HDF 201 EARLY AND LATE CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT 3 (2+1)

THEORY:
Sl. Title of the chapter No. of
No classess
1 Concept, significance, characteristics of early and late childhood, developmental 2
tasks of early and late childhood. purposes of developmental tasks, importance of
mastering the developmental tasks, factors influencing mastery of developmental
tasks
2 Physical development; developmental laws, Major aspects of physical growth: body 3
size – height and weight, body proportion, body built, bones, muscles and fat, teeth.
factors influencing, hazards; mortality, illness, physical defects, congenital defects,
malnutrition, disturbances in homeostasis.
3 Motor development; principles, common motor skills of childhood-hand skills and 3
leg skills, important contributions of motor development, motor fitness components,
functions of motor skills, essentials in learning motor skills. handedness;
advantages of right handedness, left handedness and awkwardness, factors
influencing, hazards.
4 Emotional development; role of maturation, role of learning, characteristics, pattern 5
of emotional development, methods of learning emotions, common emotions in
early and late childhood- fear, shyness, embarrassment, worry, anxiety, anger,
jealousy, grief, curiosity, joy, pleasure, delight. Emotional dominance, balance,
control and catharsis, factors influencing and hazards.
5 Language development; Motor and mental aspects, common methods of learning 3
skills, essentials in learning to speak, major tasks in learning to speak, vocabulary,
grammar, and metalinguistic awareness, reading, bilingualism, speech improvement in
late childhood, common speech disorders, factors influencing and hazards.
6 Social development; socialization process, essentials of socialization, social, 5
gregarious, unsocial, antisocial, common social and unsocial behaviors. Function of
group play in early childhood, gangs formation, characteristics, Social acceptance
Factors influencing and hazards. Common behavioral problems,
7 Cognitive development; importance of cognition, Piaget’s stages; sensory motor 4
intelligence, conceptual intelligence, Pre operational stage - symbolic function
-Egocentrism and Animism. intuitive thought -centration and conservation Concrete
Operational –classification, reversibility- negation compensation, reciprocity.
Centration to decertration- class inclusion conservation, attention, perception,
seriation, spatial reasoning, distance, memory. Creativity- convergent thinking,
divergent thinking, factors influencing.
8 Moral development; moral concepts, Piaget’s stages in moral development, 3
Kohlberg’s stages. Essentials in learning morality; role of laws and customs,
conscience, guilt and shame and social interaction. Discipline; meaning, need and
essentials of disciplinary techniques. Factors influencing and hazards
 9 Personality development; pattern, components - self concept, traits, determinants. 3
10 Creativity; meaning characteristics, expression and conditions that foster creativity, 2
hazards
11 Gender role development; Meaning, gender role stereo types, stages in learning 2
gender role stereotypes kinds- traditional sex role, male and female, egalitarian sex role
stereotypes-male and female, hazards.
12 Play development; characteristics of play, stages in play development, common play 2
activities of childhood, common forms of amusements contributions of play to children’s
development, factors influencing, hazards.
13 Pubertal changes in late childhood; meaning, characteristics, stages, development of 3
primary and secondary sex characteristics, physical and psychological implications.
Total no. of Classes 40

SCHEDULE OF PRACTICALS

Sl No Topics No. of Practicals

1 Observations and recording of developments in early childhood using
structured questionnaire:
a) Physical development 1
b) Motor (gross & fine) development 2
c) Cognitive development 2
d) Language development 1
e) Socio emotional development 1
2 Assessment of development in late childhood using standardized tools
a) Physical development - anthropometry
b) Cognitive development 1
c) Social development - socio metric status 1
d) Emotional development - fears 2
e) Personality development - self-concept 1
Interpretation and report writing 1
1
3 Interviewing school children regarding interests and hobbies 2
4 Content analysis of primary school text books regarding gender role 1
development
5 Elicitation of media consumption in school children 1
6 Assessment creativity in school children 1
7 Observation of behavioral problems in school children 1
TOTAL 20

Importance of different stages life :

Each child’s growth pattern is unique and special. No two children ever develop at the same rate
accept identical twins. Regardless of how short or long the total life span may be, it falls into ‘stages’ or
‘periods’. According to Smart and Smart (1971), a stage is a period during which certain changes occur.
Each stage is built upon the foundation of the development of the previous stages. Each stage is
designated according to the child’s activities during that period. Irrespective of racial and cultural
differences of human growth follows a general developmental pattern of deferent stages.

Stages of growth and developmental as interpreted by Smart and Smart (1971):

Stage Age

1. Prenatal - Intrauterine (0-9 month)

Zygotic - 0-14 days
Embryo - 14 days - 2 months
Foetus - 2 months – birth
2. Neonates - birth – 1 month
3. Infants - 1 month – 2 years
Infancy- 1 month – 1 year
Toddlers - 1 year – 2 years
4. Childhood - 2 – 12 years
Early child hood - 2 – 6 years
Late childhood - 6 – 12 years
5. Adolescence - 12 – 21 years
Preadolescent - 10 – 12 for girls, 10 – 13 for boys
Late adolescent - 12 – 20 for girls, 13 – 21 for boys
6. Adult hood - 20 – 60 years
7. Old age - 60 years onwards

Childhood begins when the helpless of babyhood is over at approximately the age of two years and
extends to the time when the child becomes sexually mature at approximately 12-13 years for the
average girl and 13-14 years for the average boy. After the child has become sexually mature, he is
known as an ‘adolescent’.

Today, it is widely recognized that childhood should be subdivided into two periods. Early
childhood and late childhood.

Early childhood extends from 2-6 years and late childhood from 6 years to the time, when the child
becomes sexually mature.

Early childhood is marked off by the end of babyhood, the age when helplessness is practically a
thing of the past and is being replaced by growing independence and at the other, by entrance into
school. Become 6 years of age marks the beginning of the compulsory school period in our culture. It
serves as a convenient dividing line between early and late childhood. This dividing line is significant
because, as the child leaves the home and enters the school, new pressures and new expectation results
in marked changes in pattern of behaviors, in attitudes, in interests and in values on the part of the child.
Significance of childhood years:

The childhood years can be a delightful time for a family. A mother and father are lucky to find
time to enjoy those years with the child.

- The childhood years are the time for companionship.

- These are the time for shared experiences at home, Youngsters have their moments of waking to
work along with parents helping in cleaning, cooking etc.
- The preschool years are the time for words for stories and for music – These are the years for
listening to children and for talking with children.
- These are the years where they asks question about our world and give parents the most magnificent
teaching time for explaining and interpreting.
- These years are wonderful for youngsters to come to know their wider family (grand parents uncles,
aunties and cousins etc). At the same time children need friends of their own age. Their increasing
strong social drive is one of the main reasons for entering to nursery school.
- Preschoolers are in between the age of not totally dependent and not totally independent. They are
mixture of both.
- It is easy to underestimate them and to expect too little physical challenge.
- During these years parents has to guide and safe guard each and every activity of the child.
- Child is ready to learn everything- marked by an expanded vocabulary, a larger attention span totally
preoccupied with activities of play of fantasy.

Characteristics of Early childhood

There are cretin characteristics of early childhood which make it distinctive. Early childhood is the -

1. Preschool age
2. The pre-gang age
3. The age of exploration
4. The problem age
5. A less appealing age

1. Early childhood is the preschool age: Educators refers to early childhood as the ‘preschool age’ –
the period preceding the entrance into school. A growing number of young children, it is true are
growing to nursery schools and kindergartens, but these are very different from formal schools. Whether
the young child goes to preschool or remains at home, the pressure and expectations to learn certain
things will be very different from those often he enters school.
2. Early childhood is ‘pre-gang age’: To the psychologists, early childhood is ‘pre-gang age’, the time
when the child is learning the foundation of social behaviors which will prepares him for the more
highly organized social life. He will be required to adjust to when he enters first grade in school, by this
time he will have the social characteristics of sympathy, friendly, cooperative, sharing, responsibility
and leadership.
3. Early childhood is the age of exploration: Having acquired a workable control his own body
during the first 2 years of life, the child is now ready to explore his environment. He wants to know
what his environment is, how it works, how it feels and how he can be a part of it. This includes people
as well as inanimate objects.
4. Early childhood is problem age: Most problems that parents face with babies centers around
their physical care. With the down of childhood the child’s parents many behavior problems for his
parents to cope with. He is developing a distractive personality and is demanding an independence,
which in most cases, he is incapable of handling successfully. A young child is often an obstinate,
stubborn, disobedient, negativistic, antagonistic individual. He has often frequent tempertantrums, he is
bothered by nightmares at night and irrational fears during the day and he also suffers from jealousy.
5. Early childhood is a less appealing age: During early child hood, body proportions changes and
they will lose their ‘baby look’. Usually the child’s head is broader in relation to its body length, by the
end of 6 years, he may start losing milk teeth also. They may reduce his beauty or make him look ugly.
Due to exploration nature, these children are least bothered about cleanness and personal hygiene.

Characteristics of School age Period (Late childhood):

1) It is known as ‘Elementary school age”- Educators.
2) It is known as ‘Gang age’ – Psychologists / Sociologists.
3) It is known as stage of concrete operations –Psychologists
4) It is known as pre pubertal age- Developmentists.
5) It is known as ‘trouble some age’- Parents
6) It is also regarded as ‘critical period’ in the achievement drive- underachievers or overachievers-
educators.
7) Late childhood also known as ‘creative age’- children engage more in creative activities-.
Psychologists
8) Psychologist also called late childhood as ‘play age’- children’s interest and activities increases.
9) Late childhood also recognized as ‘smart’ or ‘big in turn’ age- parents
Children thinks that, they know everything and not hesitate to inform others, of his superior
knowledge ‘big in turn’ because he demand more independence than what his parents are willing to give
him.
10) Late childhood period also regarded as shift years - There will be shift in upward directions in
capacities of children. Child gain more experience in physical, cognitive, social, emotional changes, uses
language as a tool to broaden his intellectual and social abilities.

Developmental tasks of childhood years:

 It is a well known fact that, in every culture, people are expected is learn some skills and
behaviors that are essential for personal and social adjustment. These social expectations are known as
‘Developmental tasks’. Havighurst has defined a developmental tasks as a “ task which arise at or about
certain period in the life of an individual. Successful achievement of which leads to his happiness and
success with later tasks while failure leads to unhappiness in the individual, disapproval by society and
difficulty with later tasks.

Some developmental tasks arise mainly as a result of physical maturation (learning to crawl,
sit, walk etc) others are developed mainly from cultural pressures of society (learning to read or
learning appropriate sex roles), still others grow out of the personal values and aspirations of the
individual (choosing and preparing for a vocation). Most of the developmental tasks arise from above
three forces working together.

Developmental tasks of the early childhood: Given by Havighurst.

1. Learning to walk
2. Learning to take solid food
3. Learning to talk
4. Learning to control the elimination of body wastes
5. Learning sex differences and sexual modesty
6. Forming simple concepts and learning language to describe social and physical reality.
7. Learning to read – Getting ready to read
8. Learning to relate oneself emotionally to parents sibling and other people
9. Learning to distinguish right and wrong and developing a conscience.

1. Learning to walk: Between the age of 9-15 months most of children are biologically ready to
walk. The bones, muscles, and nerves of their leg and trunk have developed to the point, where they can
perform this task. The child then learns to walk with varying amounts of stimulation and assistance from
other people. Once the basic skills are mastered, he learn during later years to run, jump and skip.
2. Learning to take solid foods: The baby’s digestive system gradually grows ready to digest and
assimilate a variety of foods and his chewing apparatus develops to the point, where he can handle and
take solid foods.
3. Learning to talk: That is to learn make meaningful sounds and to communicate with other
people through the use of these words.
4. Learning to control the elimination of body wastes: That is to learn to urinate and defecate at
socially acceptable times and places – The development of nerves that govern voluntary urination is not
complete until somewhere between the ages of 2-4 years.
The child can be regarded as trained for toilet habits when he 1) recognizes the need to urinate or
defecate and has voluntary control over these acts. 2) Accepts responsibility for keeping himself clean
and dry. The evidence is that these conditions are seldom, met before the age of 2 or 21/2 years and that
bladder control at night is not achieved by the average child until his fourth birthday.
5. Learning to sex differences and sexual modesty: The child is made aware of the sexual
differences of the human species from the beginning only. He observes behavior differences between
sexes and very early they taught to behave like a boy or a girl. Very soon children learn that there are
anatomical differences between boys and girls.
6. Forming concepts and learning language to discribe social and physical reality: children
learn that certain images and sounds for people who look after him and meet his needs. He learns that
particular perception can be grouped and called by one name such as, ‘round’-after seeing plate, roti,
ball, coin etc. or ‘animals’ after seeing cat, dog, cow, butterfly, horse etc.
When the child’s thinking system is ready he must have enough experiences and the parents /
teacher should enable him to form a stock of concepts and learn the names of them on this basis his
later mental development is built.
7. Getting ready to read: To learn that signs can stand for words, to discriminate among a variety
of signs and to acquire a vocabulary of at least several thousands of words. With this child’s eyes should
also be biologically ready to focus on a small visual object, then more slightly and refocus and focus on
to relatively small print without eye strain. With most of the children the eyes are biologically ready for
reading by the age of six or earlier.
Number of children have learned to read as early as the age of 3 and this is because of
stimulation, that the child received during his early years. i.e. when the child is given with the
experience in observing visual forms, perception of forms such as the symbols of language -that causes
nervous system to develop in this respect and thus the reading may develop early with this kind of
stimulated environment.
8. Learning to relate oneself emotionally to parents sibling and other people: One of the most
difficult developmental task of the early childhood. The emotional relationships that existed during
babyhood must be replaced by more mature ones. The reason for this is that, relationships to others in
babyhood are based on babyish dependence on others to meet their basic needs, especially their need for
affection. Young children however, must learn to give as well as to receive affection. In short they must
learn to be outer bound instead of self bound.
9. Learning to distinguish right and wrong: The child must learn concept of good and bad.
During the later years of early childhood he taken into himself the warning and punishing voices of his
parents and display of affection and punishment towards him. Thus the child develops the basis of his
conscience upon which later structure and values and moral characters will built.

Developmental tasks of late childhood:

According to Havighurst’s Developmental tasks during late childhood are.
1. Learning physical skills necessary for ordinary games.
2. Building wholesome attitude towards oneself as a growing organism.
3. Learning to get along with age mates.
4. Beginning to develop appropriate masculine or feminine social roles.
5. Development of fundamental skills in reading, writing and calculating.
6. Developing a conscience, a sense of morality and a scale of values.
7. Developing attitudes towards social groups and institutions.
8. Achieving personal independence.

Purposes of Developmental tasks :

Developmental tasks serve three very useful purposes.
1. They act as guidelines to help parents and teachers to know what society expects of them at given
ages. For.eg. parents can be guided in teaching the necessary adjustments that are need for children
to enter to the school and for teacher, guided in acquiring the adjustment skills during play.
2. Developmental tasks motivate children to do what the social group expects them to do at certain ages
during their lives.
3. Developmental tasks show, parents and teachers what will be expected of children in the immediate
and remote future i.e. what they will be expected to do when they reach their next stage of
development. For eg, when children starts playing with other age mates, it alerts parents that-
teaching the importance of popular games that older children play.

Importance of Mastering the Developmental Tasks :

Children who are precocious in mastering the developmental tasks set by the social group are
rewarded by social approval and self-approval. Both of these contribute happiness, social approval, in
addition, puts children in line for leadership role, because they are judged by their age mates to the
superior in skills and general maturity, self-approval contributes to self-confidence and provides strong
motivation to live up to social and self-expectation.

In spite of the importance of mastering the developmental tasks appropriate for the child’s age
and level of development, not-all children do.

This failure has 3 serious consequences :

1. It makes the child’s feel inferior, and this often leads to unhappiness.
2. It results in social disapproval, which is often accompanied by social rejection. The child is
considered as immature or babyish.
3. It makes the mastery of new developmental tasks difficult. Each year the child will lag behind and
further behind.

Factors influencing Mastery of Developmental tasks :

A number of factors influence the mastery developmental tasks. Some acts as obstacles to this
mastery and some did it. They are
Aids to mastering :

1. Accelerated physical development

2. Strength and energy
3. Above average intelligence.
4. Guidance from parents and teachers in learning
5. A strong motivation to learn
6. Creativity accompanied by a willingness to be deferent

Obstacles to mastery :

1. Retardation in developmental level whether physical or mental- Weak physique

1. Poor health resulting in low energy and strength levels
2. A handicapping physical defects
3. Lack of opportunity to learn what the social group excepts
4. Lack of guidance in learning
5. Lack of motivation to lean
6. Fear of being different

.
 Growth and development
The terms growth and development have different meanings, but many people use the terms
interchangeably, in reality they are different.

‘Growth’ refers to qualitative changes indicating change in size, shape and proportions of the
body parts. Not only does the child become larger physically, but the size and structure of the internal
organs and the brain increases. As a result of the growth of the brain, the child has a greater capacity for
learning for remembering and for reasoning. The child grows mentally as well as physically.

‘Development’ by contrast refers to qualitative and quantitative changes. However, Development

includes processes like maturation and learning, which are quantitative by nature. Development may be
defined as a progressive series of orderly, coherent changes. Progressive, means, changes are directional
that may lead forward rather than backward. Orderly and coherent means, that there is a definite
relationship between the changes taking place and those that proceed or will follow them.

Physical development in preschool and late childhood

To get a complete picture of children’s development, it is essential to know how they are
developing physically as well as psychologically. The reason for this is that physical development
influences children’s behaviors both directly and indirectly. Directly physical development determines
what children can do, e.g., if children are well developed, for their age, they will be able to complete on
equal terms with their age mates in sports and games. If not they will be handicapped in competition
with them and may be excluded from their peer group.

Indirectly, physical development influences attitudes towards self and others, these in turn, are
reflected in the kind of adjustment children make. Children who are markedly over weight for eg, soon
recognize that they cannot keep up the pace set by their thin age mates. This often leads to feeling of
personal inadequacy. In addition, their age mates refuse to play with them because they are ‘too slow’.
These feelings will play havoc with children’s developing personalities.

Physical Growth Cycle: Physical growth does not occur at a regular rate but rather in periods, phases
or waves of different velocities, sometimes rapidly and sometimes slowly.

Growth cycles are orderly and predicable, though the tempo varies from child to child, with
some children growing at a slower rate and others at a normal or rapid rate. Studies on growth have
shown that there are four distinct periods- two characterized by slow rate and two by rapid growth.
During the prenatal and for the first 6 months of postnatal life growth is at a rapid rate. By the end of
first postnatal year growth begins to show down and is followed by a period of slow and relatively even
growth up to the time of puberty which is between 8-12 years. From then until 15 or 16 years there is
rapid growth called the puberty growth spurt. The growth attained in this fourth growth cycle is
maintained until old age but there may be increase in weight.
Late childhood is a period of slow and relatively uniform growth until the changes of puberty begin,
appropriately two years before the child becomes sexually mature at which time growth speeds up
markedly.

Major aspects of physical growth :

1. Body size – height and weight

2. Body proportion
3. Body built
4. Bones
5. Muscles and Fat
6. Teeth

Body Size: Body size is measured in terms of height and weight. Which follows similar pattern of
development- with slow gains in one parallel by slow gains in the other and vice versa- the total growth
in height from birth to maturity is less than the total growth in weight. The total increase in height is
approximately 3 1/2 fold and total increase in weight is approximately 20 fold. Increase in body size for
boys and girls is difficult at different ages.

Weight: During early childhood years, i.e. second years onwards the child gains 3-5 pounds (1.7 kg)
annually. At 5 years, the typical child weight approximately 5 times birth weight and 6 years, children
should weigh approximately 7 times as much as they did at birth. (3x7 = 21 kgs).
Among school children, increase in weight ranging from 2-3 kg annually. The average 11 years
old girl’s weight is 33.5 kg and the average boy of the same age weigh 32 kg. The total increase in
weight from birth to puberty is about 20 folds.

Height: For 2 years, height increases rapidly. The child measured about 32-34 inches (72-78 cm) tall,
and by 5 years birth height has doubled. At the age of 6 years the child measured amends 46.6 (107-108
cm) inches approximately.

Among school children, the annual increase in height is 2-3 inches (5-6 cm) until the onset of
puberty. In girls the puberty spurt is between 12-13 years where as in boy it was one two years later than
this i.e. 13-15 years. The average 11 years old girl is 58 inches (142 cm) tall and the average boy of the
same age 57.5 inches (147 cm) tall. The total increase in height from birth to puberty is about 3.5 folds.

Variation in Height and Weight is observed due to factors like nutrition, health, SES taters as
well as prenatal conditions. Development of body does not advance in a straight line.

