MODULE 3
Early Childhood
Human Behavior and the Social Environment
Jack’s Name Change
Joyce describes as a happy home. Charles moved in with his girlfriend and has not
contacted Joyce or Jack at this point. Joyce just cannot believe that this is happening to her.
Her mother had the same experience with Joyce’s father but had kept the marriage going for
the sake of Joyce and her siblings. Joyce, conversely, is determined to live a different life
from the life her mother chose. She saw how depressed her mother was until her death at age
54. Joyce states that her mother died of a broken heart. Although Joyce is determined to live
without Charles, she is concerned about how she and Jack will live on her income alone.
Although she plans to seek child support, she knows she will need to move, because
she cannot afford the mortgage on her own. Joyce would prefer for Jack not to have contact
with his father. Joyce simply responds to Jack by telling him that they probably will never see
Charles again.
Their mother, Shirley, was sent to prison a year ago after conviction of drug
trafficking. Shirley’s boyfriend is a known drug dealer and had asked Shirley to make a
"delivery" for him. Shirley was arrested as she stepped off the bus in another state where she
had taken the drugs for delivery.
Typical Development in Early Childhood
As children like Terri Smith, Jack Lewis, and Ron and Rosiland Johnson emerge from
toddlerhood, they turn their attention more and more to the external environment. Some
children emerge from toddlerhood with a sense of confidence in the availability of support
and a beginning sense of confidence in themselves. Other children, unfortunately, leave
toddlerhood more challenged than when they entered that stage.
Much happens in all interrelated dimensions of development from age 3 to Some
child development scholars still refer to the period from age 3 to 6 as the preschool age, but
others have recently begun to refer to this period as early school age, reflecting the fact that
many children are enrolled in some form of group-based experience during this period.
Remember as you read that the various types of development discussed in this chapter under
separate headings are interdependent, and sometimes the distinctions between the dimensions
blur. There are growing criticisms that all children of the world are evaluated against Western
developmental psychology science, which is a mix of statistical averages and historically and
culturally specific value judgments. Many children of the world are still reared in households
without access to even necessities such as safe drinking water and sanitation.
Physical Development
Terri Smith, Jack Lewis, and Ron and Rosiland Johnson are at an age when they are
likely to be running, skipping, jumping, and using their fingers to create objects. From ages 2
to 6, young children’s appetites tend to decline, and around age 3 many young children go
through a fussy eating phase where foods once tolerated are no longer accepted and the
introduction of new foods is resisted. Young children require a healthy diet of the same foods
that adults need. However, globally, many children suffer from malnutrition.
In 2016, almost one quarter of the world’s children younger than 5 years of age were
stunted in growth due to malnutrition, with the highest prevalence in South Asia and Africa.
More than half of all stunted children under 5 lived in Asia, and more than one third lived in
Africa. At the same time, increasing rates of children have been found to be overweight in
most regions of the world.
Hispanic children of the same age, and there is some evidence that Hispanic American
children weigh more on average than other young children. Children of low economic status
are more likely than other children to be overweight during early childhood, but severe food
insecurity may lead to growth inhibition. Even in the affluent United States, 12.4% of
households were categorized as food insecure at some point during the year in 2016
Coleman-Jensen, Rabbitt, Gregory, & Singh, As noted in Chapter 3, the brain continues to be
shaped by experience throughout early childhood and beyond. There is little research to date
to clarify the benefits of and drawbacks to use of information and communication technology
with young children, but what little research there is suggests that brain development may be
enhanced with the use of interactive technologies that help children develop curiosity,
problem solving, and independent thinking skills but hampered by passive engagement with
technology.
Because of the great plasticity of the brain, each new wave of technological
advancement, like earlier development of written language, results in new brain-mediated
capabilities that had previously been unexpressed. The left hemisphere is activated during
tasks that require analytical skills, including speaking and reading. Tasks that involve
emotional expression and spatial skills, such as visual imagery, require response from the
right hemisphere. With the development of the right hemisphere and the social-emotional
components there, young children develop the ability to reflect on the feelings and thoughts
of others.
In recent years, neurodevelopmental researchers have been concerned about the
impact of early lead exposure on brain development. Neuropsychological studies have found
that children exposed to lead and other heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury during
early brain development are more vulnerable to behavioral and cognitive deficits that can last
a lifetime.
Cognitive and Language Development
The waiting area was very quiet, and the young child’s voice seemed loud in the
silence. He responded by saying, "I don’t want to shh, I want to talk." Of course, everyone
laughed, which made the child talk even louder. They played with an electronic game in
which the child selects pieces to add to a face to make a complete face. This game kept the
child’s attention for a while until he became bored.
The mother told him to "make the game stop." The child responded by yelling at the
game, demanding that it stop making the face. The child became very confused, because in
the book, different from his memory of the movie, the main character, Simba, was already an
adult at the beginning. The child, looking at the pictures, argued that the adult lion was not
Simba but instead was Simba’s father. This scene encapsulates many of the themes of
cognitive and moral development in early childhood.
As memory improves, and the store of information expands, young children begin to
think much more in terms of categories, as the little boy in the doctor’s office was doing.
Young children are full of big questions such as where do babies come from, what happens to
people when they die, where does the night come from, and so on. They make great strides in
language development and the ability to communicate. In early childhood, children fit into
the second stage of cognitive development described by Piaget, the preoperational stage.
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Through play, children learn to use symbols and actively engage in what Piaget
labeled deferred imitation. Deferred imitation refers to the child’s ability to view an image
and then, significantly later, recall and imitate the image. During the second part of the
preoperational stage, children use language to represent objects. During the preconceptual
stage, any object with long ears may be called "bunny." However, during the intuitive stage,
children begin to understand that the term bunny represents the entire animal, not just a
property of it. However, although young children can classify objects, their classifications are
based on only one attribute at a time. For example, given a set of stuffed animals with various
sizes and colors, the young child will group the animals either by color or by size.
In contrast, an older child who has reached the intuitive stage may sort them by both
size and color. In early childhood, children also engage in what Piaget termed transudative
reasoning, or a way of thinking about two or more experiences without using abstract logic.
