10 Emotional Development in Middle Childhood
Chapter Objectives
After this chapter, you should be able to:
- Describe the continuum of development of emotional skills during middle childhood
- Discuss Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
- Discuss childhood mental health issues
- Explain resilience
- Describe self-understanding, motivation self-efficacy in middle childhood
- Explain gender identity
INTRODUCTION
As children get older their experiences allow them to develop a more realistic understanding of themselves, including both their strengths and weaknesses. This developing self-concept is influenced by messages they receive from their peers, their family, other adults in their lives such as teachers and coaches, and the media.
Continuum of Development
The Continuum of Development identifies several root emotional skills that are emerging in children between 5 and 8 years of age. During these years, children are solidifying their self-concept, identity and self-esteem. They start to define themselves by comparing themselves to others and are becoming more aware of stereotypes. They are better able to recognize and understand complex emotions such as gratitude, jealousy and anxiety. They now have a variety of strategies for managing their emotions, such as self-talk, empathy and perspective-taking. They often take great pride in their work and their new-found abilities to persevere and solve problems (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014a).
Between the ages of 9 and 12, improving metacognitive skills (the awareness of their own thought processes) enable children to understand their emotional selves. They are also better at anticipating future outcomes which allows them to be better prepared for managing emotional situations. However, tweens can still struggle to manage their emotions if they feel overwhelmed by strong emotions such as frustration or by the demands of the situation (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014a).
Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
Kohlberg (1963, as cited in Paris, Ricardo, Raymond, & Johnson, 2021) built on the work of Piaget and was interested in finding out how our moral reasoning changes as we get older. He wanted to find out how people decide what is right and what is wrong. Just as Piaget believed that children’s cognitive development follows specific patterns, Kohlberg (1984, as cited in Paris, Ricardo, Raymond, & Johnson, 2021) argued that we learn our moral values through active thinking and reasoning, and that moral development follows a series of stages. Kohlberg’s six stages are generally organized into three levels of moral reasoning. To study moral development, Kohlberg looked at how children (and adults) respond to moral dilemmas.
One of Kohlberg’s best-known moral dilemmas is the Heinz dilemma: In Europe, a person was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save them. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently d