middle years a time when children can be introduced to mediation. CRC trains children beginning in the third grade to be peer mediators who help other children work out conflicts on the playground. Solutions to conflict are not imposed; rather, mediators help disputants work out their own agreements. This approach, which further pro­motes perspective-taking and problem-solving skills, is particularly successful with middle-years students because it meshes with their growing reliance on peers for affirmation and their need for autonomy and self-direction.