Body Proportion : During early childhood, body proportion change and the ‘baby look’ disappears.
The change in proportion follow the law of developmental direction.
The young child’s head is broader in relation to its length. The arms and legs lengthens and the
hands and feet grow bigger. There are marked variation in the size and shape of the feet. During early
childhood, the boys have slightly longer feet then girl. The arches of the feet are well developed by the
time the child is 5 year old.
Throughout childhood, the facial features remain small. The nose is particularly small and rather
flat on the surface of the face. The mouth is proportionately too small. Because of small baby teeth.
However, there is a more pronounced chin, owing to the development of lower jaw and the neck
elongates. The soft hair of the baby is gradually replaced by hair of a coarser texture.
The trunk changes in both size and shape. The thickest body of the baby gradually becomes sock
like with no apparent waistline with rounded chest, stopping shoulder and protruding abdomen. Then
between the ages of 4-5 years there is a tendency towards a cone-shaped body with a flattened abdomen,
broader and flatter chest, a clearly indicated waistline and shoulders that are broader and more square.

Conditions responsible for changes in body proportion:

Changes in body proportion are due to asynchronous growth or split growth. This means that, the
different parts of the body have their own period of rapid and slow growth and each reaches its nature
size at its own time. Growth in all parts of the body, however, is continues and concurrent.

Growth curve for height and weight slow that except during first year of life. Children grow
more rapidly in height than weight. To express this fact, Krogman has suggested a simple rule children
grow tall before they grow heavy.

Even though there is an orderly and predictable pattern for the changes that lacks place in body
proportion throughout the growth years, there is variation in this pattern. That is way children become
increasingly dissimilar in appearance with each passing year.

Children as well as adults can be divided roughly in to 3 general types of body build determined
by the relative proportion of the different parts of their bodies. These three types of body build are.

1. Endomorph – round, soft body, short neck, small hands, fat, have a good digestive
track, usually are good natured, relaxed, sociable and communicative.
2. Mesomorph - square, firm body with hard muscles, very active, energetic, assertive,
noisy and aggressive at times.
3. Ectomorph - spindly (long & slender) body, delicate, usually look tensed, inhabited and
restrained type, prefers to to noise and company.

There are generally slightly sex differences in body build during the early year of childhood. Boys
show a greater tendency to have mesomorphic builds than girls while girls tend to have either
echomorphic or endomorphic builds.

Bones: Bone development consists of growth in bone size, change in the number of bones and change in
their composition. Bone development is more rapid during first year of life and relatively slow up to the
time of puberty. Ossification proceeds at different rates for different parts of the body. Ossification of
fasteners computer at the age of 18 months to 2 years and ossification of long bones of the legs occur till
puberty.

Ossification is largely depends upon the secretion of a hormone from the thyroid glands. A
difference of the hormone will delay ossification- there is also a close relationship between ossification
nutrition. Directly difference may cause inadequate manacles and have delayed affrication. (Bow leg in
used may due to this).

Importance of ossification: Because bones of the babies are soft, they can be early deformed. The
shape of the head, for eg, can be flattened if babies spend most of their sleep time on their backs. Or the
chest can be flattened if they sleep time on their backs. Or the chest can be flattened if they sleep too
long on their stomach. Even in the elementary school years, bone deformities can result from too short
shoes. Furthermore, because bones in childhood are less subject to fractures or breaks than they will be
after ossification.

Muscles and Fat

Besides the weight contributed by the bones increases in body weight comes mainly from muscles and
adipose tissue i.e fatty tissue. In the early years of childhood, adipose tissue develops more rapidly than
muscles. Children who tend toward endomorphy have more soft adipose tissue than muscular tissue.
Those who tend toward mesomorphy, have a predominance of muscle and connective tissue. And those
who incline toward ectomorphy do not have a predominance of either , the muscles are slender and the
adipose tissue is minimal.

For average person, muscle weight increases forty fold from birth to maturity. Up to 5 years of
age, the muscles grow I proportion to the increase in body weight. Then from 5 to 6 years, comes a rapid
spurt in muscles growth at which the child’s weight gain is approximately 75% muscle weight. After
this muscle growth shows to be followed by a marked spurt at puberty.

Teeth:

Between 6 months to 21-25 years of an individual develops two sets of teeth, the baby or temporary
teeth and the permanent teeth. Usually the first temporary teeth cut through the baby’s gum between the
sixth and eighth months, but the time of eruption depends upon health, heredity, nutrition. By 9 months,
the average baby has three teeth and between 2-21/2 years of age, most young children have all 20 of
their teeth.

After the temporary teeth have erupted, much activity goes on inside the gums as the permanent teeth
begin to calcify. On the average, the child at 6 years of age has 1 to 2 permanent teeth. The last four
teeth erupt between the ages of 17-25 years.

Conditions influencing variation in body size

1. Family influence: family influences are both heredity and environmental. Genetic factors make some
children fatter and thus heavier than others. Environment helps to determine whether heredity potentials
will be reached. At every age, environment has a greater influence on weight than on height.
2. Nutrition: Well nourished children are taller and reach puberty sooner than poorly nourished
children poor nourishment can present puberty and the attainment of heredity growth potentials.
3. Emotional disturbances: Persistent emotional disturbances cause as over production of adrenal
steroids which inhibit production of the pituitary growth hormone. This delays the growth spurt in late
childhood and prevents children from reaching the attainable height.
4. Sex: Boys tend to be heavier than girl, expect between the age of 12-14 years. Differences in weight
often sexual maturity are due to heavier bones and muscles of the boy.
5. Ethnicity: Variation in body size may be due to ethnic background. Typically black children and
more stander in build than white children might their height is approximately same and they came from
familiar STs background.
6. Socio-economic status: Similar aged children from homes of low socio economic status are smaller
than other group children.
7. Health: Children whose health is good and who suffer from only in frequent and minor illness tend to
be larger than children who are sick.
8. Endocrine functioning: Normal endocrine functioning results in normal size by contrast, deficiency
in the growth hormone leads to dwarfism white an excess of the growth hormone leads to gigantism.
9. Prenatal in fluencies: Unfavorable prenatal conditions due to multination, stress or excessive
smoking of the mother, tend to stated growth in the postnatal years.
10. Body build: Body build whether etomorphic, mesomorphic child. For eg. Look lighter than
endomorphic child, because of the heavier builds and greater height.

Hazards in physical development :

Some of the physical hazards of childhood have psychological as well as physical causes. In the
case of upsets in body homeostasis, for example, the cause may be physical as well as psychological.
Due to illness or due to living in as emotionally disturbed environment or tying to came up to unrealistic
parental expectations.

Most common hazards arise from child’s physical development are,

1. Mortality: During preschool years, serious illness is for less common today than in the past due to
the use of drugs and imitation against. Such childhood discuses as polio, measles, whooping cough and
mumble which formerly added to the mortality role at this age. As a result more children die from
accidents than from illness. Death due to accident decline when children approach puberty because old
children learn to be more countries.
2. Illness: From 3-6 years, the commonly called “children’s diseases – polo, measles, mumphs, rubella
(German Measles) whooping cough, chicken fox and even diphtheria and scarlet fever- are frequent
among those who have been inoculated as a protection against these diseases. Children at this time also
suffer from digestive disturbance and told of minor or major severity.
Illness prone children- Some children are illness prone children that they seen to have more
illness and tend to be sicker always- occurs due to unfavorable physiological and psychological factors.
Imaginary illness- All children at some time complain of not feeling well in order to escape from
unpleasant duty or avoid punishment.

Effects of illness: Regarding whether an illness is physical or psychological in origin, it brings changes
in development, behaviors, attitudes and personality.

3. Physical defects : Physical defects may be hereditary or they may result from enforceable prenatal
environment or an injury during birth some are caused by illness or accident. Children suffer from many
defects. Common defects reported are, dental caries, visual and auditory impairments, orthopedic,
speech defects, facial or bodily birth marks, abnormities of physique such as, crossed eyes, hunch back,
sixth finger etc.

Effects of Physical defects: Must of the children suffering from physical defects are tends to be
overprotected. They are deprived of learning opportunities and are not motivated to do things for
themselves so they make poorer social adjustments sometimes they tend be withdrawn, aggressive
which further have enforceable effects on their personality.

4. Malnutrition: Malnutrition may be caused by poverty but it more often arise from faulty eating
habits due to parental ignorance about good nutrition.

Effects of Malnutrition: Malnutrition may came stunted growth in height severe and prolonged
Malnutrition in children causes less energy level among children and are susceptible all kinds of
diseases. They tend to be depressed, irritable, undependable, unpredictable and nervous. It also affects
intellectual capacities of the child. Children who suffer from malnutrition look unhealthy.

5. Disturbances in Homeostasis: Caused by unfavorable physical and psychological conditions.

Glandular disturbance which occurs at the time of rapid physical growth i.e, at puberty. This will
increases the secretion of growth hormone- which leads to huge body i.e., ‘gigantism’.
Disturbances in Homeostasis increases blood pressure in the children. The child becomes nervous,
irritable and tense. Sleep get disturbed and child is likely to suffer from enuresis. This also leads to
awkwardness, clumsiness, distractibility and tendency towards hyperactivity.
 Motor Development in preschool and late childhood
Motor development means the development of control over bodily movements through the
coordinated activity of the nerve centers, the nerves and the muscles. This control comes from the
development of the reflexes and mass activity present at birth. Until this development occurs, the child
will remain helpless. This conditions of helplessness changes rapidly. During the first 4-5 years of life,
the child gains control over gross movements. These movements involve the large areas of the body
used in walking, running, jumping, swimming and so on. After 5 years of age, major development takes
place in the control of finer coordination, which involves the smaller muscles groups used in grasping,
throwing, catching a ball, writing and using different tools.

With normal motor development the 6 year old child will be ready to adjust to the demands of
school and to participate in the play activities of peers.

Principles of Motor development:

There are five important principles are there in motor development.

1. Motor development depends on neural and muscular maturation: Development of the different
forms of motor activity parallels the development of different areas of the nervous system. Reflexes and
mass activity presents at birth gradually developed in to simple patterns of voluntary activities which
forms the basis for motor skills.
2. Learning of skills cannot occur until the child is maturationally ready: Trying to teach the child
skilled movements before the nervous system and muscles are well developed will be waste of effort. eg.
Cycling before child is ready to walk.
3. Motor development follows a predictable pattern: Motor development follow the law of
developmental direction- There are two laws of the directional development.
1. Cepholocaudal Law: Development spreads over the body from head to foot. i.e. improvement
in structure and function comes first in head region and then in the trunk region and lastly in leg
region.
2. Proximodistal law: Development spreads from near to far-outward i.e. from the central axis of
the body towards the extremities.

As per cephalocaudal law, sequence of motor development shown first in head region, than in the
rest of body (head control, trunk control, leg control). Motor development also follow proximodistal
law. In reaching for an object, the baby uses shoulders and elbow before wrists and fingers.

4. It is possible to establish norms for motor development: Because early development follows a
predictable patterns it is possible to establish norms based on mean ages for different forms of motor
activity. These norms can be used as guidelines to enable parents and others to know what to expect at
what age. They can also used to assess normalness of a child’s development. Norms for different
patterns voluntary activity such as sitting, standing, reaching and grasping are used to assess the
intellectual development of babies.
5. There are individual differences in the rate of motor development: even through motor
development follows a pattern that is similar to all but there are individual differences in reaching
different stages.

Common motor skills of childhood:

Some motor skills are commonly found among all children in a given culture because of similar
learning experiences and similar adult expectations.
1. Hand skills : Control of the muscles of the arms, shoulders and wrists improves rapidly during
the childhood years and almost reaches the adult level of perfection by the time the child is 12 years old.
Control of the fine muscles of the fingers by contrast, develops at a slower rate. Of the many skills of
childhood, those that have been studied most commonly are self feeding skills, self dressing skills, self
gromming skills, writing, copying, ball throwing and catching and block building. All these studies,
resulted in age norms at which different skills are mastered.

These hand skills are learned and developed earlier than leg skills. Hand skills are more in
number than leg skills.

2. Leg skills: After babies reach 18 months of age motor development in the leg consists primarily of
the perfection of walking and the acquisition of related skills. Before babies are 2 years old, they can
walk side ways and backwards. They can stand on one foot with help and a year later without help.
Between fifth and sixth years, they can walk well enough to balance on a narrow plank or follow a chalk
line on the floor.
The leg skills that have received most scientific attention are running, hopping, skipping,
jumping, climbing, swimming, tricycling and bicycling.

Motor Development during school age period

During the elementary school tears, the child learns many new motor skills and also improves on
those previously acquired. During school age, motor abilities develops from general to specific and
provide children freedom to experiment and practice a variety of motor skills. Activities and equipments
which encourage the use of large muscles and fine muscles. eg. Jingle gym, slides, rockets etc.
Progressive gains are registered in the speed of running, accuracy, distance of throwing, height
and distance of jumping, balancing etc. a two fold increase is strength occurs between 6-11 years of age
and remarkable increase in the speed of eye-hand coordination. Throughout late childhood, boys are
superior to girls in most of the gross motor skills such as climbing, jumping, skipping, running, ball
throwing etc. By acquiring more motor skills child gain self satisfaction, physical independence.
Children can achieve control over motor skills through-
1) Readiness of body to perform the activity. 2) Opportunity to practice.

Methods of learning motor skills-

1) Trial and error learning 2) Imitation 3) Training

Important Contributions of Motor Development:

1) Achievement of skills indicated good physical health.
2) Skill helps to release pent up energy or keep children engaged in that activity (drawing,
embroidery)
3) Achievement of motor skills indicates their levels of independence.
4) Some skills which require practice and reputation provide self entertainment. (dancing, playing with
musical instrument, cricket etc)
5) Group activities and certain gross motor skills having competitive spirit helps for socialization.
6) Achievements and rewards received for perfection in motor skills increases self confidence, these
intern it gives value for self concept.

Motor fitness Components:

Children’s motor fitness is interrelated with movement acquisition. The necessary components
are:
1. Coordination: Skills that requires considerable amounts of visual inputs integrated with motor
outputs. Bouncing, catching, throwing, kicking, and trapping are the main skills that needed
coordination. Boys perform better in coordination activities than girls, year by year improvement with
age will be there.
2. Balance: The ability to maintain the equilibrium of one’s body when it is placed in various positions
and it is basic to all movement. Vision play an important role in balance, for eg (young 6-7 years)
children cannot balance standing on one foot with their eyes closed- use of eyes enables the children to
focus on a reference point to maintain balance.
Static balance: refers to the ability of the body to maintain equilibrium in a stationary position
(standing on the foot).
Dynamic balance: refers to the ability to maintain equilibrium when moving from one point to another
(walking on Beam balance)
3. Speed: The ability to cover a greater distance in as brief time as possible. Boys and girls appear to
be similar in running speed skills at age of 6 and 7 years but boys outperform girls age 8 onwards.
4. Agility: is the ability to change the direction of the body rapidly and accurately. With agility, one
can make quickly and accurate shifts in body position during movement. It is most important in most
sports and in dancing. It is largely depends on the looseness of the Joints and the abilities of the muscles
to stretch and relax. girls begin to level off after age 13, whereas boys continue to improve.
5. Power: Is the ability to perform a maximum effort in as short a period as possible. This combination
of strength and speed is exhibited in children’s activities that require jumping, striking, throwing for
distance etc. Boys outperform girls at all ages.

Motor development in children of:

5-6 years: flings out arms and legs as he walks, very active. almost in constant motion play active
games which involves jumping, running, skipping etc. He can pull and push large pieces of furniture,
play things, climbs up and steps down many steps. Able to bounce and toss up the ball. Child can enjoy
walking, balancing on fences, cuts and pasts papers, learns make boxes, pockets out of paper etc. can
copy latter drawn and paint the picture.

7-8 years: Very active, repeats the performance persistently enjoys, running, skating, rope jumping,
catch and throw activities. Interested in cricket carpentry work. Girls prefer dancing, making dolls,
colouring and attempts to sewing. Children can able to copy small letters.

9-10 years: Body movement is more rhythmical and graceful. Like to play in groups, follow the leaders,
enjoys soft ball play, cricket, foot ball etc,. Able to copy text from black board. Girls prefer skipping /
rope jumping games. Free movements while painting enjoy folk songs and dances and playing musical
instruments, enjoys painting, can write all types of letters and text. Girls can do Heming and interested
in sewing also.

10-12 years: Enjoy playing all games and works hard. Like to do anything until exhausted, such as
racing bicycle, running, skipping or playing ball. Interested in swimming and water games. They have
better control of own body speed but not confident with automobile riding. Boys are interested in team
games and in learning to perform skillfully. Improves hand writing, can copy maps, still pictures from
printed books. Girls interested in simple embroidery painting, knitting etc. children can dress neatly and
show interested in combing own hair.

Functions of Motor skills:

Different motor skills play different roles in children’s personal and social adjustments. They can
be divided roughly in to four categories according to the functions they serve in the child’s personal and
social adjustment.

1. Self-help skills : To achieve independence, children must learn motor skills that will enable them to
do thing for themselves. These skills include self feeding, self dressing, self grooming and self bathing.
By the time children reach school age these skills should have reached the level of proficiency to enable
children to take care of themselves with almost the speed and adaptive of adults.
2. Social-help skills : To be an accepted members of a social group either the family, the school or the
neighborhood group, the child must be cooperative member. Skills such as helping with the work of the
home, the school or the peer group will win the acceptance of the group.
3. Play skills : To enjoy the activities of the peer group or to amuse themselves when away from peers,
children must learn play skill such as, ball play, roller skating, drawing, painting and manipulating toys.
4. School skills : Much of the work of the early school years involves motor skills, such as writing,
drawing, painting, clay modeling, dancing etc. Children who are better in these shills are better in
adjustment and greater in their achievement in academic as well as the non academic areas of school
work.

Handedness :
Handedness means the predominant use of one hand. There are two criteria used to determine
handedness.
1) Preference for one hand as compared with the other.
2) Proficiency or skill with which a person uses one hand as compared with use of the other hand.
Children are said to be “right handed” if they use the right hand most of the time and “left
handed” if they favor the left hand. Few children are so predominantly right or left handed that they
always use the preferred hand. People are regarded to as “ambidextrous” or as it is sometimes called
mixed handed if they use both hands equally well and approximately an equal amount of the time.
A majority of hand skills require the use of one hand or of one hand aided by the other. The hand
that does most of the work is known as the “dominant hand” and if the act requires help, the other hand
plays the role of helper and is known as the “auxiliary hand” . eg,. In writing-, writing can be done
with right or left hand, holds the pencil or pen with other hand holds the paper in place.

Development of handedness: Extensive research on handedness indicates that, handedness develops in

early months of life. Training and social conditioning determine the handedness. When children enter
the school, they are predominantly either left or right handed. These is no evidence that right hand is
superior or left hand, but traditionally right hand is preferred than left hand.

Importance of right handedness (advantages):

1. Learning is facilitated
2. Guidance and demonstrations are more meaningful
3. Gives feelings of stability and security and opportunities to develop levels of skills. So feels less
fatigue
4. Gains confidant in speed, accuracy in movements
5. Conformity to social expectation and personality gets facilitated.
 Factors influencing Motor development :

Some conditions influences the rate of motor development they are :

1. Genetic constitution: including body build and intelligence has a marked influence on rate of
motor development.
2. Favorable Prenatal conditions: especially maternal nutrition, encourage more rapid postnatal
motor development than unfavourable prenatal conditions.
3. A difficult birth especially when there is temporary brain damage delay’s motor development.
4. Good health and nutrition during early parental life speed up motor development unless there are
environmental obstacles.
5. Children with high IQs show more rapid motor development.
6. Stimulation, encouragement and opportunities to move all parts of the body speed up motor
development - over protectiveness delays learning of motor skills and first borns tend to be ahead
than later borns due to parental encouragement.
7. Physical defects such as blindness delays motor development
8. Sex, racial and socio economic differences in motor development are due to differences in
motivation and in child rearing methods.

Hazards in Motor development :

1. Delayed motor development : Delayed motor development means motor development below the
norms for the child’s age. As a result child does not learn the developmental task the social group
expects children of that age to learn. For g. if a baby learn to sit by 9 months of age it is considered as
developmental delay.
There are many causes of delayed motor development some of which are controllable and some
not. It may come from
i. Unfavorable prenatal and postnatal periods.
ii. Brain damage at birth
iii. Lack of opportunities to learn motor skills
iv. Parental over protectiveness
v. Lack of motivation.
Delayed motor development has unfavorable effects on children’s self concepts. As a result it leads
to emotional and social and behavioral problems. They become frustrated, feel inferior, and children
lack the motor skills necessary for play with their age mates.

2. Unrealistic expectation about skills : Unrealistic expectation are based more on hopes and desires
than on the individual’s potentials. In the area of motor development children are expected to gain motor
control and to learn skills before they are maturationally ready to do so.
 Some unrealistic expectations come from parents, some from teachers and some from children
themselves. Regardless of the source, they are hazardous to the child’s personal and social adjustments.
They are also psychologically damaging the children. Not being able to live to the expectation makes
children feel inferior and inadequate feelings that undermine self confidence and weaken motivation to
learn other skills in addition children are criticized and scolded.

3. Failure to learn important motor skills: If children fail to learn the motor skills that are important
to them or to members of the peer group, it plays havoc with their personal and social adjustment. For
eg. Self-help skills are necessary to become independent. If child fail learn to self help skill, when a
desire for independence becomes strong, then the child feels inferior and become rebellious when it
must rely on others for help.

4.Poor foundation skills : ‘Practice makes perfect’. This is true only when the foundation skills are
good. Skills learnt from trial and error method or by imitating a poor model will not result in good and
perfect skills. If the foundation skills are poor, proficiency in the new skills will not be possible. When
this happens, children feel frustrated due to poor results and results in feeling of inferiority. Lack of
social acceptance leads to poor social and emotional adjustments.

4. Stunting : Once children learn skill well enough to gain satisfaction from it, they often begin to
‘stunt’ or to carry out the skill in an unorthodox way to gain greater satisfaction, attention and publicity.
For.eg. a child who learnt the skill of riding a bicycle very well, it may try to ride the bicycle in
unorthodox way- riding backwards, leaving handle bars etc. this gives them personal satisfaction from
feeling of successful achievement and from the admiration of their peers.
In spite of the satisfaction stunting gives, there is potential psychological damage from it. This
comes from the effect on children’s personal and social adjustments. Because stunting often lead to
accidents with the physical and psychological repercussions. As they grow older, it is hazardous to good
social adjustments, because members of the peer group regard stunt children as ‘show-offs’ and think
they are silly and even they start envy them.

6. Left handedness: Left handedness is a potential hazard to good personal and social adjustments. It
becomes hazardous under two conditions:
1. If children realize they are different because they are left handed and if they are serious about this,
it will affect their attitudes towards self and in turn their behavior.
2. When the instruction are given to right handers - these children get confused. This makes their
learning more difficult.
7. Awkwardness: Children are not clumsy by nature, as they grow older, the grace of movements of
the average child is something to be admired. Children whose movements are awkward and in
coordinate presents an unhappy contrast.
Awkwardness in early childhood may be due to brain damage at birth, mental deficiency or other
physical cause or due to over protectiveness of parents. Children who are awkward delay in their motor
development cannot keep up with their age mates, as a result they feel ‘left out’ and developing an
inferiority complex.
 Emotional Development

All emotions play an important role in life. It is essential to know how they develop and how they
affect personal and social adjustments. Emotional development depends on maturation and learning. As
children grow older, their emotional responses become less diffuse, random and undifferentiated. eg.-
when showing displeasure, babies merely scream or cry. Toddlers express their reactions in resisting,
throwing things, stiffening the body, preschoolers may runaway, hide and children of school age may
use more of linguistic responses. In them, the motor responses decreases so, emotionally follow a
predictable pattern with different stimuli.

Conditions responsible for emotional development:

Various studies of children emotions have revealed that their development is due to maturation and
learning. Both are so closely interwoven that some time it is difficult to determine their relative effects.

1. Role of maturation: Development of endocrine gland is essential to mature emotional behavior.

The adrenal gland also play an important role in emotional control. Intellectual development results in
an ability to perceive meaning and reacts a accordingly. The growth of imagination and understanding
increases the ability to remember and anticipate in particular way.

2. Role of learning: Different kinds of learning contribute the development of emotional pattern
during childhood. Their learning experience will determine which of the potential reaction may actually
use to show their emotions.
Both maturation and learning influence the development of the emotions but learning is more
important because it is controllable.

Characteristics Features of Children’s Emotion :

1. Emotions are intense: Young children respond with equal intensity to lighter event and to a serious
situation. School age children are quick and sharp in responding they can understand the seriousness of
the situation and respond accordingly.

2. Emotions appear frequently: Children display their emotion frequently. As they grow older and
discover that disapproval or punishment often follows an emotional outburst. They learn to adjust to
emotion arousing situations. Then they curb their emotional outburst or react in a more acceptable way.

3. Emotion are transitory: Children can easily direct their emotion. There is rapid shift from laughter
to tears, from anger to smile or from Jealousy to affection. This change is main because of
1) Clearing the system of pent up emotions by unreserved expression.
2) lack of complete understanding to the situation due to intellectual immaturity
3) limited experience and short attention span.
As children grow older, their emotions become more persistent.
4. Responses reflect individuality: In all children the pattern of response changes gradually as the
influences of learning and environment are felt. One child may run out of the room when frightened,
another may cry and still another may hide behind the furniture or a person.
Eg- For exam- some are cool, interested, but some are disturbed, tensed.

5. Emotions change in strength: As the children grows older. Emotion becomes very strong in some
children, while in other weak, these variations are due partly to changes in the strength of drives, partly
to the child’s intellectual development and partly to changes in interests and values.
Eg- Naughty child may become very good, decent and regular

6. Emotions can be detected by behaviors symptoms: Children may not show their emotional
reactions directly, but they show them indirectly by restlessness, day dreaming, crying, speech
difficulties and nervous manners such as nail biting, thumb sucking etc.
As the child gains intellectual abilities, in physical and motor skills and in awareness of the
significance of their environment, they acquire emotional reactions and pattern appropriate to their level
of development and to their experience.
Eg- 4 years child’s tends to be afraid of dark, ghost etc, but 12 years child may be afraid of failure in
school subjects, rejection from peers etc.

Methods of learning Emotions are: Five kinds of learning contribute to the development of
emotional pattern during childhood.
1. Trial and error method: It involves mainly the response aspects of emotional pattern. They try out
different ways to express their emotions that give them greater pleasure, satisfaction and avoid those that
give little or no satisfaction. This form of learning is more commonly used in early childhood years than
later.
2. Learning by imitation: It affects both stimulus and response part of the emotional pattern. By
observing the emotion of others arousing certain emotions in them also eg. If teacher scold the child, if
that child is popular with age mates, other children also like to become angry at the teacher.
3. Learning by identification: Is similar to learning by imitation. In this, children copy the emotional
reaction of another person. Here they copy the style and nature of admired people and imitate them to
identify in that personality.
4. Learning of conditioning: It means training by association. It is related to stimulus aspects. (eg.
Child gets afraid of hairy thing when conditioned by loud sound, Pavlov’s experiment food-dog-bell).
Conditioning occurs easily and quickly during early years of life, because of lack of reasoning ability
and experience to assess a situation critically.
5. Learning by training: means learning under guidance and supervision. It is limited to the response
aspects of emotional pattern. Children are taught the approved way of responding when a particular
emotion to respond to stimuli that normally give rise to pleasant emotions and discouraged from
responding emotionally to stimuli that normally give rise to unpleasant emotion.
Common childhood emotions: Fear, Anger, Jealousy, Curiosity, Joy, Pleasure etc.

Fear: Certain fears are characteristically found at certain ages- called as ‘typical fears’ for those age
levels. Young children are afraid of more thing than either babies or older children. 2-6 years of age is
the peak period of specific fears in the normal patterns of development. Among children, fears are
concentrated on the fanciful, supernatural, or remote dangers, on the death or injury, on the elements like
thunder and lightning and on characters recalled from stories, movies, and television. School children
have fears related to self or status. They are afraid of failure, being ridiculed or being ‘different’ in
group.
An important characteristic of all fear stimuli is that they occur suddenly and unexpectedly has
little opportunity to adjust to them. As children grow older and become more mature intellectually they
adjust more quickly to sudden and unexpected circumstances.

Fear related responses: Children may hide their faces, screams, cry or run away from the situation etc.
As children grow older, overt fear responses are curbed by social pressures. The crying reactions stops,
though the characteristic facial expression remain and the child withdraws from the feared object.

Variations in children’s fear may be due to, Intelligence, sex, SES. Health, social contacts, ordinal
position and personality.
Girls have more number of fears than boys. First born have more fears than later born. Physically
tired, hungry, poor health and less intelligent child respond in greater intensity to fears.

Fear related Emotions : Dominant aspect of these emotion is ‘fear’.

a) Shyness : It is a form of fear, characterized by shrinking from contact with others who are strange
and unfamiliar. Shyness is always aroused by people (strangers) and not by objects or animals or
situations. Children show their shyness by blushing, stuttering, talking as little as possible, pulling the
clothes, bending the head etc. Children as they grow older, they may be shy in the presence of guests in
the home. When their parents or peers are in the audience, when they recite, sing or participate school
functions. Their shyness comes from uncertainty about ‘how others will react to them’ or fears that
‘they will laugh at them’.
Responses: Children show their shyness by blushing, by stuttering, by talking as little as possible, by
nervous mannerisms- such as pulling at the ears or clothing, shifting from one foot to another, bending
the head to one side, speaks only when spoken to.

b) Embarrassment: It is fear reaction to people not to objects or situation. It is aroused by

uncertainty about how people will judge one and one’s behavior. It is also known as state of ‘self
conscious distress’.
 A number of studies have shown that’s memories of humiliating and ego deflating experience
play an important role in increasing embarrassment- in which their behavior fell below the social
expectations.
Responses: blushing, stuttering, nervous mannerism, avoidance of situation. Children speak out loudly-
their intension is to justify or clarify their behavior in the hopes of removing the unfavorable social
judgments that caused their embracement.

c) Worry: It is described as ‘imaginary fear’ or ‘borrowing trouble’. It is not aroused by direct

stimulus but is a product of child’s own mind. It comes from imagining dangerous situation which could
arise. Worry is normal in childhood, even in the best adjusted children. Children below 8 years are not
capable of worrying due to lack of imagination.
Most cannot worries center around family members, friends, teachers, school etc.
Family worries relate to the health, safety of family members, being scolded or punished by the father
or mother.
School worries: center around being late, failing in tests, being scolded or punished by the teacher.
Peer group worries: group acceptance, social adjustments problems- how to be more popular.

Responses: Their facial expression- they look ‘worried’. Children realize that worry is not a acceptable
emotional pattern. So they will try to conceal their facial expectation. Some children deliberately look
worried to win the attention and sympathy.

d) Anxiety: is an uneasy mental state concerning impending or anticipated ill. It is accomplished by

a feeling of helplessness because the anxious person feels blocked, unable to find a solution for
problems. If children are closely associated with anxious people, a mother or a father, they also may
expressed anxiety. In its milder from, children may be expressed anxiety in readily recognizable
behavior such as depression, nervousness, irritability, mood swing, restless sleep, quick anger etc.
Anxious children are unhappy because they feel insecure. They may blame themselves, feel guilty-
about not coming up to the expectations of parents, teachers and peers, they often feel lonely and
‘misunderstood’.

Anger: Anger is more frequently expressed emotion in childhood than fear in its different forms.
Anger is an effective way of getting attention or what they want. The frequency and intensity which
children experience anger varies from child to child. In older children, interruption in their activities,
constant fault feeding, teasing, lecturing, making unfavorable comparisons with other children will lead
to anger. They also become angry when they feel that their friends are unjustly punished and they are
neglected or ridiculed by other children.
Anger responses: divided into two major categories 1) Impulsive responses and 2) Inhibited responses.
Impulsive responses of anger are usually called as aggression. They are directed towards persons
animals and objects. They may be physical or verbal. Eg- hitting, kicking, punching, pulling etc.
Extra punitive: If responses are directed towards others.
Intra punitive: children direct the anger responses at themselves.

Inhibited responses anger are kept under control or bottled up. Children may withdraw into themselves,
thus, running from the offending person or object. They may show anger through being hurt, feeling
sorry for themselves, threatening to run away etc.

Jealousy: It is a normal response to actual supposed or threatened loss of affection. It is an outgrowth

of anger, giving rise to an attitude of resentment directed toward people. Often some fear is combined
with anger in the Jealousy pattern. The Jealous person feels insecure in relationship with a loved one and
is afraid of losing status in that person’s affection.
[

Three major social situational sources of Jealousy.

1. Most childhood Jealousies are homegrown- i.e. they originate because of arrival of new baby in
home. When mother takes care of newborn, older children might feel neglected. They become
Jealousy toward newborn and even the mother. Parental favoritism- unknowingly parents may show
disproportionate interest in a child, which is attractive, affectionate or gifted or to sick and
handicapped child.
2. Social situation- In school environment due to favoritism by class teacher. In older children, schools
are responsible for many Jealousies like, teachers comparison with other children, friend show more
interest in others, disparity in selection to participate in many other activities etc.
3. Deprived of material possessions (envy)- this kind of Jealousy is known as envy – it is emotional state
of anger or hateredness towards another who has these envied material possessions.

Jealousy responses : depending upon the situation, children show two categories of responses.
1) Direct responses: Direct responses to Jealousy may be aggressive attacks- biting, kicking, hitting,
punching and scratching. When Jealousy springs from envy, children may be motivated to engage in
socially disapproved acts, such as cheating or stealing. Older children may blame their parents for
not providing them the things their play mates have.
2) Indirect responses: These responsive are more subtle than the direct ones, and therefore, harder to
recognize. They include reversion to infantile forms of behavior, such as bedwetting, thumb sucking
bids for attention in the form of food idiosyncrasies, general naughtiness, destructiveness, verbal
expression such as tattling and name calling etc.
Grief: Grief is a psychic trauma. An emotional distress resulting from the loss of something loved. In
its milder forms it is known as sorrow or sadness. For most children, grief is not a very common
emotion because, 1) Parents, teachers and other adults try to insulate or protect children from the painful
aspects of grief. 2) Children when they are young, they have short memories, they can be helped to
forget their grief of their attention is directed to some pleasant things. 3) The provision of a substitute for
what children have lost- a loved toy or things, pets or even a parent which can often turn their grief in to
happiness.

Greif responses:
1. Overt expression: The typical overt expression of grief in childhood is crying. The crying may be
so anguished and prolonged that children will enter a state of near hysteria.
2. Inhabited expression: Inhabited expression of a grief consist of a generalized state of apathy
marked by a loss of interest in things, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, a tendency to experience fearful
dreams, refusal to play, lack of communication with others and prolonged grief leads to anxiety.

Curiosity: The stimuli that give rise to curiosity in childhood are innumerous. Children are interested
in everything in their environment including themselves. They are curious about their bodies, different
part of the body, why we have that? Why other do like that? etc, as their environment expands,
children’s curiosities are also increases. They are especially interested in sudden changes. eg. If mother
changes her hair style or dressing style or if father starts wearing glasses, etc. when children noticed any
changes, they want to know what caused it?. Changes in their bodies arouse their curiosity.

When children enter school, they are curious about mechanical devices such as light switches,
television sets or automobiles.
Curiosity responses: children’s express curiosity by tensing the face muscles, opening the mouth,
stretching out the tongue, and wrinkling the forehead. Out of curiosity they ask hundreds of questions to
satisfy their needs, that is why these years are called as ‘questioning age’- 3 years is the peak and
spreads to school years. Most of the children start reading on different information instead of
questioning or if they feel that their questions are not answered to their satisfaction.

Joy, Pleasure, Delight: Joy is a pleasant emotion, in its milder from it is known as pleasure,
delight or happiness. All children will experience varying intensities of joy. For preschool children, their
pleasure comes mainly from activities in which they are involved, primarily their age mates and is
particularly strong when their achievement surpass those of their age mates.

In older children also, the stimuli that aroused pleasant emotion at younger ages continue to bring
pleasure. Physical well being, mysterious situation, play on the words, successful achievement of goals,
getting appreciation or rewards from teachers, is the joy provoking stimuli.
Responses: Joyful responses range from a quiet, calm, self satisfied contentment to a babbling over to a
great extent, different ways of laughing appears. Some children jump up and down, clap their hands, hug
other persons or objects.
As children grow older, they learn to express their joy in the socially approved pattern for the group
with which they are identified. Joyful responses are always accompanied by smiling or laughing and
general relaxation of the entire body. Social pressures force older children to control their expression, so
that they will not be considered as ‘immature’. As a result they are less noisy than younger children.

Affection: It is an emotional reaction directed towards a person, an animal or a thing. It indicates

warm regard, friendliness, sympathy or helplessness. It may take a physical or verbal form. Older
children show grater affection for peer group, teachers and adults who like them, help them, who shows
interest in them. Within peer group, they select one or two, as their friends and show more affection for
them.
Responses: Affection is first shown in an outgoing, striving, approaching kind of behavior. Children
express other emotions two, they hug, pat, stroke and kiss the loved person or object. Young children
want to be constantly with the people they lose and they like to assist them is whatever they are doing.
Favorite toys are hugged and patted; children have with them wherever they go. The toys for which they
have so much of clean deep affection. They want to contently be with it. After children enter school,
they kind to feel that physical demonstration of affection are childish and they are embarrassed by them.
They prefer instead, verbal expressions- calling with pet names, by wanting to be with them etc.
School children they tend to feel that physical demonstrations of affection are childish and they are
embraced by them. Instead, they refer verbal expression. For eg. Boys may say ‘good guys’ or girls may
say ‘my friends’ or they may call them by pet names.

Emotional Dominance: Means that, of all the emotions one or few come to have predominant
influence on the person’s behavior. eg. anger, silent. Children are not born with a dominance of one
specific emotion. Instead the emotions that will become dominant forces in their lives depend mainly on
the environment in which they grow up.
A predominance of the pleasant emotions, such as affection, love, Joy and happiness are essential for
normal development. These emotions lead to feeling of security with self-confidence and assurance.
Children whose emotions are predominantly pleasant are happy and well liked by others they make a
success in whatever they do. They not only become popular but also are often selected for leadership
roles in the peer group.

Control of Emotional Dominance: may be achieved by three possible ways.

1. Encouraging the development of emotions which contributes more to successful adjustment and
intellectual development.
2. Provide guidance to help the child to develop the most valuable forms of emotional expression. eg-
anger- may directed towards socially acceptable channels rather than showing a destructive
behavior.
3. Control of the environment- can ensure that desirable emotions will be dominant.

Emotional Balance: The dominance of unpleasant emotions can be counteracted to some extent by
pleasant emotion and vice versa.

Emotional balance can be achieved in two ways:

1) Control of the environment- see that unpleasant emotions are quickly outweighed by pleasant one, so
that balance will be in favor of the pleasant.
2) Develop emotional tolerance- ability to with stand the effect of the unpleasant emotions- anger,
frustration and also they should learn to tolerate Joy, affection curiosity etc.

Why Emotional Balance is Essential?

If children experience many of the unpleasant emotions and a few of pleasant, their outlook will be
‘unpleasant dispositions’, their facial expression will become sad, dull and disagreeable, they look less
appealing to others. Their self dissatisfaction increases and lead to major personality mal adjustments.

Emotional Control: The popular concept of emotional control is suppression of overt responses to
emotion provoking stimuli. The scientific concept of this, to direct emotional energy into useful and
socially approved channels of expression. To achieve this control, the child must give attention to the
mental aspect of an emotion as to the physical. i.e. expressing emotion in a more socially acceptable
form. One’s usual way of responding will depend largely on what provides the greatest satisfaction.

Emotional catharsis: It means clearing the system of pent-up energy, which occurs when the
emotional expressions are controlled. Release of both physical and mental energy is very much needed
to maintain the body homeostasis.

Common ways of releasing pent-up emotion energy:

1. Moodiness: is a drawn- out state of the emotions caused by bottled up emotional energy and
allowing it to suppress. The unpleasant emotions are most likely to be controlled, so children are
sullen, quiet or badly humored. They become restless and work below their capacities.
2. Substitute responses: Substituting a more socially acceptable response- eg. towards angry- child
may do some useful or constructive work instead of hitting or name calling.
3. Displacement: In this, emotional responses are directed against a person, animal or object unrelated
to the stimulus.
4. Regression: It going back to earlier / or infantile forms of behaviors. Jealousy children may wet
their beds.
5. Emotional explosions: Children show violent reactions. As older children know they are expected
to develop frustration tolerance, their emotional explosions often lead to feeling of inadequacy, guilt
and shame.

Aids to emotional Catharsis: There are aids to suggest how children’s can be encouraged to learn
to use emotional catharsis which inturn facilitates good personal and social adjustments and children
gain satisfaction from their emotions and from the approval of the social group.
1. Involving in some strenuous physical exercises daily in either some plays or works.
2. Development of a sense of humor. So that one can laugh even at stress.
3. Developing a close affectionate relationship with at least one family member
4. A willingness to talk over problems with a sympathetic person.
5. Avoidance of causes of one’s emotional arousal. Parents and teachers- recognize the cause and try to
remove it.

Factors responsible for variations in children’s emotions:

1. Health conditions of children: Healthy children tend to experience less unpleasant emotions than
children with poor health.
2. Age of the child: all emotions are less violently expressed as they grow older.
3. Size of the family: large and nuclear families. Nuclear family- have control over the children.
4. Child training methods. - Authoritative child training encourages unpleasant emotions. So have
democratic and permissive child training.
5. Relationship with family members- happiness, Joy affectionate lovable than friction, anger, Jealousy.
6. Relationship with peers- who is accepted dominance of pleasant emotions.
7. Over protectiveness- encourage fear, anxiety in child
8. Parental aspiration- if parents have unrealistic high aspiration- child becomes embarrassed and
ashamed, feel guilty
9. Guidance – emphasis on understanding why pleasant emotions are necessary.

Factors responsible for variations in children’s emotions:

4. Health conditions of children: Healthy children tend to experience less unpleasant emotions than
children with poor health.
5. Age of the child: all emotions are less violently expressed as they grow older.
6. Size of the family: large and nuclear families. Nuclear family- have control over the children.
4. Child training methods. - Authoritative child training encourages unpleasant emotions. So have
democratic and permissive child training.
5. Relationship with family members- happiness, Joy affectionate lovable than friction, anger, Jealousy.
6. Relationship with peers- who is accepted dominance of pleasant emotions.
7. Over protectiveness- encourage fear, anxiety in child
8. Parental aspiration- if parents have unrealistic high aspiration- child becomes embarrassed and
ashamed, feel guilty
9. Guidance – emphasis on understanding why pleasant emotions are necessary.