This type of reasoning is also evident in the example of the mother and child in the doctor’s
office. Because the child saw Simba as a cub in the movie version of The Lion King, he
reasons that the adult lion in the picture at the beginning of the book cannot possibly be
Simba.
One last related preoperational concept described by Piaget is egocentrism. According
to Piaget, in early childhood, children perceive reality only from their own experience and
believe themselves to be at the center of existence. This aspect of cognitive reasoning could
be problematic for most of the children described in the case examples. Researchers are
finding that young children have the capacity for nonegocentric thinking but do not
consistently demonstrate that capacity.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective
Most of what children learn comes from collaborating with other people. Children
learn by interacting with more skilled partners who serve as models and provide instruction
that children internalize over time. Research suggests that adults tend to provide children with
learning scaffolds. Effective teachers assign children tasks they can accomplish with some
assistance, provide just enough help so that the child can learn to complete the task
independently, and provide the types of environments that stimulate children to complete
more challenging tasks on their own.
Information Processing Theory
Although the ability to sustain attention improves in early childhood, young children
have trouble switching their attention from one stimulus to another. Young children are also
well known for their relatively poor selective attention abilities of focusing, particularly on
aspects of a situation relevant to the task at hand. Even 5-year-old children are easily
distracted by stimuli in the environment. Recognition memory, the ability to recognize a
stimulus that was encountered before, is nearly perfect in 4- and 5-year-old children.
Young children are not very effective at using memory strategies, those cognitive
activities that help us remember. Children do not start to consistently apply memory strategies
until middle childhood. Young children are better at remembering things they did than things
they watched. An issue of concern to researchers is the accuracy of young children’s
memories and their suggestibility or inclination to accept and act on suggestions of others.
In laboratory study, young children typically recall only a small portion of
information from an event if asked for memory recall, but children’s recall memory is
influenced by several interacting factors. From around age 4 to 6, children show
improvements in their ability to adjust responses and alternate back and forth between
strategies.
Theory of Mind
Children ages 3, 4, and 5 were shown a bag of M&M’s. While the child was watching,
the M&Ms were poured out of the bag and into a bag marked "crayons." Both boxes were
then sealed up so that nobody could see what was inside. At this point, a research assistant
who had not seen the transfer of M&Ms comes into the room, and the child is asked where
the research assistant thinks the M&Ms are. All the 3-year-olds and some of the 4-year-olds
incorrectly answered that the research assistant knew that the M&Ms were in the crayon box.
M&Ms were now in the crayon box and they could not understand that the research
assistant would be missing that knowledge. Most of the 5year-olds realized that because the
research assistant had not seen the switch, he or she would not know the actual location of the
M&M’s. Chinese parents do often talk with their children about information concerning other
people, however. Siblings also provide young children with opportunities to develop theory
of mind, and young children with siblings have been found to perform better on false-belief
tests than children without siblings.
By 6 years of age, children are often using about 2,600 words and can understand
more than 20,000 words. Children around the world develop language without formal
instruction. Young children ask "why" questions, persistently and often assertively, to learn
about the world. At every point in development, however, children differ in the size of the
vocabularies they command, the complexity of the language structure used, and the skill with
which they communicate.
By age 4, young children in all cultures understand the basic grammar rules of their
language. Although somewhat influenced by the environment, children are thought to
develop language skills if the appropriate genetic material is in place. The other approach
focuses on the way the social contexts in which children live shape language acquisition. She
argues that children need both a language model and opportunities for communicative
interaction to support language development.
Past toddlerhood, children increasingly take charge of their own language acquisition
by asking questions and initiating dialogues. Parents can assist children by asking questions,
eliciting details, and encouraging children to reflect on their experiences. As children grow
older, they are often corrected by caregivers and preschool teachers in the misuse of words or
phrases. Children are talked to a great deal in some cultures and very little in other cultures.
Across cultures, there is consistent evidence that parents with higher socioeconomic
status, on average, speak more to their children, elicit more conversations with their children,
use larger vocabularies in conversations with their children, and engage in fewer verbal
behavioral prohibitions than parents with lower socioeconomic status. This means that many
low-income children enter elementary school with smaller vocabularies than their more
privileged peers unless they are provided with support for language development. Some
research indicates that both low-income and high-income mothers use more complex speech
when reading books to their children, and book reading can attenuate the language
disadvantage of low-income children. Children have an innate capacity for language, but the
structuring of the environment through culture is what allows language development to occur.
There is some evidence that children learning two languages tend to have smaller
vocabularies in each language than monolingual children, but vocabulary size depends on the
amount of exposure to each language and the opportunities to speak each language. Recent
research indicates, however, that learning two languages simultaneously in the first 3 years of
life lays down the brain structures for later language learning Klein, Mok, Chen, & Watkins,
Language development is a particularly important area of development for deaf and hard-of-
hearing children. Unless they have deaf parents, who will teach them sign language, these
children require intervention to acquire language. Some children are exposed to spoken
language only, and technological innovations, such as hearing aids and cochlear implants, are
making that a more realistic choice for children with less severe hearing loss. The choice of
method is influenced by attitudes about how important it is for children to fit into a
mainstream hearing world.
Moral Development
Young children improved cognitive abilities and development of theory of mind
influence moral reasoning. Young children begin to move from a moral sense based on
outside approval to a more internalized moral sense, with a rudimentary moral code. Three of
these approaches to moral development are explored here. Freud thought the superego is
formed from the ages of 4 to 7, but more recent psychodynamic formulations suggest that
infancy is the critical time for the beginning of moral development. Freud thought children
would have more highly developed superegos when their parents used strict methods to
inhibit the children’s impulses. Contemporary research indicates the opposite, however,
finding that moral behavior is associated with parental warmth, democratic decision making,
and modeling of temptation resistance.
New psychodynamic models emphasize a close, affectionate bond with the caregiver
as the cornerstone of moral development. Social learning approach. From the perspective of
social learning theory, moral behavior is shaped by environmental reinforcements and
punishments. Children are likely to repeat behaviors that are rewarded, and they are likely to
feel tension when they think about doing something they have been punished for in the past.
From this perspective, parental consistency in response to their children’s behavior is
important. Social learning theory also suggests that children learn moral conduct by
observing models. Albert Bandura found that children are likely to engage in behaviors for
which they see a model rewarded and to avoid behaviors that they see punished. This can be
problematic for children who watch a lot of television, because they may come to view
violence as an acceptable way to solve interactional conflict if they see violence go
unpunished.
Kohlberg described three levels of moral reasoning, with two stages in each level. It
was expected that in early childhood, children will operate at the preconventional level of
moral reasoning, with their reasoning about moral issues based, first, on what gets them
rewarded or punished. This type of moral reasoning is thought to be common among toddlers.
In the second stage, moral reasoning is based on what benefits either the child or someone the
child cares about.
This is consistent with the child’s growing capacity for attachments. There is some
empirical evidence that children ages 3 to 6 do, indeed, begin to use the type of moral
reasoning described in Stage 2. He has coined the phrase social intelligence to refer to this
ability to be attuned to another person. There is growing agreement that empathy and
prosocial behavior begin in infancy and grow throughout early childhood.
Toddlers as young as 18 months help adults with instrumental tasks or help with
simple activities. From 18 to 24 months of age, toddlers respond to others’ emotional and
physical distress with expressions of concern and comfort. By age 3 or 4, children across
cultures have been found to be able to recognize the type of emotional reaction that other
children might have to different situations. Perspective taking, which is a thinking rather than
feeling activity, grows in early childhood and is another important ingredient in moral
development.
One research team studied children at ages 3½ years and 5½ years and found that a
sophisticated understanding of both emotional and mental states was associated with
increased consideration of the emotional and mental states of others. Longitudinal research
has found that children who show empathy and perspective taking at 4 and 5 years of age are
more likely to exhibit prosocial behavior and sympathy during adolescence and early
adulthood. Some researchers have suggested that the development of moral emotions can be
studied by examining the development of sharing behaviors. Ongley and Malti’s research
indicate that fairness norms and aversions to inequality develop between early and middle
childhood, and that is particularly the case for girls who show a preference for fairness in
early childhood. There is compelling evidence of the capacity of children in early childhood
to attend to the emotional and mental states of peers.
She suggests strong gender bias in Kohlberg’s theory, and her research indicated that
women’s moral thought is guided by caring and maintaining the welfare of others whereas
men use more abstract principles of justice. As you can see from Exhibit 4.2, caring for others
and maintaining harmony in relationships would put women in Stage 3, at the highest.
Stage 4, indicating that their moral reasoning is not as well developed as the
researchers suggest that the moral ideal in Western cultures is an autonomous individual with
strong convictions who sticks up for those convictions. In contrast, the Buddhist moral ideal
is guided by compassion and detachment from one’s own individuality. How such themes are
transmitted to young children can be strong guideposts for managing and participating in
interpersonal relationships. One aspect of moral reasoning is distributive justice, or the belief
about what constitutes a fair distribution of goods and resources in a society.
Personality and Emotional Development
Based on a longitudinal study of 180 children born into poverty, they conclude that
behavior and adaptation during early childhood predict later behavior and adaptation,
something they did not find to be the case with the predictive power of behavior and
adaptation in infancy and toddlerhood. They suggest that the important themes of
development during this period are self-direction, agency, self-management, and self-
regulation. Young children do face important developmental tasks in the emotional arena.
This section addresses these tasks, drawing on Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development.
Erikson’s Theory of Psychosocial Development
Erikson labeled the stage of emotional development that takes place during the early
childhood years as initiative versus guilt. Children who pass successfully through this stage
learn to get satisfaction from completing tasks. By the end of this stage, the child’s focus
turns to friendships outside the family. Children engage in cooperative play and enjoy both
sharing and competing with peers. Children must also can establish peer relationships outside
the family. Children who become stuck in this stage are plagued with guilt about their goals
and fantasies. These children are overly anxious and self-centered.
Emotions
Children ages 3 to 5 can recognize and label simple emotions, and they learn about
themselves when they talk about their anxieties and fears. Children reared in homes in which
emotions and feelings are openly discussed are better able to understand and express feelings.
Early childhood educators Cory Cooper Hansen and Debby Zambo recommend the use of
children’s literature to help children understand and manage emotions. Ask children to
describe the emotions of story characters.
Encourage children to draw, write, or paint about the emotions of story characters as
well as their own emotional reactions. Use stuffed animals to "listen" to children’s stories.
Most child development scholars agree that all emotions, including those that have been
labeled "negative,” are adaptive, but more needs to be learned about how the negative
emotions can become problematic for children. We know that by the first grade, most
children can regulate their emotions well enough to learn, obey classroom rules, and develop
friendships.
But we also know that emotional receptivity makes young children vulnerable to
environmental stress, and early exposure to adverse situations can have a negative effect on
the brain, cardiovascular, and endocrine processes that support emotional development. It is
important to recognize when emotional development is getting off course, and researchers are
at work to develop understanding of that issue. For example, we know that most young
children have tantrums. For most children, anger and distress are expressed in quick peaks in
anger intensity that decline into whining and comfort-seeking behavior.
Aggression
Instrumental aggression typically appears at about 1 year of age and increases from
toddlerhood into early childhood as children begin to play with other children. By age 4, most
children have developed the ability to control their aggression at times and use words instead
of physical action. Although some children continue high levels of aggression into middle
childhood, usually physical aggression peaks early in the early childhood years. By the end of
the early childhood years, children learn better negotiation skills and become better at asking
for what they want and using words to express feelings.
Attachment
In early childhood, children still depend on their attachment relationships for feelings
of security. In particularly stressful times, the attachment behavior of the young child may
look very much like the clinging behavior of the 2-year-old. For the most part, however,
securely attached children will handle their anxieties by verbalizing their needs. In addition,
many young children continue to use transitional objects, such as blankets or a favorite teddy
bear, to soothe themselves when they are anxious.
In their longitudinal study of 180 children born into poor families, Sroufe et al.
examined, among other things, how attachment style in infancy and toddlerhood affected the
developmental trajectory into early childhood.
Peer Relations
Across cultures, young children’s friendship groups are likely to be segregated by sex.