Hazards in Emotional Development:

Emotions play an important role in determining the kind of personal and social adjustments children
will make, not only during childhood but also as they become adolescent and adults. Anything that
interferes with good emotional development will play havoc with children’s adjustments.

1. Emotional deprivation: It means that children are deprived of a reasonable share of pleasant
emotional experience, especially curiosity, joy, happiness and affection. Most child unfortunately grow
up in unpleasant environment- anger, fear, jealousy, envy etc., they are in dearth of pleasant emotional
experiences.
Effects of emotional deprivation: Children deprived of love and affection are handicapped in learning
how to get along with people. They respond negatively to the others. Tend to be non cooperate , feel in
adequate and show resentment in aggressiveness, disobedience and other forms of a social behaviors.
Deprivation during early years of life would automatically lay the foundations for adult personality
disorders.

2. Dominance of unpleasant Emotions: Dominance of unpleasant emotions is hazardous to good

personal and social adjustments. If persistent ‘shyness’ among children effects their personal and social
development. It leads to a generalized timidity which causes children to be afraid to anything new or
different, which lowers their potentials. Like Shyness, embarrassment also leads to unfavorable self-
concepts and undermines self- confidence. Frequent embarrassment can make childhood an unhappy
and lay foundation for personality maladjustments and social rejection.
3. Heightened emotionally: means a frequency and intensity of emotional expression beyond what is
normal. When the happy emotions predominates, the persons is said to be in a state of ‘euphoria’- a
sense of well- being. When the most frequent and intense emotions and unpleasant, whether they are
anger, fear, jealousy or envy- the person is said to be a state of ‘disequilibrium’.
4. Failure to learn emotional control: When the children are ready to go to school they are expected
to have learned some control over their emotions as they grow older, they are expected have
increasingly more control. When they fail to achieve this control, it leads to unfavorable social
judgments which make children embarrassed and ashamed.
Failure to learn emotional control is especially common among children brought up by authoritarian
or permissive child training method. When parent’s guidance is not there, children have little motivation
to control their emotions.
5. Stumbling blocks to emotional catharsis:
The live major stumbling blocks to emotional catharsis are, lack of opportunities to express pent-up
energy in socially approved patterning behavior and lack of opportunities to discuss the situation that
gave rise to unpleasant emotions, which affects getting a healthier perspective on them and preventing
the damaging effects on personal and social adjustment.

Language Development in preschool and late childhood

The early years of life are critical for speech development. During this time the foundations for
later speech development are laid. Children gain control over the muscles needed for the various
communication mechanisms.
Many people use the words ‘speech’ and ‘language’ interchangeably. However, they are not
synonymous. Language encompasses every means of communication, in which thoughts and feeling are
symbolized so as to convey meaning to others. ‘speech’ is a form language in which articulate sounds or
words are used to convey meaning. Children speech will be mere ‘parrot talk’ or ‘imitative speech’
because it lacks the mental element of meaning.

Speech is a tool for communication:

Communication means an interchange of thoughts and feelings. This interchange can be carried
out with any form of language- gestures, emotional expression, speech or written language but it is most
commonly and most effectively done by speech.

How children learn to speak:

Speech is skill and like all skills it must be learned. Speech consists of motor and mental aspects.
Motor aspect: It involves the coordination of different teams of muscles of the vocal mechanism and
the ability to produce certain sounds in combination that are recognizable as words.
Mental aspect: the ability to associate meaning with these words.
Not all sounds made by children are considered as speech. Until they gained enough control over
the neuro- muscular mechanism to produce clear, distinct and controlled sounds, furthermore, until they
learn to associate meaning with these controlled sounds.

Common methods of learning skills:

1) Trial and error learning: Having no guidance and no model to imitate. This usually results in child
tries out different ways to learn. This usually results in a skill below the child capacities.

2) Imitation: learning by imitating or observing a model is faster than learning by trial and error, but is
limited by faults in the model. A child will not learn to speak well, if a poor speaker is imitated.
3) Training: learning under guidance and supervision. In training, children are not only given a good
model to imitate but they also receive guidance and help in following the model accurately.
Essentials in learning to speak:
There are certain essential in learning to speak.
1. Physical readiness to speak: The ability to speak depends upon the maturation of the speech
mechanism. At birth, oral canal is small, the palate is flat and the tongue is too large for oral cavity.
Until they take on a more mature shape, the nerves and muscles of the vocal mechanism cannot
produce the sounds needed for words.
2. Mental readiness to speak: It depends on the maturation of the brain, especially the association
areas of the brain. This readiness usually develops between the age of 12 and 18 months and is
regarded as the ‘teachable moment’ in speech development.
3. A good model to imitate: If children are to learn to produce words correctly and later to continue
them into correct sentence, they must have a model of good speech to imitate. This model may be
people around them, speakers on radio, television, actors in the movies etc. If they lack a good model,
learning to speak will be difficult and the end result below their potential.
4. Opportunities for practice: If deprived of opportunities to practice speaking for whatever reason,
children become angry and frustrated when they cannot make others understand them. This often
weakens their motivation to learn to speak.
5. Motivation: If young children discover that they can get what they want without asking for it and if
substitutes for speech, such as crying and gestures serve their purpose, there incentive to learn to
speak will be weekend.
6. Guidance: The best ways to guide learning to speak are 1) to provide good model 2) to say words
slowly and distinctly, so that children can understand them well and 3) to provide help in following
this model by correcting any mistakes children may make in imitating the model.

Conditions contributing to variations in learning to speak:

1. Health: Healthy children have a stronger motivation to learn to talk. To communicate with the
members of the group. they learn to talk sooner than those who are unhealthy.
2. Intelligence: Children with high IQ learn to talk sooner and show a marked linguistic superiority
over those of lower intellectual levels.
3. Socio-economic status: Due to more encouragement and proper guidance children from higher SES
group learn to talk earlier compared children from other group.
4. Sex: Boy lag behind in learning to talk. At every age boy sentences are shorter and less
grammatically correct. Their pronunciation is less accurate than girls.
5. Desire to communicate: The stronger the desire to communicate with others, the stronger will be the
child’s motivation to learn to talk.
6. Stimulation: If children are stimulated more, and encourage more, they will learn to talk early and
better the quality of speech will be.
7. Size of family: Only child is a child from a small family usually speak earlier and better than
children from large familiar because parents can give more time to teaching them to speak.
8. Ordinal position: Speech of first born is superior to that of later borns in the same family. This is
because, parents can spend more time in teaching and encouraging them to talk, than they can for
later born children.
9. Child training methods: Authoritative child training, which emphasizes that children should be
‘seen but not heard’ is an obstacle to learning. While permissive and democratic child training
encourages learning.
10. Multiple births: Children of multiple birth are generally delayed in their speech development
because they associate mainly with one another and learn to understand their own jargons. This
weakens their motivation to learn to speak.
11. Contact with peers: children having more contacts with peers are more anxious to be accepted as
member of the peer group, the stronger will be their motivation to learn to speak.
12. Personality: Well adjusted children learn to speak better both qualitatively and quantitatively than
those who are poorly adjusted.

Major tasks in learning to speak:

Learning to speak involves three separate and yet interrelated processes - learning to pronounce
words, building a vocabulary, and forming sentences. Because, these three are interrelated failure to
master one of them will disturb the whole speech pattern.

Pronunciation: The first task in learning to speak is learning to pronounce words. Pronunciation is
learned by imitation. Due to plasticity of the vocal mechanism and the absence of well developed habits
of pronunciation children can develop many kind of words in new environment. Early childhood is the
proper time to begin learning a new language. Correct pronunciation depend partly upon the rate of
development of the vocal mechanism but mostly upon the guidance young children receive in combining
sounds into meaningful words. Variations in accent results from imitating models whose pronunciation
differs from that in general use, as in case of bilingual families.

Vocabulary building: In vocabulary building children must learn to associate meanings with sounds.
Since many words have more than one meaning and some words that sound alike- bear, sun, and sea
have different meaning. Vocabulary building is far more difficult than pronunciation.

Children learn two kinds of vocabularies

a) General vocabulary: consists of words which can be used in a variety of deferent situation (such as,
man, nice and go).
b) Special vocabulary: consists of words with specific meaning that can be used only in certain
situation.
Since words in the general vocabulary are the ones that are used most, they are learned first. At
every age, the general vocabulary is larger than the special vocabularies.
Increase in vocabulary comes not only from leaning new words, but also from learning new
meaning for old words. for eg. Children may first use word orange to refer to the fruit. Later they
discover that the word ‘orange’ also refers to a colour and still later, that is a complex colour, made up
of a combination of red and yellow. A child at the end of 6 years knows about 20,000-24,000 words.
Individual differences in vocabulary size at every age are due to differences in intelligence,
environmental influences, learning opportunities and motivation to learn. Girls on the average, have
larger vocabularies at every age than do boys.

Sentence formation: The third task to learning to speak, combination of words into sentences that are
grammatically corrected can be understood by others. Children use single word sentence from
approximately 12 to 18 months of age. Two years old combine words in to short incomplete sentence
containing one or two nouns, a verb and occasionally an adjective and adverb are used. They simply
omit preposition, pronouns and conjunctions. Hold doll, Go bed, Go bye, etc. by the time children are 4
years, their sentences are complete and a year later, all parts of speech are used in their sentences.

Content of speech: The content of speech has been classified in to two major categories. Egocentric and
socialized speech.
1. Egocentric speech: Children talk either for their own enjoyment or about themselves, their interest
their family and their possessions. Egocentric speech is pseudo conversation or monologue. There is
no real conversation present.
2. Socialized speech: Towards the end of early childhood socialized speech begins, children talk about
others as well as about themselves. As they grow older and as their desire to be accepted member of
the peer group strengthens they tend to shift to more socialized speech.
When older children, shift from egocentric to socialized speech they tend to present their thoughts
and feelings in more dramatic, attention getting methods. As a result, their speech turns to be unsocial
than social. Some of the common unsocial forms of speech are.
Exaggeration: Exaggerate the things, to seek attention and approval of others.
Boasting: is a form of exaggeration makes the statements more colourful- more between 8-12 years.
Name calling: is a form of boasting- is most common among older children. To gets attention, or to
impress others- they use some derogatory names like idiot, loose, fatty etc.
Criticism: critical comment about others- mainly on behavior, appearance and personality- the children
who feel inferior or to call attention to themselves, they criticize others.
Tattling: is a form of criticism- children complaint to a parent or teacher or some other adult the way
another child has treated them. Children use tattling when desire for social acceptance becomes strong.
Derogatory comment: Around 3 years of age, many children use derogatory comments to inflate their
ego, to relieve injured feelings.

Speech improvement in late childhood:

As children’s social horizons broaden, they discover that speech is an essential tool for gaining
acceptance in a group. They also discover that simpler forms of communication such as crying and
gesturing are socially unacceptable. This gives them an added incentive to improve their speech. In late
childhood speech improvement mainly comes from 4 sources.
1) Motivate the children to speak better by correcting faulty pronunciation and grammatical errors and
by encouraging them to participate in general family conversations.
2) Radio and TV provides good models for speech, they also encourage attentive listening and ability to
comprehend what others are saying.
3) Motivate them to read and to add to their vocabularies and become familiar with correct sentence
formation.
4) Mispronounced words and wrong meaning associated with words are quickly corrected by teachers /
adults.

Areas of Improvement:
Vocabulary building: Though out the late childhood children’s general vocabularies grow from their
studies, their reading, their conversations with others and their exposure to Radio and TV. They build up
vocabularies which they use in their speech and writing. This to known as “general vocabulary” because
it is composed of words in general use. It has been estimated that average first graders know between
20,000 and 24,000 words or 5-6% of the words in a standard dictionary. By the time they are in the sixth
grade, most children know approximately 50,000 words. Girls build up larger vocabulary than boys.
In addition to this, children build up ‘special vocabularies’- vocabularies made up of words special
meanings and limited uses.
The most common special vocabularies learned by older children are:
1. Etiquette vocabulary: Children who have had training at home in using such words as ‘please’
‘Thank you’ and ‘sorry’ as have large etiquette vocabularies as those of the adults in their environments.
2. Colour vocabularies: Children learn the names of all the common colours and many of the less
common ones shortly after they enter school and began to have formal training in art.
3. Number vocabularies: From their study of arithmetic at school, children learn the names and
meaning of numbers, odd, even, prime, whole, rational / irrational.
4. Money vocabularies: learn the names of different coins and they understand the value of various
denomination of bills.
5. Time vocabulary: Time vocabularies of older children are as large as those of adults to whom they
come in contact. hr, min, sec, AM and PM
6. Slang word and swear word vocabularies: Children learn slang words and swear words from older
children or neighbor using such words make them feel ‘grown up’.
7. Secret vocabulary: Used to communicate with their intimate friends. These can be written,
consisting of codes, formed by symbols or the substitution of one letter for another. Most children start
to use one of these farms at the time when they enter 3rd grade and their use reaches a peak at puberty.
Pronunciation: Errors in pronunciation are less common at this age than earlier. A new word may be
incorrectly pronounced the first time it is used, but after hearing the correct pronunciation once or twice,
children are generally able to pronounce it correctly. But children of lower socio-economic status and
bilingual homes had many mispronounced words.

Improvement in comprehension:
With increased interest in groups, increases the interest in desire to communicate with group
members. Children soon learn that, meaningful communication cannot be achieved unless they
understand the meaning of what others are saying to them. This provides necessary incentive to improve
their comprehension. It is also aided by training in concentration in school. Soon they discover that they
must pay attention to what is going on in the class in order to get well with their lessons. Concentration
also improved by listening to the radio and watching television and this, inturn improves
comprehension. Improved comprehension comes from the shift that normally taken place from
egocentric to socialized, when their speech becomes more socialized, there is a greater incentive to play
attention to what others say and as a result comprehensive is greatly increased.

Content of speech:
Children when they are with the peers, they may talk about anything – their favorite topic of
conversation, their own experiences, their homes, games, sports, movies, TV programs and about their
gang activities but when they are with adults, it is the adults who usually determines the topic of
conversation. When older children talk about themselves, it is usually in the form of boasting- about
their superior skills and achievements. Boasting as a rule, is very common between the ages of 9 and 12,
especially among boys. Older children also like to criticize and make fun of other people, for adults,
they may criticize openly or sometimes at their backs. For other children, their criticism includes name
calling, teasing or making derogatory comments.
How much improvement is there in the content of older children is depends upon their intelligence
and their level of socialization, children who are popular have a strong incentive to improve the content
and quality of their speech.

Amount of talking:
Talk of the older child becomes more controlled and selected of speech. No longer do children talk
just for the sake of talking as they do in pre school. Instead they use speech as a form of communication,
when children enters to school, they often continue the meaningful chattering, but soon they discover
that this is no longer permitted. They may speak only when the teacher gives them permission to talk.
When they are with peers, they discover that, endless talking annoys their peers and that is the quick
way to lose social acceptance. Some children talk less, because they have been ridiculed by peers their
‘funny pronunciation’ if they are bilinguals or unsocial content of their speech. Throughout late
childhood, girls talk more than boys. Boy discover that too much of talking is regarded as sex
appropriate. Children from upper SES class talks more than those from the lower class. Because, they
afraid of being ridiculed because of poor quality of their speech. Some children talk less, to draw
attention this may be the withdrawal syndrome that is characteristic of the puberty period. Children who
grow up in homes where discipline tend to be very strict they talk less.

Hazards in speech Development: Speech hazards in early childhood.

There are many hazards in the speech development. Unless hazards are recognized, speech will
fall below the child’s capacity.
1) Excessive Crying: means crying more than normal for a child’s age and level of development.
Normal cry in babies- needed from muscles growth and coordination it stimulates their appetite and
encourages sound sleep- it is a outlet for emotional tension. In contrast, Excessive crying- damages the
babies both physically and psychologically.
Physically- depletion of energy and upsets the body balance.
Psychologically: It interferes with normal eating and sleeping, become hysterical, cannot stop cry even
the cause for crying to solved.
2) Difficulties in comprehension: Children who cannot understand what others are trying to
communicate to them will be handicapped socially. They often feel socially isolated, which leads to the
feeling of inadequacy, inferiority, their academic achievements face below their intellectual capacities.
3) Delayed speech: when the level of speech development falls below the level of children of the same
age in quality, as shown by no of words used and accurate use.
Delayed speech not only affect children’s personal and social adjustments but also it affects their
academic adjustments - ability to read, ability to spell.
4) Defective speech: defective speech is inaccurate speech. It differs from delayed speech. Most speech
defects can be categories in to three.
1. Defects in word meaning: defects in association of the wrong meaning with a word. Number of
meanings are associated with a word that sounds alike. If child makes any wrong association- it is
said to be defective.
2. Defects in pronunciation: is due to faulty learning or due to malformation of parts of the speech
mechanism. Such as teeth, palate, lips or jaw, or it may also caused due to impaired hearing.
3. Defect in sentence structure: is grammatical errors, young children face major problem in
sentence structure and use of pronounce and verb tenses.
5. Speech Disorders: It refers to disorders in pronunciation. It differs from a defect in pronunciation,
because 1) it is not caused by faulty learning but by some defects in vocal mechanism or by
persistent emotional tension. 2) it cannot be corrected by learning correct pronunciation rather the
cause of the trouble that has led to the disorder must be removed.
Some common speech disorders that developed during preschool years are,
1. Lisping: lisping consists of letter - sound substitution the most common substitution are ‘th’ for
‘S’ or 'Z’ sounds and ‘W’ for ‘R’ as in ‘wed wose’. Lisping is usually caused by deformation of
Jaw, teeth or lips.
2. Slurring: is indistinct speech due to inactivity of the lips, tongue or Jaw, or sometimes caused by
paralysis of the vocal organs. When child is emotionally upset or excited, he may rush through
words without pronouncing each one distinctly- common during preschool years.
3. Stuttering: It is hesitant, repetitive speech accompanied by spasms of the muscles of the throat
and diaphragm. It usually accompanied by stammering- a deadlocking of speech in which child is
unable to produce any sound.
4. Cluttering: It is rapid and confused speech. It usually occurs in children whose motor control and
speech development are delayed. It is an exaggeration of the errors of speech.

6. Bilingualism: bilingualism is the ability to use two languages. For some children bilingualism is a
serious obstacle to learning to speak correctly. This is hazardous to child’s personal and social
adjustments. Because, it makes communication with others more difficult.

7. Socially unacceptable speech: A child’s whose speech is socially unaccepted makes a poor
impression and often acquires an unfavorable reputation. It affects personal and social adjustments –
egocentrism, boasting, tattling, criticisms etc.

There are four common speech hazards in late childhood.

1. Low vocabulary: A smaller than average vocabulary handicaps children in their school work as
well as in their communication with others.
2. Speech errors: mispronunciation and grammatical mistakes and speech disorders such as, stuttering
or lisping may make children so self conscious that they will speak only when necessary.
3. Bilingualism: children have difficulty in speaking with language used in school may be
handicapped in their efforts to communicate and may be made to feel that they are different.
4. Socially unacceptable speech: makes poor impression, egocentric speech, critical and derogatory
comments and boasting, antagonize their peers.
 Social Development in preschool and late childhood
Social development means acquisition of the ability to behave in accordance with social
expectation. Becoming socialized involves three processes,
1) Learning to behave in socially approved ways:
Every social group has its standards of what is approved behavior for its members. To become
socialized children must not only known what this approved behavior is, but they must also model their
own behavior along the approved lines.
2) Playing approved social roles:
Every social group has its own pattern of customary behavior that one carefully defined and are
expected by members of the group.
3) Development of social attitudes:
To become socialized, children must like people and social activities. It they do, they will make
good social adjustments and be accepted as members of the social group with which they are identified.

The terms ‘social’ and ‘non-social’ are so frequently used in everyday language that it is often
difficult to know exactly what is meant by them.

Social people
Social: people are those whose behavior reflects success in the three process of the socialization. They
fit in to the group and are accepted as group members.
Gregarious: people are social, who crave the presence of others and are lonely when by themselves.
They are satisfied merely to be with others.

Non-social people
Non social: are those whose behavior does not reflect success in the three process of socialization.
Un social: people are nonsocial people who does not know what the social group expects and as a result,
behave in a manner that falls short of social expectations.
Anti social: people are nonsocial people who know what the group expects but become of antagonistic
attitude towards people, they violate the group rules, as a result they are neglected and rejected by the
group.

Essentials of Socialization:
1. Ample opportunities for socializing
2. More of socialized speech the ego centric speech
3. Motivation to learn to be social
4. Learning under guidance is essential. So that, they will have good models to imitate.
Social development in early childhood:
From 2-6 years, children learn how to make social contacts and how to get along with people
outside the home. Especially children of their own age. Follow-up studies of groups of children report
that the social attitudes and behaviors established during these early years usually persist with little
change.
Early childhood is often called the ‘pregang age’. At this time the number of contacts children
have with other children increases and this determines, in part how their social development will
progress. Children who attend day-care centers, or kindergartens, usually have a larger number of social
contacts and make better social adjustments than children who have not had preschool experiences.
One of the many advantages of nursery schools and day care centers, and kindergartens is that,
they provide social experience under the guidance of trained teachers who promote enjoyable contacts
with others and reduces negative reactions.

Common forms of social behaviors during early childhood:

Some of the forms of social behaviors developed in early childhood are based on foundation laid
in babyhood. Which will determine how children will adjust to people and to social situation when
environment becomes broader and when they do not have the protection and guidance of parents they
had during the years of babyhood. Deferent forms of behaviors developed in social situations are divided
into two groups - social and unsocial behavioral patterns.

Social Behavior Patterns:

1. Cooperation: Few children learn to play or work cooperatively with others until they are 4 years old.
More the opportunities, more quickly they will learn to do in a cooperative way.
2. Rivalry: when rivalry acts as a spur to children to do their best, it adds to their socialization, if
however, it is expressed in quarreling and boasting it leads to poor socialization.
3. Generosity: Generosity is shown in a willingness to share with others. It increases as selfishness
decreases and as children leant that generosity leads to social acceptance.
4. Desire for social approval: When the desire for social approval is strong, it motivates children to
conform to social expectations. Desire for adult approval usually comes earlier than desire for peer
approval.
5. Sympathy: Young children are incapable of sympathies behaviors until they have been in situations
similar to those of a person in distress. They express their sympathy by trying to help or comfort a
person in distress.
6. Empathy: Empathy is ability to put one self in the position of another and to experience what that
person experience. This develops only when children can understand the facial expression and speech of
others.
7. Dependency: Dependency on other for help, attention and affection motivates children to behave is a
socially approved way. Children who are independent lack this motivation.
8. Friendliness: young children show their friendliness by wanting to do things for and with others and
by expressing their affection for them.
9. Unselfishness: Children who have opportunities and encouragements to share what they have and
learn to think of others and to do things for them rather than concentrating on their own interests and
possessions.
10. Imitation: By imitating a person who is well accepted by the social group. Children develop traits
that add to their acceptance by the group.
11. Attachment behavior: Young children transfer loving attachment of mothers to other people and
learn to establish friendship with them.

Unsocial Behaviors Patterns:

1. Negativism: It is a resistance to pressures from others to behave in a certain way. It usually begins
during second year of life and reaches a peak between 3 and 6 years. Physical expression of temper
tantrums gradually give way to verbal refusals to do what children have been asked or told to do.
2. Aggression: It is an actual or threatened act of hostility, usually unprovoked by another person.
Children may express their aggressiveness in physical or verbal attacks on another, usually a child
smaller than they are.
3. Quarreling: Quarreling are angry disputes that, generally starts when a person makes an unprovoked
attack on another, quarreling differs from aggression.
1. Quarrel involves two or more people while aggression is an individual act.
2. One of the people involved in a quarrel plays a defensive role while, in aggression the role is
always aggressive.
4. Teasing and bullying: Teasing is a verbal attack on another but in bullying the attack is physical. In
both cases, the child gains satisfaction from watching the victims discomfort and attempts to retaliate.
5. Ascendant behavior: Ascendant behavior is the tendency to dominate others or to be ‘bossy’. If
properly directed, it can be a leadership trait but it usually is not and as a result, leads to rejection by
the social group.
6. Ego centrism: All most all children are egocentric in nature they think and talk about themselves.
This tendency if remains constant or grow stronger will makes them unpopular and sometimes
rejected by the group.
7. Prejudice: The foundations of prejudice are laid in early childhood when children realize that some
people are different in appearance and behavior from them and these difference are regarded by the
social group as signs of inferiority.
8. Sex antagonism: in early childhood years, many boy’s are pressured by male relatives and peers to
avoid associating with girls or playing girls games. They are also learning that, the social group
considers males as superior to females.
Social development in Late childhood:
After children enter school and come in to contact with more children than during preschool
children. Since group games requires a large numbers of playmates, the older child’s circle of friends
gradually widens- gang age- social consciousness develops rapidly.

Childhood Gangs:
Peer group: According to Havighurst, peer group is an ‘aggregation to people of approximately the
same age who feel and act together’.
During the transition from the pre gang age of early childhood to gang age of late childhood,
children shift from one group to another or from group to individual activities. The ‘shifting group’
stage bridges the gap between the pre gang age and the gang age.
Gang have a more definite structure than the informal grouping of younger children. It is made
up of children who have common play interests. Childhood gang- is a spontaneous local group having
no authorization from outside and not socially approved aims. During school age gangs are usually
unisexual in makeup.

Characteristics of children gangs:

1) Gangs identify themselves by names- many of which may be taken from movie, popular books or
comics etc.
2) Gang members uses secret signals, passwords, communication codes or a private language to
maintain their secrecy.
3) Gang children use some kinds of symbol to represent their membership (insignia) eg. Colored sticker
caps, arm or hand bands, badges etc.
4) Gang’s meeting place will be of less adults interferences, in a quiet, clam area and more opportunities
for gang activities.
5) Gang activities includes all kinds of group play and entertainment’s, making things, annoying other
people- by teasing, engaging in forbidden activities like- gambling, smoking, drinking- drug and card
playing, going/watching blue films etc.
6) To belong to a gang, a child must be invited
7) Members of a gang are of the same sex
8) The gang has a central meeting place, usually away from the watchful eyes of adults.
The most important of these characteristics is that, gang are social groups formed by children
themselves not by adults, that their major purpose is to have fun. Not to engage in mischief or other
forms of unsocial behavior.

How gangs helps children in socializing/ significance (importance) of childhood gangs:

1. Gangs helps children to learn to get along with age mates and to behave in a way that group expects.
2. It helps children to develop a rational conscience (thinking what is right and what is wrong
3. Through gangs experiences, children learn appropriate social attitude to carry out their
responsibilities.
4. Gang helps to develop personal independence by giving them emotional satisfaction from friends.
eg.- climbing high compounds wall / fences / tree etc.

Formal gang groups- scouts, guides, NSS group, or social work group in the school, club members-
sports and recreation clubs.

Companions in late childhood: - May by associates, play mates and friends

1. Associates: are people who satisfies an individual companionship needs by being in the same
environment which in they can be watched and listened to. There is no direct interaction with associates.
They may be of any age or sex.
2. Playmates: are people with whom individual engage in pleasurable activities. Children prefer
playmates of their own sex. They give more importance to their interests and skills rather than their age.
3. Friends: are congenial playmates, with whom the child can communicate by exchanging ideas and
confidential matters. Friends are those of the own sex and level of development who have similar
interest and values.

Reason for formation of gangs:

1. Need for acceptance- for belongingness of group- they get recognition
2. Need for identity- leadership role
3. They like to avoid adults pressures
4. The development of children- They like neuro-muscular activities, adventures things.
5. To avoid generation gap.

Shifts in childhood companions why childhood companions come and go:

During the gang age shift in play mates and friends common. Today’s playmate is replaced by a
different one tomorrow. A best period can become an enemy. Factors which cause changes in childhood
companions are.
1. Change in interests: As interests in play activities, academic work or conversational topics change,
children shift to companions whose interest are similar to theirs.
2. Changes in values: which changed interest as with greater maturity of behavior - they those
companions whose values match their own.
3. Anti-social behaviors: children find if their play mates / friends behavior is not accepted they shift to
companions whose behavior is more socialized.
4. Lack of social insight: children whose social insight is less developed than that of their age mates are
regarded as fact less and heartless. When they fail to show sympathy for their companion, they are
likely to be rejected.
5. Pressures from others: Parental or peer pressures to select other playmates or friends because of
their sex, religion, race, socioeconomic status often cause children to give up on old companion in
favor of one approved by parents or peers.
6. Social and geographical mobility: when there is shifting of family in new community or new place,
children one forced to find new friends.

Social acceptance:
The term ‘popular’ and ‘social acceptances’ are used unanimously. To the sociologists and
psychologists there is subtle distinction between social acceptance and popularity. Social acceptance
means being chosen as companions for an activity in a group of which one is a member. It is an success
with which children take their place in the social group and the extent to which other group members
like to work or play with them.
On the other hand popularity means the general admiration in which people are held even by
those who do not associate with them.

Characteristics of social acceptance:

1. Star : children having an outstanding quality or qualities, they are intimate friend of others. Everyone
admires them.
2. Accepted: accepted children are liked by every member of the group. Their status is less secure than
stars.
3. Isolate: These children have no friends among their peers. There are two kinds-
1. Voluntary isolates- withdrawn from the group because of lack of interest in group members or
their activities.
2. Involuntary isolates- are rejected by the group even though they would like to be identified with
it.
- Subjective involuntary- children think that they are unwanted by others and isolate themselves
from the group.
- Objective involuntary- actually they are rejected by the group members.
4. Fringer: are those, who are on the borderline of the acceptance. They loose their status, even if they
do or say against the group.
5. Climbers: have gained acceptance in one group, but want to gain acceptance in a socially more
favoured group.
6. Neglected: are neither liked or disliked. They are neglected because of their shy, withdrawn nature.
Hazards in Social development:
There are many hazards to social development, most of which are controllable if they are
recognized in time and if remedial steps are taken to change them before they become habitual and lead
to unfavorable reputations.

Social Deprivation : It means being deprived of opportunities to associate with people and as a result of
opportunities to learn to be a social person. This deprivation may come from, lack of stimulation by the
family members to associate with other children or persons and sometimes parents are afraid of contacts
of others will spoil their children.

Too much Social Participation: it is harmful because it deprives children of opportunities to develop
their inner resources which will enable them to be happy when circumstances force them to be alone.
They will feel ‘lost’ when they are not able to be with others and do things with them. This kind of
social contacts does not develop social attitudes.

Over dependency: normally children wants to be independent as soon as they are developmentally
ready to learn to be independent but if they tend to be depend on the adults and age mates, it will
become hazard to good personal and social adjustments. Over dependency is common in children who
suffer from some chronic disease, such as asthma, cough, diabetes etc. First borns are likely to be
dependent than their later born siblings. These children start feeling that they are inferior to their age
mates.

Over conformity: older children, who are especially anxious to be accepted by the peer group often
over conform in the hopes that this will guarantee their acceptance, but instead of accepting, the groups
tends to regard them as ‘weak’ or ‘helpless’ because they may lack in independence over conformity
results in loss of individuality and feel that they are neglected and overlooked by their peers.

Nonconformity: is failure to conform to group expectation so that a child will be in deprived of the
satisfaction of being members of an group, but they are also deprived of leading experiences which can
come only from group belonging.
Common Childhood Behavior Problems:
Children as they grow-up, often develop certain kinds of behavior that bother and embarrass
adults. Adults call such behavior as problem behavior and try to correct it. In doing so, They often make
things worse rather than better.
According to Charlotte Buhler, who explain in psychological terms, a problem is a hindrance that
disrupts the continuity of processes within the individual or in a group. Behavior problem is that
behavior which disrupts the teaching learning process and also disturbs the individual-group interaction
thus, hinders individual’s ability to function adequately.

Common types of behavior problems:

1. Conduct problems: Certain kinds of behavior can be called problems only when they interfere with
others happiness and their adjustment to life. Two types of problems arises.
1. Problem of limited social significance:
eg. Feeding difficulties, sleeplessness (Insomnia) nightmares, grinding of teeth, sleep walking /
talking, masturbation, excessive sexual curiosity, nail biting, thumb sucking, disobedience, etc.
2. Problems of serious social significance:
eg. Stealing, truancy, sexual abuse, begging, gambling, homicide etc.
2. Personality problem: which directly affects of individual in his/her personal adjustments eg,
aggressiveness, submissiveness, withdrawal behavior, inferiority feeling, shyness, day dreaming etc.

Problem behavior affects child efficiency, physical well being, social adjustment and create feeling
of inferiority or inadequacy.

Some Specific Behavior Problems:

1. Eating problems: There are number of common eating problems among children. These may lead to
the development of unfavorable attitudes toward meals. Because child’s eating problems often affect
the whole family. Parents should try to overcome such problems from developing.
Avoid giving snacks between the meals, because they make the child less hungry at meal times,
make child’s meal plate should be pretty, colourful and avoid heaping it with food.

2. Sleeping Problems: Problems connected with sleep, may harm the general state of the child’s health.
Parents who realizes this and change the sleep schedule from time to time will do much to
correct many sleep problems.

3. Bedwetting: children cannot be expected to have good control over bladder and to keep dry all the
night till the age of 3.5 or 4 years old. After the age of 4 years, if bed wetting takes place, parents
could think that, there is something wrong. It must be corrected before the habit of enuresis (bed
wetting). Studies have shown that, most cases of enuresis have an emotional cause. They come from
 some psychological disturbance in child’s life. This may be result of too exciting environment,
Jealousy, parental processes or parental criticism.
To avoid this, find out the real cause, never scold or punish or make fun of the child for wetting
the bed. Do not put much stress on the bedwetting itself. Lesson the child’s liquid intake in the
evening time. Teach the child to go the toilet alone during the day and also in night.

4. Thumb sucking: Many parents worried a lot about thumb sucking by their children. This is only a
transient phase and it is a device by which the child comfort himself. Sometimes it may be an
indication that the child is bored or frustrated or getting sleep. This may be due to the fact that the
child’s sucking urge has not been fully satisfied.
Usually this habit stops by about five years. It is better to distract the child’s attention from
thumb sucking with colorful toys than from threatening the child. This will psychologically
upset the child.

5. Nail biting: children bite their nails during excitement or due to nervousness, try to hide the anxiety.
High expectations of parents make the child nervousness and worried.
Do not punish him. Distraction from nail biting will give better results than severe punishment.

6. Tics: Tics is repetitive moments of the group of muscles. This usually starts as an imitation of school
mates. Blinking, winking, tossing the head, shrugging of shoulders or jerking of an arms are the
common forms of Tics. Emotional stress may enhance these conditions.
Better to distract the child. The more you correct the more permanent and vigorous it may
become.

7. Anger / Temper tantrums: When child get frustrated and becomes angry, that he forgets about
himself and his surroundings. He may roll on the ground, bang his head, or may hit others, screams,
kicks things and he will not control his demand or anger until adults yield to him. The cause of
temper tantrums lies back in the family’s background, anxiousness of parents of family atmosphere.
This condition puts every parent in an embarrassing situation especially when they are on outings.
A little give and take policy will be of much help and above all use commonsense to solve their
problem.

8. Jealousy: Jealousy is common in the first born child. When his parental love is threatened by the
arrival of another child, and in twins, especially when the adults compare them. Jealousy cannot be
shown only as physical violence. There child may become depressed and sit in a corner or may have
thumb sucking or bedwetting etc. sometimes children adopt defensive lying to avoid punishment and
to get out of difficult situation. Sometimes children tell lies in order to get approval or admiration or
to catch attention etc.
 To avoid this, parents should prepare the child psychologically to receive the new arrival and
spend sufficient time which all children. They should not compare amongst themselves or with
neighbour’s children. Try to appreciate their truth and honesty to avoid lying, tell moral
stories.

9. Stealing: it may be due to more temptation, grabbing the objects from the other child. It is a
impulsive behavior. Sometimes a variety of motives such as, unhappy home, lack of affection,
deprivation of materials, economic set back etc. sometimes child may steal just to release his
emotional tension.
Parental training and learning emotional control may hinder such impulsive behavior.

10. School phobia : (refusal to school). Some children remain absent from school. They refuse to go to
school with or without the notice of the adults in family. School phobia may be due to afraid of
separation from parents or afraid of teacher or age mates or due to anxious nature of the child.
Create interest in the child, environment in classroom should be attractive.

11. Gratification habits : Habitual manipulation of the body for pleasure. Some behavior which are not
accepted by others such as, picking the nose, ears, plucking eye lashes and hairs, fondling of genitals
masturbation, grinding of teeth etc. These behaviours indicate anxiety, insecurity or in adequacy
feeling among children.
Proper guidance from parents, creating proper understanding among children may reduce
these problems.

Moral Development in preschool and late childhood

Moral development has both an intellectual and an impulsive aspect. Children must learn what is right
and what is wrong. Then, as soon as they grow old, they must be given explanations of why this is right
and why that is wrong. They must also have opportunities to take part in group activities so that they can
learn what the group expects. Learning to behave in a socially approved manner is a long, slow process
which extends to adolescence. This lays the foundation for the development of a conscience.

Moral behavior: Moral behavior means behavior in conformity with the moral code of the social group.
‘Moral’ comes from the Latin word ‘mores’ meaning manners, customs and folkways. Moral behavior is
controlled by moral concepts- rules of behavior to which the members of a culture have become
accustomed.

Immoral behavior: Behavior that fails to conform to social expectation such behavior is not due to
ignorance but due to disapproval of social standards- lack of obligation to confirm to rules.

Unmoral behavior: is due to ignorance of what the social expects rather than intentional violation of
group standards. Some of the misbehaviors of young children are unmoral rather than immoral.

In learning to be moral, these are four essential elements.

In learning to be moral, There are 4 essential elements

1. Learning what the social group excepts as in laws, customs and rules
2. Developing conscience
3. Leaving to experience guilt and shame
4. Having opportunities for social interactions to learn
1. Role of Laws, Customs & Rules

The first essential in learning to be a moral person in learning what the social group excepts of its
members. These expectations may be in the forms of laws, customs and rules. Parents, teachers and
others who are responsible for the guidance of children must help them to learn to conform the approved
pattern this is done by setting up of rules. Rules are the prescribed patterns for conduct as guidelines.

Difference between Rules & Laws

Rules Laws

1 Rules are set by those who are responsible for Set by the elected or appointed law makers
the child’s care of state or country

2 Breaking a rule is punished according to the Laws have set penalties for their
wish or the whim of the person in charge of infringement
child

3 Few children are aware that if they break a rule When people learn the laws, they also learn
they will be punished specific punishments for breaking each law

4 Severity of punishment is often unrelated to Severity of punishment depends on

the seriousness of the act seriousness of the act

5 Rules are not consistent, They often vary Laws are more uniform and consistent-
within every family or group Same for all
2. Role of conscience

The second essential is learning to be a moral person is the development of conscience to act as
an internal control over the individual’s behaviour. According to tradition, children are born with
conscience or the ability to know what is ‘right’ or what is ‘wrong’. The persons with such beliefs
maintain that children cannot be “reformed and morally trained”. Today it is widely accepted that
conscience is not inborn and every child not only learns what is right and wrong but also use conscience
as a control over the behaviour.

Conscience is also called as inner light, superego and internalized policeman.

3. Role of Guilt and shame

After children develop a conscience, they carry it with them use it as a guideline for their
behavior. If their behaviour does not come up to the standard set by their conscience, they feel guilty,
ashamed or both.

Guilt is a “special kind of negative self evaluation”. Shame has been defined as “an unpleasant
emotional reaction of as is an actual or presumed negative judgment of himself” by others resulting
in self depreciation to the group.

4. Role of Social Interactions: Social interactions play an important role in moral development

1. Providing children with standards of socially approved behaviour

2. Providing them a source of motivation
Without interaction with others, children would not knew what socially approved behaviour is
not would they have a source of motivation to behave is any way except as they wished.

Early social interaction occur with in the family, children learn from parents, siblings and other
members. As the social horizon broaden to include the neighborhood, school age child discover that
some of the behaviour they learnt in home are different what their peers are behaving.

When peer influences increases, child accepts the standards of the peer and rejects the family
standards when they entry school, they discover that their behaviour and conduct is controlled by school
rules. Failure to conforms to these rules brings punishments.

Social interaction help the children to learn moral codes and also they learn and how others
evaluate their behaviour.

Pattern of moral development:

Moral development is dependent upon intellectual development. It occurs in two stages according
Piaget and in three stages according to Kohlberg. Both have shown that, how children at different ages,
make moral judgments and behave in a socially approved ways, follow a predictable pattern related to
the a sequence of stages in intellectual development.
Piaget’s stages in moral development:

According to Piaget, moral development occurs in two stages

1. Stage of moral realism or morality by constraint: In this stage, children’s behavior is characterized
by automatic obedience to rules and regulations without reasoning or judgment.
2. Stage of autonomous morality or morality by cooperation or reciprocity: In this, children judge
behavior in terms of its underlying intention. This stage usually begins between 7-8 years of age.
Between the age of 5 and 7-8 years, children’s concepts of justice begin to change. As a result they
begin to take into consideration the specific circumstance related to moral violation.

Kohlberg’s stages in moral Development:

Kohlberg has extended Piaget’s research and concluded with three stage and each consisting of two
sub stages.

1) Pre conventional Morality: In this, the child’s behavior is subject to external controls.
a) the child is obedient and punishment oriented and the morality of an act is judged in terms of
physical consequences.
b) Children confirm to social expectation to gain rewards. There is some evidence of reciprocity and
sharing, but it is based on bartering rather than on a real sense of justice.

2) Conventional morality or morality of conventional rules and conformity:

a) ‘good boy morality’: the child confirms to rules to win the approval of others and to maintain
good relations with them.
b) In this children believe that if the social group accepts rules as appropriate for all group members,
they should confirm to them to avoid social disapproval.