When asked about the definition of a friend, most children in this age group think of someone
with whom they play. As peer relationships become more important, around age 3, children
are motivated to be accepted by peers. Research indicates that young children are at a higher
risk of being rejected by their peers if they are aggressive and comparatively more active,
demonstrate a difficult temperament, are easily distracted, and demonstrate lower
perseverance.
The rejection of some children is long lasting. It is important, therefore, to intervene
early to help children like Terri Smith learn more prosocial behavior. Peer relationships in
early childhood are associated with early attachments. In contrast, peer interactions are often
difficult for young children with insecure working models.
Self-Concept
" I have bunk beds in my room." By about age 3.5, children include emotions and
attitudes in their self-descriptions. The young child seems to vacillate between grandiose and
realistic views of the self. Children are aware of their growing competence, but at the same
time, they have normal doubts about the self, based on realistic comparisons of their
competence with the competence of adults. In early childhood, children begin to develop a
self-concept, which includes a perception of oneself as a person who has desires, attributes,
preferences, and abilities.
Some investigators have suggested that during early childhood, the child’s ever-
increasing understanding of the self in relation to the world begins to become organized into a
self-theory. As children develop the cognitive ability to categorize, they use categorization to
think about the self. By age 2 or 3, children can identify their gender and race as factors in
understanding who they are. As they develop theory of mind, from ages 4 to 6, young
children become more aware that different people have different perspectives on situations.
In addition to these interpersonal messages, young children observe their own
competencies and attributes and compare them with the competencies of other children as
well as adults. Of course, a young child may develop a positive view of the self in one
dimension, such as cognitive abilities, and a negative view of the self in another dimension,
such as physical abilities. Children also learn that some abilities are more valued than others
in the various environments in which they operate. An example of the way these beliefs play
out and influence self-development from an early age was described by Markus and
Kitayama, who noted that in U.
Gender Role Development
By age 2, children can usually accurately identify others as either male or female,
based on appearance. Understanding gender as stable. Later, children understand that gender
is stable, that boys grow up to be men and girls to be women. Understanding gender
constancy. Even with this understanding of gender stability, young children, with their
imaginative thinking, continue to think that girls can turn into boys and boys into girls by
changing appearance. Gender constancy has been found to be associated with an
understanding of the relationship between gender and genitals. Gender includes the cognitive,
emotional, and social schemes associated with being female or male. Gender identity refers to
one’s sense of being male or female, a topic that receives more attention in the chapter on
adolescence.
Gender expression is the physical and behavioral display of one’s gender identity.
Sexual orientation refers to one’s preference for sexually intimate partners. It appears that
gender identity development begins with recognition of sex differences. Reviews of
thousands of research studies find few differences between boys and girls.
During early childhood, boys tend to exhibit more physical and verbal aggression than
girls, and girls show more relational aggression than boys. Young girls also show more
empathy, compliance, and cooperation with adults than young boys. Although there are no
gender differences in intelligence tests, young girls have better verbal, mathematical, and fine
motor skills than young boys, and young boys tend to be better at tasks requiring spatial
abilities. There are some rather large cultural and subcultural variations in gender role
definitions, however.
Existing cultural standards about gender are pervasively built into adult interactions
with young children and into the reward systems developed for shaping child behavior. Much
research indicates that parents begin to use gender stereotypes to respond to their children
from the time of birth. They cuddle more with infant girls and play more actively with infant
boys. Later, they talk more with young girls and expect young boys to be more independent.
Researchers have found that the nature of parental influence on children’s gender role
development is more complex than this. Parents may hold to stereotypical gender
expectations in some domains but not in others. For example, parents may have similar
expectations for boys and girls in terms of sharing or being polite. Evidence that gender
differences in verbal, visual, and mathematical skills are at least partially socially constructed
can be found in data that indicate that differences in all three areas have decreased over the
same time period that gender roles have changed toward greater similarity.
As they learn about sex and gender, young children tend to describe their own sex in
positive terms and the other sex in less positive terms. Researchers have found high rigidity
in gender-typed behaviors in early childhood across ethnic groups in the United States, with
most gender-typed behaviors increasing from ages 3 to 4. In some countries, including the
United States, gender norms are becoming less rigid, and some young children resist the
gender binary they encounter as they grow. Researchers are studying how parents can help
gender nonconforming young children negotiate that binary in a supportive way.
One research team found that young daughters of same-sex couples report more
flexible gender attitudes than daughters of heterosexual couples, but no differences were
found between the sons of same-sex couples and the sons of heterosexual couples. Lesbian
mothers reported more flexible attitudes about gender roles than either gay fathers or
heterosexual fathers. Parental division of childcare labor was a better predictor of children’s
gender typing than the parents’ gender attitudes. Another research team found that gender
typing in early childhood predicted sexual orientation at age 15, with gender nonconforming
young children more likely to report a less exclusive heterosexual orientation in adolescence.
Gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation are explored in subsequent
chapters in this book. Social workers can be helpful to gender nonconforming children and
their families as they negotiate societal gender and sexual orientation binaries. As young
children become more interested in issues of sex and gender, they become increasingly
interested in their genitals. They are interested, in general, in how their bodies work, but the
genitals seem to hold a special interest as the young child learns through experimentation that
the genitals can be a source of pleasure.
Little boys may fear that their penises will disappear, like their sisters did. During
early childhood, masturbation is used both as a method of self-soothing and for pleasure.
Young children also "play doctor" with each other and often want to see and touch their
parents’ genitals. Many parents and other caregivers are confused about how to handle this
behavior, particularly in our era of heightened awareness of childhood sexual abuse.
In general, parents should not worry about genital curiosity or about children
experimenting with touching their own genitals. They should remember, however, that at this
age children may be overstimulated by seeing their parents’ genitals. And we should always
be concerned when children want to engage in more explicit adultlike sexual play that
involves stimulation of each other’s genitals.
Racial and Ethnic Identity
Findings from research suggest that children first learn their own racial identity before
they can identify the race of others. Elements of racial and ethnic identity awareness have
been found to occur as early as age 3. Getty/Robert Griffin They presented African American
children with Black dolls and White dolls and concluded that African American children
responded more favorably to the White dolls and had more negative reactions to the Black
dolls. Trinidad and African American children in New York, reported similar results. The
young children from both New York and Trinidad preferred and identified with the White
dolls. Interestingly, the same results have been reported more recently in studies of Taiwanese
young children.