3) Post conventional morality or morality of self accepted principles:

a) Here, child behaves that there should be a flexibility in moral believes that makes it possible to
modify and change moral standards if this will prove to be advantageous to group members as a
whole.
b) In this stage, people confirm to both social standards and to internalized ideas to avoid self-
condemnation rather than to avoid social censure. It is a mortally based on respect for others rather
than on personal desire.

Phases of moral development:

If good morality is to be attained, moral development must take place in two distinct phases.

1. The development of moral behavior: children can learn to behave in a socially approved manner
through trial and error, through direct teaching or through identification.
2. The development of moral concepts: moral concepts are the principle of right and wrong. As the
child’s mental capacity for comprehending relationships increases, concepts of right and wrong in
different situation can be well recognized.
As children grow older, moral concepts become more generalized ex. Stealing is bad or wrong rather
than it is ‘wrong to steal a ball’.

Discipline:
The concept ‘discipline’ is synonymous with ‘punishment’. According to this concept, discipline is
used only when the child violates the rules set by the parents, teachers or adults.
Discipline comes from the word ‘disciple’- meaning, one who learn from or voluntarily follow a
leader. The parents and teachers are the leaders, and the child is disciple, who learns from them.
Discipline is thus society’s way of teaching the child the moral behaviors approved by the group.

Need for discipline:

Discipline is essential to children’s development because it fulfills their needs. By doing so it adds to
their happiness and to their personal and social adjustments.
1. Discipline gives children feeling of security by telling them what they may and may not do.
2. Help the children to avoid frequent feelings of guilt and shame for misbehavior- which leads to
unhappiness and poor adjustment
3. Discipline enables children to live according to standards approved by the social group and thus win
social approval.
4. Through discipline, children learn to behave in a way that leads to praise- indicates love and
acceptance which are very much essential to successful adjustment and happiness.
5. Appropriate discipline serves as motivation, which encourages children to accomplish what is
required of them.
6. Discipline helps children to develop a conscience. The ‘internalized voice’ that guides them in
making their own decisions and controlling their own behavior.

Essentials in Discipline:
Discipline has 4 essential elements. Omission of any of these, will result in unfavorable attitudes on
the part of the children.

1) Rules: Rules are prescribed patterns for conduct. They may be set by parents, teachers or playmates.
Rules serve two very important functions in helping children to become moral.
1. They have an educational value- they teach how to behave.
2. Rules helps to restrain undesirable behaviors.
If it is a family rules that no child can take toys of others, without their consent or knowledge;
children soon learn that this is regarded as unacceptable behaviors.
2) Punishment: It comes from the Latin verb ‘Punire’ meaning, to impose a penalty on a person for a
fault, offense or violation of rules.
Punishment plays 3 important functions in the moral development of children.
1. Restrictive: when children discover that certain acts will lead to punishment, they usually not
repeat such acts because of the memories of the punishments they have received in the past for
these acts.
2. Education: by receiving punishment, children will understand the rules.
3. Motivation: to avoid socially disapproved behaviors. Recognitions of the possible consequences
of a wrong act are essential to motivation to avoid this act.

3) Rewards: The term ‘reward’ means, any form of appreciation for an attainment. It does not have to
be in the form of material (gifts), instead, it can be a word of approval, praising, a smile, or a pat on the
back, social recognition and special treats.
Rewards play 3 important functions.
1. Rewards have an educational value- children come to understand that if they are punished. It is
bad, if they get rewards, the act is good.
2. Motivation to repeat socially approved behavior.
3. Reinforce socially approved behavior- absence of rewards weakens the desire to repeat the
behavior.

4) Consistency: means a degree of uniformity or stability (it is different from constancy- there is no
change) consistency is tendency towards sameness.
Consistency in discipline play 3 important functions.
1. Educational value: when rules are consistent it speeds up the learning process.
2. Motivational value: children discover that, rewards always follows approved behavior but
punishments always follow for bidden behavior- this will have a strong motivation to engage in
approved acts.
3. Fosters respect for rules and for people in authority: even children have less respect for those
who cannot punish them for their misbehavior- fair and unfair justice wins the respect.

Techniques of discipline:

In early days there was only one approved technique of discipline- i.e. ‘authoritarian discipline’-
Training the children to behave in a socially approved way was the responsibility of those in authority-
parent’s teachers or others. During this era, new techniques of discipline were widely accepted- i.e.
permissive discipline and democratic discipline.

1. Authoritarian Disciplinary technique: Strict rules and regulations to enforce the desired behavior.
This includes severe punishment for failure to come up to the expected standards, no or little
recognition, praise or other signs of approval when the child meets the expected standards. Authoritarian
discipline always means control through external force in the form of punishment especially corporal
punishment. Even as children grow older, they use rigid punishment and they do not encourage children
to make decisions regarding their acts instead they tell them what to do? Thus children are deprived of
opportunities to learn how to control their own behavior.

2. Permissive Disciplinary technique: In this type, there is little or no discipline. It does not usually
grade the child into socially approved patterns to behavior and does not employ punishment. For many
parents permissive discipline is a protest against harsh and rigid discipline under which they were
brought up. In such cases, children often do not have limits or boundaries set on what they may do. They
are permitted to make their own decisions and act on them in practically any way they wish.

3. Democratic Disciplinary technique: This type of discipline employ explanation, discussion and
reasoning to help children understand why they are expected to behave in a certain way, they emphasize
educational aspects of discipline rather than punitive. Here, parents uses more of rewards than
punishments. Punishment is never harsh and it is used only when there is evidence that children have
willfully refused to do what was expected of them.
Democratic discipline teaches children, educate children to develop control over there, behavior so
that they will do what is right even there is no one standing over them to direct. This internal control
over behavior comes from educating the children to behave in an approved manner and by showing
them the reward for doing so.
Democratic discipline leads to good personal and social adjustments. It results in independence in
thinking, initiative in action and a healthy, positive, confident self concept which is reflected in active,
out going and spontaneous behavior.

Hazards in Moral Development: The common hazards in moral developments includes.

1) Relief that discipline and punishment are synonymous: People believe that a good disciplinarian
in one who uses punishment for misbehaviors and to teach children what the social group will and will
not tolerate and also believes that punishment can fulfill all the functions of discipline. Which ignores
the roles played by rules and rewards.

2) Difficulties in learning moral concepts: Due to low level of intelligence, way of parental teaching,
changes in social values, variations with the different situation, conflicts with social pressures learning
specific moral concepts becomes difficult.

3) In consistency in discipline: Unless discipline is consistent, children are at loss to know what to do
and whom to obey.

4) Use of bribes: use of bribe is very bad due to 3 reasons

1. They motivate children to behave in a social approved way only when they are paid to do so.
2. Lack of educational value.
3. They give children the choice of not behaving in a good way it they feel they are not being paid.
5) Discrepancies between moral concepts and moral behavior: these discrepancies are hazardous to
good personal and social adjustment and also this leads to feeling of guilt and shame.

Misdemeanors: A misdemeanor is mischievousness, disobedience or willful badness of a minor sort.

Dishonesty is very common among preschool children, who have been subjected to strict discipline. To
escape from the punishment these misdemeanors exists in children which affects child’s good personal
and social adjustments. Common childhood misdemeanors includes, lying, cheating, stealing,
destructiveness and truancy (dislike of school).
When these are not treated or guided properly they may also observed in case of school age period.

Common misdemeanors of late child hood

Home misdemeanors:
1. Fighting with siblings
2. Breaking possessions of other family members
3. Escape from routine activities
4. Being rude to other family members
5. Neglecting home activities
6. Lying
7. Being sneaky (escaping)
8. Pilfering thing belonging to other family
members.
9. Spilling things intentionally.

School misdemeanors:
1. Stealing
2. Cheating
3. Lying
4. Using vulgar and obscene language
5. Destroying school properly and materials
6. Being truant
7. Creating disturbance, teasing, bulling other
children.
8. Reading comic books or chewing gum
during school hours
9. Fighting with classmates
10. Use of drugs during school times
 Cognition Development in preschool and late childhood
Cognition refers to mental activity and behaviour through which knowledge of the world is
attained and processed including learning, perception, memory and thinking (Hetherington & Parke
1979)
Importance of cognition
1. Helps us to understand child’s level of thinking and what is to be expected of them – their
behaviour or discipline.
2. A concept of child’s understanding level helps us formulate appropriate content, and approach
for Education.
3. Help child to adjust to changes in personal and environmental situations /conditions.
4. Help to adjust to all developments.

Cognitive development is the construction of thought processes, including remembering,

problem solving and decision making from childhood through adolescent to adulthood.
Jean Piaget, a well known psychologist, proposed a cognitive theory and he found that, a child’s
knowledge is composed of ‘schema’s’, units of knowledge used to organize past experiences and serves
as a basis for understanding new ones.

According to him, cognitive ability develops in two periods

1. The period of sensory motor intelligence
2. The period of conceptual intelligence
[

The first period is largely dominated by sensory motor processes and the second by more
abstract processes of reasoning and problem solving in which child is capable of using language
and symbols.
The period of sensory motor intelligence involves
a). The sensory motor stage (in fancy)
b). The Pre operational stage (Toddlerhood and early childhood)
The period of conceptual intelligence
a). Concrete operational stage (elementary and early adolescence)
b). Formal operational stage (adolescence and adulthood)

Pre operational stage (Toddlerhood and early childhood) – This stage extends from 2-6 years of age.
They are capable of using language and symbolic thinking. They are using their imaginary and memory
skills, which is apparent in their imaginative play. Their view of world is normally very self centered
and are unable to take the views of others. Their thinking is done in a non-logical, non-reversible
manner. They are unable to solve problems involving number concepts and actions, such as, talking
back to adults, lying and bullying. Other cognitive development in preschoolers are developing
structured routines such as, doing household works.
Two stages can be formed from Pre-operative thought.
a). The symbolic function sub stage: Occurs between 2-4 years. The child is able to formulate designs
of objects that are not present. They are characterized by Egocentrism and Animism.
Egocentrism occurs when a child is unable to distinguish between their perspective and that of another
person’s. Children tend to pick their own view of what they see rather than actual view shown to others.
Animism is the belief that inanimate objects are capable of actions and have life like qualities.

b). The intuitive thought sub stage: Immediate application of mind without reasoning. This occurs
between 4-7 years of life. Begin to use primitive thinking- Children tend to become very curious and ask
many questions.

Centration and conservation are both involved in intuitive thought.

Centration: is the act of focusing all the attention on one characteristic compared to the others. This is
noticed in conservation.
Conservation: is awareness that altering a substance appearance does not change its basic properties.
Children at this stage are unaware of conservation.
Ex: Child is represented with two identical beakers, containing the same amount of water. When water
from one beaker poured in to a taller and thinner beaker, The child would say that now beakers have
contain different amount of water.
- The child simply focuses on the height and width of the beaker than the amount of water. –
child fails in understanding conservation of water task.

So, conservation concept can be taught to the child and training can improve the child’s understanding.

Concrete Operational Period (Elementary and Early adolescence)

Between the age of 7 – 11 years children move into Piaget’s third stage of concrete operation.
Dramatic changes in child’s thinking occur during this stage. Several new features will be learn by the
child. The child is able to:
- Add, Subtract, multiply, divide and follow serial ordering – big to small or tall – short.
- He understands that operations are reversible
steam---- water ----- Ice. 4+3=7 3+4=7
- Understands that adding and subtracting are opposite.
- Their thinking is less egocentric they think from others point of view.
- Are able to solve problems considering more than one aspect
3 plastic beads- blue 4 plastic beads- green 7 wooden beads- red
Which is more? Plastic beads ? or wooden beads ? Ans: both are same
 - Children begin to think deductively
Jimmy is a dog all dogs are animals all Jimmy’s are?
- Children are able to conserve quantity, number, volume and space, length, height etc.

Children are able to classify, reverse thought, understand class inclusion, go from Centration to
Decentration and develop the skill of conservation of thought.

1. Classification: is the centre the development of concrete operations. The ability to group objects
according to common attributers allows children to put their world in order and simplify it. It appears
to be ordering and organizing what is immediately present.
Ex: classify the things according to colour, size shape etc,.

2. Reversibility: According to Piaget, children in middle childhood do processes reversible intellectual

operations or reversibility. The older child can exhibit reversible mental operations in two distinct
ways Negation (Inversion) and Compensation (Reciprocity).
The negation rules states that as operation can be negated or inverted
Ex: 1+2+3+4=10, 4+3+2+1=10
Compensation states that, for any operation there exists another operation that compensates for the
effects of first one
In arithmetic, for eg, subtraction is compensation of addition and division is compensation of
multiplication)
5 + 2 = 7, 7–2=5 4 ÷ 2=2 2x2=4

3. Centration to decertration: The concrete thinker is likelier to achieve a more balanced ‘decentered’
perceptual analysis of the problem situation. Pre-schooler is more prone to concentrate or center his
attention exclusively on some single feature that is particularity interesting to him (centration). They
are neglecting other relevant tasks. In school age children, decertration allows them to focus on
several aspects of the problem all at once and relate them (beaker problem).

4. Class inclusion: The child’s knowledge that a super ordinate class is always larger than any of its
subordinate classes, is known as class inclusion, is considered as a concrete operational thought.
Ex. If a child is given 5 roses and 3 tulips, and asked whether roses are more or flowers are more,
the child answers ‘flowers’.

5. Conservation: Children in the concrete operation stage, understand that quantity is the some despite
a change is its appearance. This skill of conservation enables concrete thinkers to easily solve the
problems.
- Conservation of Length - Conservation of Weight
- Conservation of Volume - Conservation of Weight & Volume
Horizontal declage – gradual understanding of conservation beginning with number, substance
length, area, weight and later volume.

6. Attention: The amount and type of information to which they attend. One important aspect of
attention is selectivity, which refers to the ability to screen out distractions and concentrate on a
particular stimulus while ignoring others.
Eg. Painting task or finding the difference
Older children are more flexible than younger children in modifying their attention in accordance
with the task requirements.
- Doing a task considering two aspects

7. Perception: is the primary source of knowledge, it can be referred to as detection, recognition and
interpretation of sensory stimuli. It is the process by which children extract meaningful information
from physical stimuli. Young children need to have a lot of information presented before they are
able to interpret perceptually an object or event in contrast, older children can recognize events with
incomplete information.
Perception also becomes more differentiated as children get older. Practice or prior experiences
teach children which patterns of features are distinctive and critical for identification.
Ex. b,d, p, q – Child think that the line and loop are distinctive features. Young children are
enable to discriminate the position. For old children, these 4 letters become distinguishable.
Perceptual processes do not function in isolation from other thought processes. Perceptions are stored in
memory, where information is recalled to interpret incoming perceptions.

8. Seriation: The ability to order items along a quantitative dimensions, such as length, weight is called
seriation. Ex. Arrangement of sticks of different lengths from shortest to longest.
Transitive inference: The ability to seriate or order items along a quantitative dimension
mentally.

9. Spatial Reasoning: School age children have a more accurate understanding of space, than they did
in early childhood. They will have an understanding of distance and ability to give directions.
Distance: Comprehension of distance improves in middle childhood, as a special
conservation on task reveals. How far, along with angle they are able to judge the distance.
Children can understand units of measurements- cm, inch, mts, kmts etc,.
Directions: Children are more advanced in understanding and give directions- left, right,
east or west etc. They also have the capacity for operational thinking they use a mental walk
is which they imagine another person’s movements along a route.
Memory – is the fundamental aspect of cognitive development. It refers to ability to remember. It
allows a person to perceive, classify, reason and to form more complex concepts.

Memory has three parts

a. A sensory memory
b. A short term memory
c. A long term memory

The Sensory memory records sensory information and is very brief. The information is
not stored, vanishes with in a second.
The short term memory holds, what mind is conscious of at the moment. In this – information is
available for a maximum of about 30 seconds. It is the working memory. If the information is not
repeated or stored, It will be forgotten.
The long term memory refers to knowledge that is available for a long time perhaps forever.

Another aspect of Cognitive Development is creativity is the ability to think about something in a new
way and generate new responses and unique solutions.
Process of creativity involves two types of thoughts – a. Convergent thinking and b. Divergent thinking

Convergent thinking: It involves trying to find the correct solution to a problem.

Eg. Missing number is the series of number
1, 3, 5, 7, _, _, _,15
- Problem has only one solution or correct answer. Intelligence tests tend to measure convergent
thinking.

Divergent thinking: Generates multiple solutions to a problem by expanding upon a basic idea or
concept. It assumes that a question can have several equally good answers among them choose the one
which seems most appropriate.
Creative children have the ability to look beyond the obvious to see relationship in unusual and
new ways. Creativity not only demands divergent thinking processes, it also involves the ability to
translate ideas in to a given medium such as writing or drawing.
 Personality Development in preschool and late childhood

The term ‘personality’ refers to impression which an individual makes on others. The term
‘personality’ used to mean the configuration of individual’s unique adjustment to his environment.
The word ‘personality’ is defined as the ‘dynamic organization with in the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine the individuals unique adjustments to the environment (Allport).
The term dynamic points up the changing nature of personality. It emphasizes that changes can occur in
the quality of a person’s behavior. Organization implies that personality is made up of a number of
different traits –are interrelated. The psychophysical systems are the habits, attitudes, values, beliefs,
emotional state, sentiments and motives which are learned as results of child’s various experiences.
They are the motivating forces which determine what kind of adjustment they will make. Personality
changes with child in which environment he lives.
The term personality comes from the Latin word ‘persona’ meaning ‘mask’. To the Romans
‘persona’ meant ‘as one appears to others’. Personality is the quality of persons total behaviors.

Development of personality pattern:

The term pattern means a design or configuration. In case of personality pattern, the different
psychological systems that make up the individual’s personality are interrelated, with one influencing
others. Earlier it was believed that, the personality pattern was the product of heredity, but today there is
ample evidence that the personality pattern is a product of both heredity and environmental influences.
Research studies on this have related that three factors are responsible for its Development.
1. Hereditary endowment
2. Early experience with in the family
3. Events in later life.
The pattern is closely associated with the maturation of the physical and mental characteristics which
constitute the individual’s hereditary endowment. These characteristics provide the foundations on
which the structure of the personality pattern is built through learning experience. The early experience
are mainly in home and later learning experience are in the different environments children come in
contact with outside the home.

Components of the personality pattern:

The two major components of personality pattern are.
1) The self concept: It is the concept people have of who and what they are. It is a mirror image
determined largely by their roles, their relationship with others.
 Self concept has a physical and a psychological aspect. The physical aspect is composed of concepts
individual have to their appearance, their sex appropriateness- their behaviors. The psychological aspect
is the individual’s abilities and disabilities their worth and their relationships with others.
2) Traits: These are specific qualities of behavior or adjustive patterns, such as reactions to
frustrations, way of meeting problems, aggressive and defensive behavior and outgoing or withdrawal
behavior in the presence of others.
Trails have two characteristics- 1) Individuality- which is shown in variation in the quantity of a
particular trait rather than in a trait peculiar to that person. 2) Consistency- the person behaves in
approximately, the same way in similar situations and under similar conditions.

Types of personality:
Greek Hippocrates referred to 4 personality types.
1. Sanguine – quick and active persons.
2. Choleric – strong and easily aroused persons.
3. Phlegmatic – slow and stolid type persons.
4. Melancholic – sad and pessimistic individuals.

Determinants of Personality:
Some of the determinants of personality have their greatest effect on the core of the personality
pattern.
1. Early experience: The importance of early experience to personality development was first stressed
by Freud. Who found that many of his adult patients had unhappy childhood experiences. There are
many evidence that, the total environment in which the child grows up and other factors in the child’s
total experience are of great importance in the determining the pattern of personality.

2. Cultural influences: ‘You can take children away from their culture but you cannot take the culture
away from children’. In every culture children are subjected to pressure to develop a personality pattern
that will confirm to the standards set by the culture. Accordingly, and parents set the model for the
approved personality pattern, through child training in the home and school, children are expected to
adopt this pattern and a model for their own personalities.

3. Physique: Physique or body build influences the personality both directly and indirectly. Directly,
it determines what children can and cannot do. Indirectly, it determines how children feel about their
bodies. At an early age, children become aware of any marked deviation from the group norm because
of the effect it has on their social relation. Nick names that imply their physique such as fatty, skinny,
Shorty, etc will show how other children will feel about themselves being different makes children feel
inferior which affects their personality.

4. Physical conditions: 1) general health and 2) physical defects.

 Not only does good health enable children to engage in the normal activities, but also has favorable
effect on their personalities. All the persons have more favorable towards healthy children than towards
those who are sicky. The children who are sicky cannot engage in the normal activities, always seek
consideration from other people which makes them to develop feelings of inferiority and inadequacy.
Physical defects affect personality depends on the activities they can engage in and the attitudes of
others toward them because of their defects.