African American community tend to choose Black images or dolls. Furthermore,
when young children were not asked to make a preference between images, they showed
interest in Asian, White, and Black images or dolls and did not make judgments based on race
or ethnicity. It is questionable, however, whether preferences and biases found in research are
equated with self-concept and low self-esteem for children of color. Spencer concludes that
young Black children compartmentalize personal identity from knowledge about racial
stereotypes in the dominant culture.
There is evidence of benefits of instructional technologies in the preschool classroom.
For example, 4- and 5-year-old children can use technology to develop language, art,
mathematics, and science skills. Conversely, some early childhood educators are concerned
that computers and other instructional technologies contribute to social isolation and limit
children’s creative play. Adults must give serious consideration to how to balance the positive
and negative aspects of these technologies.
Other questions that challenge parents are where the equipment is stored and who is
responsible for monitoring the amount of time a child spends with technology. Olson argues
that the potential for positive learning exists in such areas as gender roles and managing
aggressive impulses as well as in building relationships with parents and peers. The
predominant type of play in early childhood, beginning around the age of 2, is symbolic play,
otherwise known as fantasy play, pretend play, or imaginary play. Children continue to use
vivid imaginations in their play, as they did as toddlers, but they also begin to put more
structure into their play. Thus, their play is intermediate between the fantasy play of toddlers
and the structured, rules-oriented play of middle childhood. Although toddler play is
primarily nonverbal, the play of young children often involves highly sophisticated verbal
productions.
Play’s Contribution to Cognitive Development
The young child uses play to think about the world, to understand cause and effect.
Throughout early childhood, young children show increasing sophistication in using words in
their dramatic play. Childhood sociologists have found that children create sophisticated
language games for group play that facilitate the development of language and logical
thinking. Several researchers have studied how young children build literacy skills through
play, particularly play with books.
In their fantasy play, young children begin to think about "good" and as they try to
figure out good and bad, they can easily have their feelings hurt if they think another child is
accusing them of being bad as they engage in play.
Play as an Opportunity to Gain Control
In his cross-cultural study of play, childhood sociologist William Corsaro
demonstrates that young children typically use dramatic play to cope with fears. This
perspective on young children’s play is the cornerstone of play therapy. Such play helps the
child compensate for feelings of inadequacy and fear that come from recognizing that one is a
small person in a big world. Corsaro suggests that the love for climbing toys that bring small
children high over the heads of others serves the same purpose.
Young children use play to think about the world and to understand cause and effect.
Children in preschool settings have also been observed trying to get control over their lives
by subverting some of the control of adults. Corsaro describes a preschool where the children
had been told they could not bring any play items from home. The preschool teachers were
trying to avoid the kinds of conflicts that can occur over toys brought from home.
Play as a Shared Experience
Increasing emphasis is placed on the way that play in early childhood contributes to
the development of peer culture. Many researchers who study the play of young children
suggest that sociodramatic play, or group fantasy play in which children coordinate their
fantasy, is the most important form of play during this time. Young children can develop more
elaborate fantasy play and sustain it by forming friendship groups, which in turn gives them
experience with group conflict and group problem solving that carries over into the adult
world. Group play also helps young children learn to understand and follow rules.
As young children play in groups, they attempt to protect the opportunity to keep the
play going by restricting who may enter the play field. Young children learn a set of dos and
don’ts to accomplish that goal and develop complex strategies for gaining access to play.
Conflict often occurs in young children’s play groups, and researchers have found gender and
cultural variations in how these conflicts get resolved.
Play as the Route to Attachment to Fathers
Some suggest that father–child attachment may be promoted mainly through play,
much like the mother–child relationship may be the result of caregiving activities. This
research challenges the notion that only certain kinds of play have the potential to effect
positive attachment and affirms the notion that there is developmental value for children in
father–child physical play. In fact, physical play stimulates and arouses children and takes
them out of their comfort zone. Roggan further notes that the style of play often ascribed to
fathers provides opportunity for young children to overcome their limits and to experience
taking chances in a context where there is some degree of confidence that they will be
protected.
Developmental Delays and Disabilities
Children develop at different rates. Most developmental problems in infants and
young children are more accurately described as developmental delays, offering the hope that
early intervention, or even natural processes, will mitigate the long-term effects. Available
data indicate an increasing prevalence of disability in early childhood. Although the exact
reasons for this increase are not clear, it is thought to be related to improved survival of
children with disabilities and improved identification of impairments in early childhood.
Many young children with developmental difficulties, including emotional and
behavioral concerns, are inaccurately assessed and misdiagnosed. Given the difficulty of
accurate assessment, assessment in young children should include many disciplines to gain as
broad an understanding as possible. In one such program, two types of preschool classrooms
were evaluated. Social exchange between the children with delays and those without delays
was greater in the mixed-aged classroom.
Another study evaluated the usefulness of providing social skills training to children
with mild developmental disabilities. In a preschool setting, developmentally delayed
children were put in situations requiring social interaction and were praised for successful
interaction. This method increased social interaction between the young children. It is
important to recognize the parental stress that often accompanies care of children with
developmental disabilities.
The time of diagnosis is often experienced as a crisis for the parents of children with
disabilities and may be followed by a period of grief. The need to provide intensive care for
young children with disabilities often means that at least one parent must reduce or curtail
paid work roles. In addition to the loss of occupational income, families of young children
with disabilities often have expenses related to adaptations to the home environment,
assistive devices, and different therapy and personal assistance services. Nonfamily provided
childcare is more expensive than for young children without disability.
In addition to financial stress, parents of young children with disabilities often face
the stress of intensive around-the-clock caregiving and the social isolation that accompanies
such intensive caregiving. Parents may have to be strong advocates for their children to be
included in early childhood education programs. In the 1980s, concern about the quality of
education in the United States led to upgrades in the elementary school curriculum. This has
led to increased concern about kindergarten readiness, the skills that the young child should
have acquired before entering kindergarten, as well as how to provide for the needs of
developmentally delayed children in the kindergarten classroom.