5. Attractiveness: In young children “Attractive” may be based on physical features, body build,
clothing, stylishness etc. It is assumed that those who are attractive have more desirable personalities
than those who are unattractive. Among peers, attractive children are more popular than unattractive and
they are more often selected for leadership roles.
Too attractive children may be the target of envy and jealousy among their peers, when this happens
they are treated with discrimination and sometimes even rejection by their peers.
6. Intelligence: Young children are not aware of what their intellectual level is. They do not realize how
bright/dull they are. After they enter school they measure their level of intellectual development by the
kind of adjustment they make in school work. The more superior the intelligence of the child, the less
favourable the social attitudes tend to be. Highly intelligent children may be often regarded as ‘Threats’
by their peers. The reason for this is that, they may raise the standard of work in the class and make
teachers expect more of all students. This makes every bright child unpopular with their classmates. As a
result many bright children develop unfavourable self concept.
7. Emotions: When emotions are strong, the behavior of the child becomes disorganized, this will
adversely affect children’s characteristic pattern of adjustment. Suppression of emotional expression
results in moodiness, which tends to make individual rude, non cooperative and preoccupied with self.
Heightened emotionality tends to make nervous and tensed and often accompanied by thumb sucking,
nail biting etc which creates the impression of ‘immature’
8. Names: Children’s reactions to their names are emotionally weighted because they reflect how
others feel about their names. If others like their names, it will have a favourable effect in their self
concepts on the other hand it will damage their self concept. Nick names and pet names also have a
profound effect on their personalities.
9. Success and Failure: How children react to what they regard as their success and failures
influences their personal and social adjustments. This inturn, has a marked effect on their self concepts.
Success makes children proud and self satisfied, highly achieved, independent, seek new challenges and
confident, cheerful and happy.
On the other hand,failures makes children inadequate and feel inferior, lower their aspirations, often
express angry outbursts and destruction of property, depressed and unhappy.
10. Social Acceptance: Children who are accepted in the social group will develop leadership position,
develop self confidence and recognition, and win more friends. By contrast, unpopular children feel
inferior, irritable and they are envious to their more popular age mates. Children who enjoy marginal
acceptance- fringers
Children who show a degree of tension and often seem anxious–Climbers
Children who are overlooked or ignored by age mates – Neglectees
Children who are highly accepted – Stars
11. Status symbol: begins to occur when children spend more time with peers. Family status and
parental occupation play more effect on children. As they grow older, status of clothes become very
important. Children whose families are able to provide more clothes will gain prestige in the peer group.
12. School influences: Influences the child’s developing personality both in the area of traits and in
formation of self concept. This includes
- Disciplining methods used in school
- Academic achievement
- Emotional climate of the classroom
- Teachers relationship with children
13. Family influences: of all determinants of personality, the family is the most important because it is
the first social group with which child is identified, spends more time in the family, during foundation
years the most influencing members are family members.

Hazards in Personality Development:

The most common hazards that affect personal and social adjustments of children are
1. Unfavourable self concept: Many children develop unfavourable self concepts. As a result they
have difficulty in making good personal and social adjustments.
Causes of unfavourable self concepts:
i. The foundations of unfavourable self concepts are usually at home. As family relationship
deteriorates, the child’s self concept gets affected.
ii. When child’s social contacts increases they come more and more in contact with people outside
the home. If they are rejected or neglected by their peer group they develop feelings of
inferiority.
iii. If children are poor students, disruptive in the classroom, gets punishment for misbehavior, poor
relationship with teacher- makes them feel nuisance or a dull child- which again affects their self
concept.
Effects of unfavourable self concepts:
 They become self rejectant, behave in a way that others regard as unsocial or immature
 They feel unloved or unwanted by parents
 They may become resentful, rebellious, negativistic and aggressive
 They may become withdrawn or over dependent on parent.
2. Egocentrism: Means concern more about self rather than others. They are self bound, their
interests are centered mainly on themselves. All babies and young children tend to be egocentric,
but as they grow their helplessness decreases and tend to shift from egocentrism to social
behavior, but this doesn’t happen among all as a result they fail to behave in a social way.

Causes of egocentrism:
i. Over protectiveness: Children who are protected from environmental experiences their age
mates have – develop an expectancy to have others to do things for them.
ii. Parental favoritism: It encourages the children to become self bound in their attitudes.
iii. Parental aspirations: Strong parental aspirations encourage them to become egocentric in their
striving for these goals. Success in reaching the goals encourages superiority complex and failure
encourages inferiority complexes.
iv. Parental age: Young parents tend to be more concentrated about affairs and do not encourage
egocentrism in children. Over age parents by contrast, often become child oriented and this
encourages their child to be egocentric.
v. Ordinal position: First born s and last borns often become egocentric because of their focal
point of attention from all family members.
vi. Family size: The small the family the more likely the child to become egocentric. Only the child
tend to become more egocentric.
vii. Gender of the child: Among young children, boys tend to be parental favourites and this
encourages them to be egocentric. Among older children, encouragement of boys to be
independent and socially oriented curbs their egocentrism. By contrast, older girls encouraged to
be dependent and this increases their tendency to be egocentric.

Effects of egocentrism:
Egocentrism affects both the behavior and the personality pattern of the child. They are selfish,
demanding and uncooperative. This behavior creates an unfavourable impression on others, and they
tend to reject or neglect them. As a result they develop unfavourable self concept and this
encourages self rejection. Self rejection inturn leads to personal and social maladjustment.

3. Personality Maladjustment: Children who make poor personal and social maladjustment are
labeled ‘Maladjusted’. They are frequently called ‘Problem Children’. There are two kinds of
personality maladjustments
i. Involves behavior which is satisfying to the child but is socially unacceptable.
ii. Involves behavior which is socially acceptable but is a source of continuous excessive and
disturbing conflict to the child.
Dangerous signals of personality maladjustments are often overlooked or ignored by many
parents and teachers, because they believe that children will outgrow their unsocial patterns of
 behavior and develop more favourable self concepts as their bodies change to those of adults during
puberty.

Gender Role Development

Meaning of Gender role:

The term ‘Gender role’ mean the pattern of behaviors for members of the two sexes approved
and accepted by the social group with which the individual is identified.
Block (1973) has defined a gender role more specifically as ‘a constellation of qualities’ an
individual understands to characterize male and females in his/her culture.
The qualities that determine the approved patterns of behavior for members of the two genders
within a culture depend upon what is valued by that culture.
There are some stereotypes develop about gender roles are, concept about approved appearance
including body build, facial features and cloths- approved patterns of behavior, speech, expression of
feeling and emotions, approved way to earn a living and many other qualities. Once these stereo types
are formed, they act as standards by which each individual is judged by members of the social group to
be sex appropriate or in appropriate. The individual is treated in accordance with these judgments.
A stereotype also serves as standards for self-evaluation. They also act as guidelines for training
of children. Children are taught from the beginning to look to think, to feel and to act in accordance with
the standards set by the stereotypes for their sex group.

Gender role stereo types have 3 aspects:

1. Cognitive aspect: This includes the perceptions the beliefs and the expectation people hold with
regard to the male and female sex groups.
2. Affective aspects: This includes general friendliness or unfriendliness towards the object of the
attitude and the various specific feeling that give the attitude its emotional coloring. These feeling may
be of contempt, envy or fear.
3. Conative aspect: This includes belief about what should be done with regard to the group in question
and with the specific members of that group. In case of sex stereotypes, there is belief that, members of
the male sex should assume responsibilities that require physical strength and the members of the female
sex should be protected against any responsibility that might prove damaging to their weaker physical
condition.

Some facts on which sex role stereotypes were based:

1) Physical Differences: Males have larger bodies, heavier muscles, and greater muscular strength.
Females have smaller bodies. Smaller muscles and less strength. Males are therefore capable of doing
things requiring greater strength. And females of doing things that require greater skills resulting from
better muscle coordination.
2) Physiological Differences: Females are capable of producing children and are subject to periodic
discomforts at their menstrual periods. When menopause occurs, women lose one of their major
physiological functions and with it, a decline in the sex drive. By contrast, men have no periodic
discomforts, they do not experience a decline in the sex drive, the ability to procreate persists, and their
only role in procreation does not interfere with their normal pattern or living.

3) Differences in instinct: When it was believed that a person's life was controlled by instincts or
hereditary driving forces, the maternal instinct was believed to motivate women to want to be mothers
and to devote their time to caring for children. The paternal instinct acted only as a driving force to
protect the young so long as they were incapable of protecting themselves.
4) Intellectual Differences: Until the turn or the present century. it was believed that size or brain and
level or intelligence were closely correlated. Because males, at every age, had larger brains than
females, it was assumed that they had a higher level of intelligence.
5) Achievement Differences: throughout history, the greatest achievements in art, music, literature,
science, etc. Have come from males. It was assumed that their superior strength and intellectual abilities
made these greater achievements possible.

6) Emotional Differences: because of the periodic disturbances that accompany menstruation in

women, it was taken for granted that these physiological disturbances would lead to emotional
disturbances, thus causing women to be emotionally unstable. By contrast males were believed to be
emotionally stable just as they were physically stable.
7) Health Differences: the label "weaker sex" was applied to women because it was believed that they
experienced more physical disturbances and illnesses than men. This weaker physical condition was
attributed to their smaller and weaker bodies and to the periodic menstrual discharges and childbearing.

Kinds of sex role: There are two types.

1. Traditional sex role
2. Egalitarian sex role
1) Traditional sex role: The stereotypes on which traditional male and female sex roles are based on
the fundamental principle of differences between the two sexes. Not only two sexes are different but
they are also different in areas that are important to the welfare an progress of the social group with
which they are identified.

Male sex role stereotypes:

1. Dominant in all activities- shown by aggressive and assertive behavior.
2. Self fulfillment only by own achievement.
3. Control of emotion of all times to strength.
4. Self oriented considering first in all situation.
5. As wage earner, makes all major decisions.
6. Only role at home is, advising and disciplining children.
 7. Tendency to derogate all females and female achievements.
8. Upward social mobility through own achievement.

Female sex role stereotypes:

1. Expression of emotions, thus giving warmth to social relationship in the home and outside.
2. Others oriented, considering others first, before self.
3. Major role is care taker of home and family.
4. Willing to let major decisions be made by males.
5. Works outside home only when necessary and only in occupations regarded as ‘women’s work’.
6. Work inside and outside the home less demanding and difficult therefore, it carries little prestige
and is paid less.
7. Serves in community affairs in roles inferior to those of males.
8. Feels guilty if considering own interested above those of others.
9. Upward social mobility through marriage to higher status male.

2) Egalitarian sex role stereotypes:

This type of stereotypes is based on the fundamental principle that difference between the sexes
are far less than was formerly believed and that, what differences do exist are not important in a culture
when technologies has replaced the role formerly played by physical strength.
According to these stereotypes, each individual is free to develop individual needs and interests
and abilities without being regarded as sex an appropriate. Both the sexes should be given equal
opportunities to contribute equally for the progress.

Male sex role stereotypes:

1. Feels superior only when achievements are superior, not because of sex.
2. Less self centered- others oriented.
3. Works on a companionship basis with females and does not feels sex in appropriate when
working under females.
4. Shares home responsibilities and care for children.
5. Includes family members in decision making.
6. Proud of achievement of female family members.
7. Does not feel sex inappropriate when doing work regarded as ‘women’s work’ inside or outside
the home.
Female sex role stereotypes:
1. Actualizes own potentials regardless of activity.
2. More self- than other oriented.
3. Except others to help her instead of waiting on them.
4. Except equal opportunities, equal traditional and equal pay for work.
5. Does not feel unfeminine if achievement surpasses those of man.
 6. Does not feel sex in appropriate doing work in ‘men’s’ fields
7. Insists upon making decisions that affect her own life and interests.
8. Upward social mobility through own achievement.

Stages in learning sex role stereotypes:

Ist stage: Children learn that male and females are different in appearance, wear different clothes and
have different hair styles. These differences are more apparent in older children, adolescents and in
adults than in babies and preschoolers.
IInd Stage: Here, they discover that members of the two sexes do different things. In toy play, boy’s and
girl’s have different toys. In games and sports, boys and girls play differently. In adulthood, men do
different things than women do.
IIIrd Stage: Children learn that, males and females have different abilities and show these abilities in
different achievements. In school, boys discover that, girls are better readers and in ball play and other
games they do well than girls.
IVth Stage: Children discover that the social group judges certain patterns of appearances, speech and
behavior as sex appropriate and other patterns as sex inappropriate.
Eg. Well dressed boy is accepted by peers. If children are using any unsocial speech then they are
rejected by the group.
Vth Stage: Children learn that, different degrees of prestige are associated with different characteristics
and patterns of behavior. Eg. Children believe that, working outside the home is more prestigious than
working at home, as salary is given to the workers.

Hazards in Gender role / sex role development:

1. Confusion about approved sex role stereotypes: Confusion slows down the learning process
the social group excepts children to be sex role typed by the time they enter first standard in school.
Slowness in learning leads to unfavorable self-judgment.
2. Confusion about sex role typing: When those who are responsible for the sex role typing of
children are confused about what to teach them, they add to the confusion children are already
experiencing from conflicting observation.
3. Difficulties in accepting approved sex role stereotypes: Parents and teachers will teach the
different stereotypes but sometimes child will not act in accordance with the learnt stereotype.
4. Influence of mass media: Is hazardous to good personal and social adjustments, because the
different types of mass media stress the traditional sex role stereotypes, this is confusing for the children
who were learning egalitarian roles in home and school. Intern it slows down the learner’s motivation to
learn.
5. Effects on personality and self concept: Children who are judged as sex appropriate, they make
better personal and social adjustments than those who are judged as sex inappropriate.
 Play Development

‘Play’ means any activity engaged in for the enjoyment it gives, without consideration of the end
result. From an early age, play is important to a child’s development and learning, when children are
playing they doing about they want to, in a way they want to, play may takes place alone or with other
children or adults. According to children’s Play Council, play is defined as ‘play is freely chosen,
personally directed, intrinsically motivational behavior that actively engages the child. Play can be fun
or serious. Through play children explore social, material and imaginary world and their relationship
with them elaborating all the while a flexible range of responses to the challenges they encounter’.

Characteristics of Children’s Play:

1. Play is influenced by (culture) tradition.
2. Play follows a predictable pattern of development- stage by stage they learn how to play.
3. The number of play activities reduces with age.
4. Play becomes increasingly social with age.
5. Play becomes increasingly sex appropriate.
6. Childhood play changes from informal to formal- with uniforms, rules and regulation, appointment
of time and place.
7. Play is less physically active. as children grow older- spend time in reading, going to movie,
watching TV, listening to music etc.
8. Play is predictive of children’s adjustments.
9. There are marked variations in the children’s play- not all children play the same way at the same
age. Due to various factors (factors influencing play)

Stages in play Development:

1) Exploratory stage: In newborns, their play consists mainly by of looking at people and objects and
in making random attempt to grasp objects held in front of them further they can creep, crawl or walk,
they examine everything within their reach.
2) Toy stage: Toy play begins in the first year and reaches its peak between 5 and 6 years. At first, they
merely explore their toys, between 2-3 years they imagine that their toys have life qualities that they are
capable of acting, walking lacking and feeling etc. as children develops intellectually, they are able to
differentiate animate and in animate objects, this reduces their interest in toys.
3) Play Stage: After children enter school, they become interested in games, sports, hobbies and other
mature forms of play.
4) Day dream stage: As children approach puberty they spend most of the time in day dreaming.
Common play activities of childhood:
There are many kinds of play activities not-all children engage in all play activities. Children’s play
are divided in two categories. 1) Active play and 2) passive play, of these two, generally active play
predominates in the early years of the childhood and passive play in closing years of childhood.

1. Active Play: In this, enjoyment comes from what the individual does, whether it is running just for
the fun of running or constructing something with paints or clay.

The different forms of active play are:

1. Free spontaneous play: Here children do what they want, when they want and how they want.
There are no rules and regulation. The stimulus that give rise to free, spontaneous play is anything
new and different in the environment or toys that are especially designed for exploration.
2. Dramatic play: often called “make believe play”, in which children play through overt behavior and
language. This play is reproductive or productive often called ‘creative’ form. In reproductive
dramatic play children try to reproduce the situations that they have observed in their real life or seen
in in mass media. In productive dramatic play, children use situations, action and speech from real
life situations in new and different forms.
Dramatic play usually begins around second year of life when children play with their toys. They
react to them in way they have observed adults and older children react to the people or animal they
represent. As their intellectual abilities increase, their dramatization become more elaborate and
complex.
3. Day dreaming: In this play, the activity is mental rather than physical. The roles children adopt in
their day dreams are dramatic, heroic, fanciful and remote from daily life. Day dreaming is
pleasurable form of activity, which stimulates their imagination and encourages creativity.
4. Constructive play: This is a play in which child use materials to make things for the purpose of
enjoy they derive from making them. Up to the age of 4-5 years children put together objects
without preconceived plan or pattern. If by chance, it resembles a familiar object such as a house or
bridge they are very happy. By specifically and appropriately for making things according to a
preconceived plan.
5. Exploring: Exploring anything new or different. This makes many contributions to children’s
personal and social adjustments. It increases children’s knowledge and encourage them to seek new
information.
6. Collecting: It begins during preschool years, at first children collect anything and everything that
attracts their attention regardless of its usefulness. As they grow older, they start collecting the things
 what their friend or group mates collects. This gives them sense of pride to have large collection than
their friend.
7. Games and sports: Games and sports are contests with set rules and regulations. Sports are always
physical contests while games may be either physical or mental. Both serves as a socializing agent
from them children learn how to get along with other children.

2. Amusements (passive play): In this, the enjoyment is divided from the activities of others. The child
who enjoys watching other children’s play, watching games in TV, looking at the comics or reading
books. Child is playing with a minimum expenditure of energy, but the enjoyment may be equal to that
of the child who expends great amount of energy in the gym or on the play ground. Many adults regard
the time children spend on amusement as a “waste of time” and they claim that they would desire more
enjoyment or benefit from active play.

Common forms of amusements:

1. Reading: Once children have learned to read easily and well, they learn to reading as a form of
amusement when they are tired, when they lack play mates, of geographic isolation, lack of social
acceptance or illness or lack of in talent in active play. Reading becomes more important for them.
They prefer to read stories about familiar people and animals.
2. Looking at comics: Comics are cartoon stories in which the story element is less important that the
pictures. They may be in book form, in comic strips in newspapers or magazines or in cartoons. For
preschools the more favorite comics are those which involves animals, which shows adventure and
human they want like terror or horror comics.
3. Listening to music: Children like to listen to music from any source. If give a choice they prefer
music or records. They can hear what they want and they can repeat it again and again. It gives them
a lot of enjoyment when they are alone. It relaxes them when they are tired and often serves as a
form of release of pent-up emotional energy.
4. TV watching: For many children it is more popular and more liked play time that all other play
activities. TV combines the appealing features of the movies and radio. Preschool children like
dramatization involving animals and familiar people, music, cartoons and simple comedy.

Contributions of play to children’s Development:

Throughout the childhood years, play makes many contributions to child’s personal and social
adjustment.

2) Physical development: Active play is essential if children are to develop their muscles and exercise
all parts of their body. It also acts as an outlet for surplus energy which is pent-up, makes children tense,
nervous and irritable.
3) Encouragement of communication: To play successfully with others children must learn to
communicate with them. Intern, they can understand and intern they must learn what others are trying
to communicate to them.
4) Out let for pent up emotional energy: Play provides children with an out let for the release of
tensions due to the restrictions the environment places on their behaviour
5) Out-let for needs and dresses: Needs and desires that cannot be satisfactorily met in other ways.
Can often be met in play. A child who is unable to achieve a leadership role in real life may gain
satisfaction of this desire by being a leader of toy soldiers.
6) Source of learning: Play offers opportunities to learn many-thing at home and school.
7) Stimulant to creatively: Through experimentation in play, children discover that creating
something new and different can be satisfying.
8) Development of self insight: In play, children learn what their abilities are and how they compare
with those of their playmates. This enables them to develop more definite and realistic concepts of
themselves.
9) Learning to be social: Playing with others, children learn how to establish social relationship and
how to face and solve the problem.
10) Increases moral standard: Children at home and school groups come to understand that, what is
right and wrong. The enforcement of moral standards is nowhere as rigid as in the play group.
11) Learning to play appropriate sex roles: Children at home and in school, what are the approved
sexes roles are. However, they soon discover that, they must also accept them if they want to become
members of the play group.
12) Development of desirable personality traits: From contacts with members of the peer group in
play, children learn to be cooperative, generous, truthful, good sports and pleasant people to be with.

Factors influencing children’s play:

1. Health: The healthier children have more surplus energy for active ply.
2. Motor Development: Good motor coordination, good control enables children to engage in active
play.
3. Intelligence: At every age bright children are more active than the less bright.
4. Sex: Boys play more strenuously than girls, and they show greater range of play interests compared
to girls.
5. Environment: Children from poor environment play less than others due to poor health, less time,
equipment and space.
6. Socio economic status: Children from upper class, prefers to play activities that cost money.
7. Amount of leisure time: Play time depend more on amount of leisure time they get- school work,
extra coaching.
Hazards in play Development:

There are many hazards which damages children’s personal and social adjustments. They are.