A growing concern is that children with developmental problems should not be placed
in kindergarten classrooms that do not provide support for their developmental needs. States
vary in how much support they provide to children with developmental delays to allow them
to participate in fully inclusive classrooms, but a growing group of children with
developmental delays in the United States are participating as full citizens in inclusive
classrooms during preschool and kindergarten. At the same time, however, we want to be
attentive to any aspects of a child’s development that may be lagging expected milestones so
that we can provide extra support to young children in specific areas of development.
Early Childhood Education
Early childhood education has been found to be especially important for children from
low-income households in highly unequal societies who are likely to enter primary school far
behind their peers and experience an achievement gap throughout their schooling years.
Despite mounting evidence that greater investment in early childhood education reduces costs
at later stages of education, most societies continue to prioritize tertiary, secondary, and
primary education over early childhood education. Rates of enrollment in early childhood
education vary across the world, and program quality varies as well. 3- to 4-year-olds were
involved in formal education compared to over 90% of the same-age children in France,
Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
With increasing concern about the need for early childhood learning, the Lien
Foundation of Singapore commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit to study "preschool
education" on a global scale. Much evidence indicates that low-income and racial minority
students in the United States have less access to quality early childhood education than their
age peers. In the past few years, access, spending, and support for state-funded
prekindergarten programs has been growing slowly in the United States, but the progress is
mixed with some states moving boldly and others regressing. Columbia served more than
30% of 4-year-olds. At the same time, seven states offered no pre-K programs. Start, the
federally funded program that provides early childhood education for impoverished children.
Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget included an $85 million cut for Head Longitudinal
research consistently shows the long-term benefits of quality early childhood education
programs for children from impoverished families. One longitudinal study followed a group
of children who attended the High/Scope Perry Preschool Program in Ypsilanti, Michigan,
until they reached age 40. From 1962 to 1967, the researchers identified a sample of 123 low-
income African American children who had been assessed to be at high risk of school failure.
They randomly assigned 58 of these children to attend a high-quality 2-year preschool
program for 2- and 3-year-olds, while the other 65 attended no preschool program.
The teachers in the preschool program had bachelor’s degrees and education
certification. No more than eight children were assigned to a teacher, and the curriculum
emphasized giving children the opportunity to plan and carry out their own activities. The
savings came from reduced special education costs, increased taxes derived from higher
earnings, reduced public assistance costs, and reduced costs to the criminal justice system.
She estimates that in today’s context, with most children attending formal preschool, a more
realistic return is in the range of $3 to $4 for every dollar spent, still a good return on a public
expenditure.
The children who participated in the preschool program were less likely to repeat
grades, less likely to be placed in special education classes, and more likely to complete high
school. They found that the preschool program mothers earned $3,750 more per year than the
mothers whose children did not attend the program, for a total of $78,750 more over 21 years.
These two longitudinal studies investigated the impact of quality preschool education on low-
income children, but there is also preliminary evidence of the benefit of early childhood
education on all children. These programs are considered high quality because teachers are
required to have a bachelor’s degree, there are no more than 10 children per teacher, and
teachers are paid on the same scale as public-school teachers.
The researchers found that children who attended pre-K scored better on letter-word
identification, spelling, and applied problems than children of the same age who had not
attended PreK. With such evidence in hand, social workers can join with other child
advocates to build broad coalitions to educate the public about the multilevel benefits and to
push for public policy that guarantees universal quality early childhood education.
Family
Young children are sponges, soaking up information about themselves, their worlds,
and their relationships. They use their families as primary sources of information and as
models for relationships. They teach children about morality and human connectedness by
modeling honest, kind, thoughtful behavior and by reading to their children about moral
dilemmas and moral action. They help children develop emotional intelligence by modeling
how to handle strong feelings and by talking with children about the children’s strong
feelings.
They take young children on excursions in their physical worlds as well as in the
fantasy worlds found in books. They give children opportunities to perform tasks that develop
a sense of mastery. Not all parents have the same resources for the educator role or the same
beliefs about how children learn. And some parents take their role as educators too seriously,
pushing their young children into more and more structured time with higher and higher
expectations of performance.
Many of these parents are pushing their own frustrated dreams onto their young
children. The concern is that these children are deprived of time for exploration,
experimentation, and fantasy. In the contemporary era, children are moving into organized
childcare settings at earlier ages. As they do so, parents become more important as advocates
who understand their children’s needs.
The advocate role is particularly important for parents of young children with
disabilities. These parents may need to advocate to ensure that all aspects of early childhood
education programs are accessible to their children. For some children, like Ron and Rosiland
Johnson, it is the grandparent and not the parent who serves as the central figure. 2011, 7.7
million children were living with a grandparent or other relative, with 3 million of these
children being cared for primarily by that grandparent.
In 80% of the cases where children live with a grandparent, at least one of the child’s
parents is also living in the household. The literature indicates that young children often do
better under the care of grandparents than in other types of homes. However, children like
Ron and Rosiland, who are parented by their grandparents, must often overcome many
difficult emotions. These children struggle with issues of grief and loss related to loss of their
parent and feelings of guilt, fear, embarrassment, and anger.
These feelings may be especially strong for young children who feel they are
somehow responsible for the loss of their parent. Although children in this age group can
label their feelings, their ability to discuss these feelings with any amount of depth is very
limited. In addition, grandparents may feel unsure about how to talk about the situation with
their young grandchildren. Professional intervention for the children is often recommended.
Some mental health practitioners have had success providing group sessions that help
grandparents gain control over their grandchildren’s behavior, resolve clashes in values
between themselves and their grandchildren, and help grandparents avoid overindulgence and
set firm limits.
Childhood
Poverty, White households lived with food insecurity, compared to 34% of children in
Black, non-Hispanic households and 29% of children in Hispanic households. Homelessness,
Homeless children are sick more often, are exposed to more violence, and experience more
emotional and behavioral problems and more delayed development than low-income housed
children. Families experiencing homelessness have often faced a range of risks, adversities,
and problems before becoming homeless. Like all parents, homeless parents want to provide
their children with necessities. Being homeless presents dramatic barriers and challenges for
parents, who too often lose the ability to provide essentials for their children, including
shelter, food, and access to education.
Homeless parents need be involved with a meaningful social support system that links
them to organizations and professionals in the community who might offer resources and
options that support them to engage in effective parenting. In families staying in family
emergency shelters the summer before a young child’s kindergarten or first-grade year,
parental support of competence and resilience was associated with the child’s positive peer
relationships and school performance.
Ineffective Discipline
Discipline is the methods a parent uses to teach and socialize children toward
acceptable behavior. Parents often struggle with how forceful to be in response to undesired
behavior. Children reared under an authoritarian parenting style have been found to be
withdrawn, anxious, hostile, and moody and to have difficulty managing stress. Baumrind
considered the authoritative parenting style, in which parents are warm and sensitive to the
child’s needs but remain firm in their expectations that children follow standards of behavior,
to be the most desirable approach to discipline and behavior management.
Authoritative parents explain and encourage discussion about rules, and when rules
are violated, they explain what the child did wrong and respond with actions that are closely
connected to the misdeed. Baumrind suggested that many children lack the self-regulation to
limit their own behavior, and research indicates that permissive parenting is associated with
socioemotional immaturity and poor self-regulatory capacity. Children reared from the
permissive parenting orientation tend to be impulsive, rebellious, and bossy and show low
persistence in pursuing tasks. Smiths’ style of parenting probably fits here. Certainly, Terri
Smith’s behavior mirrors behavior exhibited by children reared with the permissive style.
Baumrind’s typology of parenting styles has been the building block of much
theorizing and research on parenting styles and child outcomes. Stephen Greenspan questions
Baumrind’s suggestion that authoritative parenting is the best parenting. Greenspan proposes
that another dimension of parenting should be added to Baumrind’s two dimensions of
warmth and control. He calls this dimension tolerance and recommends a style of parenting
called harmonious.
Baumrind’s parenting typology may be a good model for understanding parenting in
White, middle-class families but may not work as well for understanding parenting in other
cultural groups. Strong support has not been found for Baumrind’s parenting typology in
research on Latino parenting styles. Latino parenting as permissive and others have described
it as authoritarian.
Greenspan, suggests that another dimension of parenting should be added to
Baumrind’s two-dimension model of warmth and control. They call this dimension
"autonomy granting," which they describe as allowing children autonomy of individual
expression in the family. In their preliminary research, which involved direct observation of
56 first-generation Latino American families, Domenech Rodriguez et al. Found that the
majority used a protective parenting style but had different expectations for male and female
children.
There seems to be merit in adding the dimension of autonomy granting, because it
may help to capture the parenting styles of cultural groups that are less individualistic than
European American culture. A relatively long line of research has questioned the
appropriateness of applying Baumrind’s model to understand African American parenting,
and the issues are proving to be complex. Much of this research has looked at the use of
physical discipline, with the finding that physical discipline causes disruptive behaviors in
White families but not Black families. White children, physical discipline exacerbated
impulsive, aggressive, and noncompliant behaviors for children who had exhibited behavioral
problems at an early age.
However, they also found that parental warmth protected against later problems in
White children but seemed to exacerbate early problems in Black children. The researchers
concluded that professionals must recognize that parenting may need to take different forms
in different communities. Low-income parents have been noted to be more authoritarian than
more economically advantaged parents. Using observation methods, one research team found
that the socioeconomic differences in parenting styles is not that straightforward, however.
They found that middle-class parents routinely use subtle forms of control while, at
the same time, trying to instill autonomy in their children. Their children spend a large
portion of their time under adult supervision, in one activity or another. The researchers also
found that low-income parents tend to value conformity but allow their school-aged children
to spend considerable leisure time in settings where they do not have adult supervision,
consequently affording them considerable autonomy. Findings from studies about punishment
and young children indicate that punishment is often used in response to early childhood
behavior that is age appropriate.
As you can see, there are many controversies about effective parenting for young
children, and this is an issue about which parents and professionals often have strong
feelings. Research is beginning to recognize that different parenting styles may work well in
different developmental niches. Rich Harris and Steven Pinker argue that behavioral traits
have such a strong genetic component that we should avoid overemphasizing the role of
parenting style in behavioral outcomes. Parents are a very large part of that experience
throughout life, but in early childhood, other people come to be a part of the context of
ongoing brain development.
Recent research on epigenetics is uncovering how environments affect gene
expression and providing convincing evidence of the important role of the social environment
for turning genes on or silencing them. " In an era of great advancements in the biological
sciences, epigenetic research is reminding us that "social workers can have their biggest
influence through social policies that work hand in hand with nature to prevent the
development of many of the problems that plague our nation and world.
Divorce and Parental Relationship Dissolution
At age 4, Jack Lewis is one of many young children adjusting to parental divorce or
relationship dissolution. Jack’s parents were married, but nonmarital parental relationships
are even more vulnerable to dissolution than marital relationships. In the United States,
divorce rates are highest among couples with lower income, less education, and early
relationship formation. Divorce and relationship dissolution is a process, not a single event.
In the case of the Lewis family, Jack’s father began to disengage from the family as he
developed another romantic relationship, but it was Jack’s mother who started the process of
legal divorce. The divorce and relationship dissolution process must be negotiated in multiple
dimensions, including legal divorce, physical divorce, financial divorce, emotional and social
divorce, and parental divorce. Where there was a legal partnership contract, legal divorce
must be negotiated in the legal system. The legal divorce process is an adversarial one that
often fuels animosity between the partners as it appears to be doing with Jack Lewis’s
parents.
At least some member, and maybe all, of the family will have to relocate. Where there
are children or other co-residing family members, decisions must be made about who resides
with whom. Partners must disentangle their financial interdependence and resolve issues
about fairness in the distribution of financial resources. On average, women’s family income
declines about one third after divorce, and the economic consequences of relationship
dissolution are also high for women in cohabiting relationships.
No matter who initiates the process of divorce or relationship dissolution, emotional
and social divorce is stressful. All involved family members experience a sense of loss, and
many experience anger and blame. Jack Lewis misses his father, but for his mother, Joyce,
the sense of loss is covered with anger and blame. Social networks must be renegotiated.
New friendships are often formed and social networks reorganized. Today, both
parents often share legal custody and the child resides primarily with one parent. When
custody decisions are disputed, general practice recently has been that each parent’s
postdivorce parenting responsibilities should be based on their predivorce involvement with
the child. Joint custody, both legal and physical, has become more common.
Ongoing contact between Jack Lewis and his father is uncertain in the early days of
the legal divorce process. Family studies researchers have been particularly interested in how
children are affected by divorce. A long line of research has found that children who
experience a parental breakup have lower educational achievement, lower levels of
psychological well-being, and more problems in their own marriages. Recently, however,
family researchers have taken a new look at this research and concluded that it fails to
adequately represent the wide variety of outcomes for children in both married and divorced
families.
They note that most of the research has focused on averages and not looked at the
differences within each group. They further note that the average reported differences
between children of divorced families.
They further note that the average reported differences between children of divorced
families and children of married families are quite small. One of the most cited findings is
that 20% of children whose parents are divorced experience behavioral or mental health
problems, compared to 10% of children whose parents are married. Another way of looking
at this is that four out of five children whose parents are divorced do not experience such
negative outcomes. One research team who has studied the diversity of outcomes for children
after divorce found that 18% declined on measures of well-being, 14%improved, and 68%
had no change.
Longitudinal studies have also found that children whose parents divorce have often
begun to have behavioral and academic problems before the divorce, like the problems found
in children living in high-conflict married families. There is consistent evidence, however,
that the economic well-being of women and children declines after divorce. Researchers are
finding that fathers are more involved in their children’s lives after a breakup than was the
case in past eras. They found that the largest group of fathers had stable and frequent
involvement with the children over the 12-year period, 32% had low involvement during the
12 years, 23%were highly involved in the years following the breakup with declining
involvement over time, and 8% increased their involvement during the 12 years. Fathers who
were active in child-rearing while in the home are likely to stay involved after divorce or
relationship dissolution.
Community Violence
Research indicates that about 38% of children and adolescents witness violence in
their communities, and the number is much higher in some urban neighborhoods. Community
violence can be a pervasive aspect of family and neighborhood life. One study of urban
mothers of young children enrolled in Head Start found that three quarters of the mothers
reported witnessing drug transactions and violence in their neighborhood, including
incidences such as witnessing people being physically assaulted, robbed, or threatened with a
weapon. Children exposed to chronic community violence show symptoms of anxiety and
PTSD, including exaggerated startle response, difficulty eating and sleeping, and cognitive
problems.
They may have trouble regulating their emotions and are more prone than other
children to be aggressive and disruptive. As we can see with Irma Velasquez from Chapter 3,
a parental sense of helplessness about community violence can interfere with a caregiver’s
ability to promote healthy child development. Some children are more resilient in the face of
community violence than others. Community interventions can help to build such resources
for children in endangered neighborhoods.
For many children living in violent neighborhoods, the death of a close friend or
family member is commonplace. Living so intimately with death has grave effects on young
children. In one study of young children whose older siblings had been victims of homicide,
the surviving siblings showed symptoms of depression, anxiety, psychosocial impairment,
and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Domestic Violence
Research indicates that men are as likely as women to be victims of intimate violence,
but women are more likely to miss work, report depression, be injured, receive death threats,
and be killed by their partners. Some suggest that physical violence between siblings may be
the most common form of family violence. Domestic violence may take the form of verbal,
psychological, or physical abuse, although physical abuse is the form most often implied. It is
difficult to produce accurate statistics about the amount of family violence because what
happens in families is usually "behind closed doors," but the Childhood Domestic Violence
Association estimates that 5 million children witness domestic violence each year in the
United States.
Almost three decades of international research indicate that young children experience
serious negative physical, emotional, cognitive, and social impacts on development from
involvement in domestic violence. Children are particularly vulnerable to neurobiological and
attachment disruptions from experiencing domestic violence from ages 3 to 6. Children often
witness the violence between parents, but they may also be accidently hurt or they may
attempt to intervene. Children who witness violence have the same negative developmental
outcomes as children who are victims of physical abuse.
In a study of 60 children ages 1 to 6 who witnessed domestic violence, most children
showed clinical signs of both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Domestic
violence does not always affect children’s long-term development, however. Relationship
between the child and the mother, assuming the mother is the victim.
Child Maltreatment
Child Protective Services in the United States in 2015 involving 7.2 million children.
An estimated 1,670 children died because of abuse and/or neglect, and most of these victims
were younger than 3 years of age. The most prevalent forms of child maltreatment include
neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and psychological maltreatment. Exhibit 4.6 provides
an overview of research findings about risk factors for child maltreatment at these four
ecological levels.
Child maltreatment creates risks to all aspects of growth and development, as shown
in Exhibit 4.7, but children ages birth to 6 are at highest risk of having long-lasting damage.
In their longitudinal research of 180 children born into poverty, Sroufe et al. Found that
young children who had been physically abused as toddlers had higher levels of negativity,
noncompliance, and distractibility than other children.
Development
At the community level, preschools, religious programs, and the like may help to
enhance physical and cognitive skills, self-esteem, and social development. Positive parent–
child relationship. A positive relationship with at least one parent helps children to feel secure
and nurtured. Remember from Chapter 3 that a sense of security is the foundation on which
young children build initiative during the early childhood years.
Even if Jack Lewis never has contact with his father, Charles, a positive relationship
with Joyce, his mother, can mediate this loss. In early childhood, children need the
opportunity to take initiative but also need firm limits, whether they are established by
parents or grandparents or someone else who adopts the parent role. Effective parenting
promotes self-efficacy and self-esteem and provides young children with a model of how they
can take initiative within boundaries. A high level of self-worth may allow young children to
persist in mastery of skills despite adverse conditions.
Johnson’s development despite the disruptions in their lives. In addition, research
indicates that self-esteem is a protective factor against the effects of child abuse. Terri Smith
needs assistance in developing this personal protective factor. Even in young children, a high
IQ serves as a protective factor. For example, young children with high IQs were less likely
to be affected by maternal psychopathology.