1. Too much play time: If children involves in play most of the time they lag behind in school work
and other works which they have to learn them to lead a steady life. Depriving children of an
opportunity to balance play with work activities is hazardous to good personal and social adjustment.
Sometimes involving in play all the time, becomes boring to the children. Boredom intern makes
children lethargic and prone to expend less energy which makes them dull.
2. Imbalance between Active play and Amusement: Both active play and Amusements make
important contribution to good personal and social adjustment. Favor of one play, creates imbalance. It
deprives children getting opportunities to explore a vide variety of play activities.
3. Imbalance between social and solitary play: whether play is predominantly social and solitary is
influenced by the degree of social acceptance children gets and pressures put on them by parents,
teachers and peers of children engage in solitary play, people think that the child to neglected or rejected
by the social group.
4. Emprises on sex appropriate play activities: It starts from the babyhood, and children are deprived
of opportunities to play with toys regarded as appropriate for members of the other sex. Generally
pressure from parents, are more for boys than girls until girls reach their puberty.
5. In appropriate play equipments: Almost all play activities except day dreaming, requires some
play materials / equipments. Some children are deprived of lack of toys and equipments due to low SES
status, which does not meet children’s play needs, as a result, they lack enjoyment and stimulation
which becomes hazards to good personal and social adjustments.
6. Too much and too little guidance in play: too much guidance makes the play like school lesson. It
make’s play seem like work, for which children does not get any kind of enjoyment. If reduces
children’s interest in play. On the other hand, too little guidance deprives children of knowing how to
use the play materials, thus getting the less enjoyment.
7. Happy ending: ‘winning a game’ may be a ‘happy ending’ for children. Too many happy ending in
any kind of play are hazardous, because they encourage children to develop unrealistic concept to of life.
They get the feeling that, always they are the winner and they does not accept the failures or losing the
game – leads to poor personal adjustments.
Types of Play:

Age Play type Explanation of the stages of play during child development
0-2 years Solitary He plays alone. There is limited interaction with other children
2- 2 and Spectator Observe other children playing around him but will not play with them
half year
2 and
half to 3 Parallel Play alongside others but will not play together with them.
years
Starts to interact with others in their play and there may be fleeting co-
3-4 Associate operation between in play. Develops friendships and the preferences for
years playing with some but not all other children. Play is normally in mixed sex
groups.
4 - 6+ Co- Plays together with shared aims of play with others. Play may be quite
years operative difficult and he’s supportive of other children in his play. As he reaches
primary school age, play is normally in single sex group.

Play based Activities for all development of children:

 Physical-Gross motor development: running, races, games, exercises, pushing, pulling, stretching,
bouncing, sliding, rocking, throwing, catching, kicking, rolling, swinging, climbing, balancing, hopping,
jogging, gardening, cycling, walking, etc.
 Physical-fine motor development: finger play, action songs, block building, drawing, colouring,
painting, chalk / crayon drawing, pattern making, patch.
 Cognitive development: social and natural science experience, nature walk matching, naming,
classifying, identifying, sorting, sequencing, serration, puzzles, mages, riddles, sand play, water play,
celebration of festivals, construction materials.
 Sensory development: hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing and feeling, water and sand play, clay
work, tearing, finger painting.
 Language and communication: songs, rhymes, stories, conversations, informal talk, books, picture
books, chart modeling, dramatic play, puppet ply, sound games, riddle, doll play etc
 Emotional and aesthetics development: music and movement, dance, creative drama, clay work,
care of animals and garden.
 Social development: stories, songs, rhymes, puppet activities, dramatization, group / team games,
sports, festivals, birthdays.
 Personal development: dramatization, role play, doll play, meal time activities, cleaning, and
grooming self, cleaning and tidying the room.
 Development of Creativity
All the psychologists, sociologists and other educationist have recognized the importance of
creativity. Still it is one of the neglected subjects in scientific research, mainly due to 3 reasons.
1) There was traditional relief that, creativity commonly called ‘genius’ it could be always hereditary
and they were either born with ‘divine spark’ of genius.
2) Only few people have the ability to create
3) Only with intelligent and persons of achievement drive can be successful in creativity.

Meaning of creativity:

Creativity is the capacity of person to produce composition, products or ideas of any sort which are
essentially new or novel. It can be imaginative activity or thought synthesis. It may involve
combinations of new patterns and information derived from past experiences, and transplanting of old
relationship to new situations. Product may take of an artistic, literary or scientific production or may be
a procedure or methodological nature.

Characteristic of creativity:

1. Creativity is a process, not a product.

2. The process is goal directed, either for personal benefit or for the benefit of the social group.
3. It leads to the production of something new, different and therefore, unique for the persons whether
it be verbal or nonverbal, concrete or abstract.
4. Creativity comes from divergent thinking. while conformity and everyday problem solving comes
from convergent thinking.
5. It is a way of thinking. it is not synonymous with intelligence, which includes mental abilities other
than thinking.
6. The ability to create depends upon the acquisition of accepted knowledge.
7. Creativity is a farm of controlled imagination that leads to some kind of achievement whether in
painting, drawing, block building etc.

Values of creativity: Value of creativity centers on what the creativity person produces for benefit and
enjoyment of social group.

- Creativity gives children’s tremendous personal pleasure and satisfaction.

- Being creative is valuable, because it adds spice to their play.
- Creativity helps children to achieve success in other developing area.
- Creativity contributes to the leadership.
Conditions that foster creativity:

A number of thing can be done foster creativity. The most important of these conditions and the
roles they play in fostering creativity are.

1) Time: To be creative children must be so regimented that they have little free time to with ideas and
concepts and try them act in new and original forms.
2) Solitude: only when away from the pressures imposed on children by the social group can children
be creative.
3) Encouragement: children must be encouraged to be creative and free form the ridicule and criticism
that fear too often are heaped on creative children.
4) Materials: Play materials and other materials must be supplied to stimulate experimentation and
exploration, essential elements of all creativity.
5) Stimulating environment: Both the home and school environments must stimulate creativity by
provably guidance and encouragement to use the materials that will encourage creativity.
6) Un possessive parent-child relationship: parents who are neither over productive nor over
possessive encourage their children to be independent and contribute heavily to creativity.
7) Child training methods: Democratic and permissive child training in the home, foster creativity.
8) Opportunities to acquire knowledge: the more knowledge children can acquire, the battle the
foundations on which to build creative production.

Variations in creativity: In spite of the fail that the creativity follows a predictable patterns, there
are variations in this patterns number of factors are responsible for these variation.
1. Sex: boys show greater creativity than girls especially as childhood advances, this is due to the
difficult treatment boys and girls receive. Boy are given more opportunities to become independent and
they are more encouraged by parents and teachers to show more initiative and originality.
2. SES Status: children of higher SES groups Lind to be more creative than those of the lower SES
groups. They provide more opportunities for gaining knowledge and experience necessary for creativity.
3. Ordinal position: Research studies show that different ordinal position show different degree of
activity among children. Middle, *-born and only children are likely to be more creative than the first
born. First born is subjected to more pressure to conform to parental expectation.
4. Family size: children from small families, tend to be more create than the children from large
families, * child training control and less favorable SES condition are more likely to affect the
development of creativity among children.
5. Urban verses Rural environment: Children from urban environment tend to be more creative than
children from rural areas. Authoritarian training method and less stimulation to creativity.
6. Intelligence: Bright children show more creativity. They have more new ideas to explore and
experiment and learn new things.

Expressive of creativity of children :

There are many way in which creativity is expressed during childhood years.

1. Animism: Animism is the tendency to ascribe consciousness to inanimate objects. Children are not
able to distinguish between life qualities and those which do not have life. Ex. Clouds stars moon etc.

Animism give children pleasure and enjoyment when they are capable of understanding that toys and
toy objects do not have the qualities of life, they begin to lose interest in life.

2. Dramatic play: Dramatic play is ‘make believe play’. It is parallel to animistic thinking, when
reasoning ability and experience enable children to distinguish between reality and fantasy, they lose
interest in make believe play and turn their drives to other activities usually construction play. Dramatic
play is reproductive. In it children reproduce the behavior of people they are instating and the situation
of life, all the themes for their dramatic play.
Contribution to personal and social adjustment:
- Dramatic play gives children pleasure and eliminate boredom they might experience when no play
mates are available.
- By dressing up for roles in make believe play, children begin to recognize the value of clothes.
- In dramatic play, children are motivate to speak. This not only increases their vocabularies, they also
gain confidence in their abilities to communicate to others.

3. Constructive play: Two most common and popular kinds of constructive play children are 1)
making things and 2) drawing.
Children make things from mud, sand, blacks, clay, paint and paper and paste.
Drawings are usually copies of picture in children’s drawing books. If given crayons are pencils and
paper to draw as they please, drawing become constructive. They are uninterested in perspective and
proportion. Their drawings represent familiar objects. Human form is most popular. Animals are less
drawn than house and trees.
Constructive play aids personal adjustment both directly and indirectly.
Directly, its contribution is, ego satisfaction of children, receive from being able to construct
something by themselves.
Indirectly, a constructive play contributes to personal adjustment by eliminating boredom and avoids
feeling that they have no one to play with. Constructive play often develops is to a life time hobby.

4. Day dreaming: Lie all play, day dreaming is an activity which is engaged in for the pleasure it
provokes. It is a form of mental play, and is usually called ‘fantasy’.
5. White lies: A very common expression of creativity among preschool children is telling of ‘white
lies’ often referred to as ‘talk tales’. A while lie is a fatherhood told by a person who actually believes it
is true. Here there is no intensive of deceiving others and no motivation to do so. Children who resort to
leis often do so to avoid punishment or criticism, children use lies to impress others and for self
protection.

6. Humor production: it is the ability to perceive the comic and ability to produce it. Both aspects can
add to social acceptance because they help to create the impressions that one is fun to be with and is a
good sport.

7. Story talking: Some children entertain their class mates or younger sibling by talking those stories.
If listener react to their stories * they are encouraged to * to talk stories. Further they can write the
stories.

Hazards to creativity:
There are number of hazards to good adjustment in the areas of creativity important ones are.
1) Failure to stimulate creativity: Even through the foundations for creativity are innate, its
development must be stimulated. Any conditions that obstruct stimulation will prevent its development.
Lack of stimulation may come from the ignorance of its importance on the parts of the parents.
2) Inability to detect creativity in time: there are no terms to detect early potential creativity. Parents
are unaware of their creativity when children are young, under such conditions, stimulations to the
Development of creativity is neglected.
3) Unfavorable Home conditions: within the home there are many conditions that affect the
development of creativity lack of encouragement, rewarding, over protectiveness of parents, strict
chiseiplinary methods etc, becomes quartets hazards during the ‘critical ages’ of creativity development.
4) Unfavorable school conditions: School conditions also affect the development of creativity strong
emphasis an memorizing, discouragement of anything that does not fall within the prescribed format, a
highly organized schedule of class activities, strict, authoritarian discipline, teachers that, creative
children are hard to manage etc, become unfavorable conditions for development of creativity.
5) Excessive day dreaming: because, it can become on habitual method of escaping from various
creative activities.
 Puberty Development
Puberty is the period in the developmental span when the child changes from asexual to a sexual
being. According to Root “puberty is the stage in development during which maturation of the sexual
apparatus occurs and reproductive capacity is attained”.
The word ‘puberty is derived from the Latin word Pubertas which means “age of manhood”.

Characteristics of Puberty: Puberty is an unique and distinctive period and is characterized by certain
developmental changes. These changes occur no other time in the life span. The most important ones
are,
1. Puberty is an overlapping period: because it encompasses the closing years of childhood and
beginning of adolescence. Until they are sexually mature, children are known as “Pubescents” or
“Pubescent children”. After sexual maturation they are adolescence or young adolescents.
2. Puberty is a short period: It lasts from 2-4 years children who pass through puberty in two
years or less are regarded as “Rapid matures”, while those who require 3-4 years to complete the
transformation in to adults are regarded as late matures. Girls tend be mature more rapidly than
boy.
3. Puberty is divided into 3 stages:
a) Pre pubescent stage: Pre pubescent is no longer a child but not yet an adolescent. The stage
over laps the closing year or two of childhood. (age 11-12 or 10-12 years) during pre
pubescent stage, the secondary sex characteristics begin to appear but the reproductive organs
are not yet full developed.
b) Pubescent stage: The criteria of sexual maturity appear in this stage. During this stage, the
secondary sex characteristics continue to develop and cells are produced in the sex organs.
This stage is a dividing line between childhood and adolescence. (age 12-13 in girls, 13-14 in
boys)
c) Post-pubescent stage: During this stage, the secondary sex characteristics become well
developed and the sex organs begin to function in a mature manner. This year overlaps the
first year or two of adolescent. (age 13-14 years or 13-15 years in girls, 14-15 or 14-16 years
in boys).
4. Puberty is a time of rapid growth and change: Puberty is one of the two periods in the life
span that are characterized by rapid growth and marked changes in body proportion. The growth
spurt lasts for a year or two before children become sexually mature and continues for six
months to a year after words. There the entire period of rapid growth lasts for almost three years.
(age 10-13 years)
5. Puberty is a negative phase: Individual takes an ant-attitude toward life or seems to be losing
good qualities developed earlier. This is evident mainly when the individual becomes sexually
mature. This negative phase characteristic is pronounced in girls than boys.
 6. Puberty occurs at a variable age: Puberty can occur at any time between the age of eight and
nineteen years. Variation in the age at which puberty occurs and in the time needed to complete
the transformation process of puberty create many personal as well as social problem for both
boy and girls.

Criteria of puberty:
The ‘menarche’ or the ‘first menstruation’ is commonly used as a criterion of sexual maturity
among girls. When the menarche occurs, the sex organs and secondary sex characteristics have all
started to develop. The menarche is considered a mid point in puberty.
Among boys, a popularly used criterion of puberty is spermarche. “ Nocturnal emissions” during
sleep, the genital organs sometimes becomes erect and semen (fluid containing sperm cells) is released.
This is normal way for the male reproductive organ to release excessive amount of semen.

The puberty growth spurt:

The puberty growth spurt for girls begins between 8.5 and 11.5 years with a peak coming on the
average at 12.5 years. From then the growth rate slows down until growth gradually comes to a stands
till between 17 and 18 years.
For boys, the growth spurt starts between 10.5-14.5 years reaches a peak between 14.5 and 15.5
years. Then onwards growth rate slows down until growth gradually comes to standstill between 20 or
21 years.

Causes of puberty changes:

1. Increase in the activity of two glands of endocrine system.
a) Pituitary gland secretion- growth hormone which is responsible for growth.
b) Ganadotrophic hormone- stimulates gonads to greater activity.
The secretion of two hormones increases, as puberty progress.
2. The gonads or sex glands are present at birth their activity, is increased at puberty by gonadotrophic
hormones. After sexual maturity, hormones from gonads stop the activity of growth hormone and
then ends the physical growth.
A proper balance in the interrelationship between the pituitary gland and the gonads leads to normal
physical development. An imbalance on the otherhand results in deviations in children.
3. Rapid growth and development depends partly on environmental factors, of which nutrition has been
found to be the most important. Good nutrition speeds up the production of the growth hormone.
While poor nutrition cause a diminished production of the growth hormone.

Major physical changes at puberty:

During puberty growth, four major physical changes occur which transform the child’s body into
that of an adult.
 1) Change in body size: it is in terms of height and weight, growth in height increases suddenly
about 2 years before sexual maturity, during the puberty growth spurt the child may grow 4-6
inches and gain 10-12 pounds. Boys reach their adult height at about 20-21 years as compared to
17-18 years for girls.
2) Changes in body proportion: certain areas of body which in the early years of life were
proportionally much too small, now become proportionally too big because they reach their
mature size, eg. Nose, feet and hands, changes occur inside the body as well as outside surface,
eg, children’s heart is small but arteries and veins are large.
3) Development of primary sex characteristics: In childhood the sex organs are small and
functionally immature. At onset of puberty they began to enlarge. In males testes are ready to
function at the age of 14 years. In female the ovaries begin to function at the menarche at about
13 years of age.
When male reproductive organs have become mature in function, Nocturnal emission begin to
occur. They usually occurs when the boy is having a sexually exciting dream, full bladder or constipated
and also when wear a tight cloths.
In girls reproductive organs grow at different rates during puberty. The first indication is the
menarche or first menstrual flow. It is the beginning of a series of periodic discharge of blood, mucus,
broken down cell tissue from the uterus, that will occur approximately every 28 days until the girl
reached the stage- menopause.
In adolescents, though their reproductive organs are growing, they are not ready for child bearing for
several months or years. This period is known as adolescent sterility.
4) Development of secondary sex characteristics: These are the physical features which
distinguish males from female’s body. They make members with of one sex attractive to
members of other. Develop concurrently with primary sex characteristics.

Development of secondary sex characteristics in boys:

a) Hairs: Pubic hairs appears about one year after the testis and penis have started to increase in size.
Axillary and facial hair appear when the pubic hair has almost completed its growth. At first all hair
is scanty, light pigmented and fine in texture. Later it becomes darker, coarser, more luxuriant and
slightly kinky.
b) Skin: the skin becomes coarser, less transparent and sallow in colour and the pores enlarge.
c) Glands: The sebaceous or oil producing glands in skin enlarge and become more active, which may
cause acne (pimple). The apocrine glands in the armpits start to function and perspiration increases
as puberty progress.
d) Muscles: the muscle increase in size and strength. Thus giving shape to the arms, legs and
shoulders.
e) Voice: The voice becomes husky and later drops in pitch, increases in volume and acquires a
pleasanter tone. Voice breaks are common when maturing is rapid.
f) Breast knots: slight knots around the male mammary glands appear between the age of 12-14 years
then decrease in size and number.

Development of secondary sex characteristics in girls:

a) Hips: hips become wider and rounder.
b) Breasts: shortly after the hips start to enlarge, the breasts begin to develop. The nipples enlarge and
protrude and as the mammary glands develop, the breasts become larger and rounder.
c) Hair: pubic hair appears after hip and breasts development is well under way. Axillary hair begins
to appear after the menarche, as facial hair, body hair appears on the limbs late in puberty. All hair
except facial hair is straight and lightly pigmented at first and then becomes more luxuriant, coarser,
darker and slightly kinky.
d) Skin: The skins become coarser, thicker and slightly sallow and pores enlarge.
e) Glands: The sebaceous and apocrine glands become more active as puberty progresses. Clogging of
the sebaceous glands can cause acne.
f) Muscle: The muscle increase in size and strength, giving shape to the shoulder, arms and legs.
g) Voice: the voice becomes fuller and more melodious.

Effects of puberty changes:

The physical changes of puberty affect every area of the body. Both externally and internally affect
the pubescent’s physical and psychological well begin.

Effects on physical wellbeing: Rapid growth and body changes are likely to be accompanied by
fatigue, restlessness and other unfavorable symptoms. Digestive disturbance are frequent and appetite is
finicky (choosy).
Anemia is common at this period because of irregular eating habits. During early menstrual periods,
girls frequently experience headache, backache, cramps and abdominal pain, sometimes accompanied by
fainting, vomiting, skin irritations and even swelling of the legs and ankles. These discomforts depends
upon how rapidly the changes occur and how healthy the individual was when puberty begins.

Effects on attitudes and behavior:

The changes in attitudes and behavior that occur at this time are more the result of social than of
glandular changes. If the child receives less sympathy and understanding from parents, siblings, teachers
and peers and greater expectation from the society, will have some serious and persistent changes on
attitudes and behaviors
Which are very common are:
 1) Desire for Isolation: when a puberty changes begins, children usually withdraw from peers and
from family activities and often quarrel with peers and family members. They spend much time
in day dreaming about how misunderstood and mistreated they are.
 Boredom: Pubescent children are bored with the play which they enjoyed earlier. School work,
social activities and life in general. As a result, they do as little work as they can. Thus
developing the habit of underachieving.
 In coordination: Rapid and uneven growth affects habitual patters of coordination and the
pubescent child is clumpsy and awkward for a time. As growth slows down coordination
gradually improves.
 Social antagonism: The pubescent child is often uncooperative disagreeable and antagonistic
(aggressive). Open hostility between the sexes, constant criticism and derogatory comments are
common at this age. This decline as puberty progress.
 Height and emotionality: Moodiness, sulkiness, temper out bursts and a tendency to cry for
slight provocation are common in early puberty. It is also the time of worry, anxiety and
irritability, depression, negative moods are common during the premenstrual and early
menstrual period of girls.
 Loss of self confidence: because of lowered physical resistance and constant criticism of
adults and peers, the pubescent child lack self confidence and develop fear of failure.

Excessive modesty: The bodily changes during puberty makes the child to become excessively modest,
for fear that other might notice changes and comment on them unfavorably.
In general, girls are seriously affected by puberty than boys, because
1) They usually mature more rapidly than boys.
2) More social restrictions begin to be placed their behavior.

Deviant maturing:
Early matures: Children who mature earlier than their sex group.
Girls: 8-10 years
Boys: 11-13 years
Late matures: Children who mature later than their sex group.
Girls: 15 years onward
Boys: 16 years onward
Rapid matures: Children who requires less than the normal for their sex group to complete
the maturational process.
Slow matures: Children who requires more than the normal time for their sex group to
complete the maturational process.
Role of Family in child’s Development
Early psychological interests were concentrated on the family mainly on the effects of the family
on child’s development.
Contributions of the family to the development of children:
- Feelings are security from being a member of a stable group.
- Children can rely on their parents to meet their physiological and psychological needs.
- Parents are the sources of objection and acceptance regardless of what they do.
- Parents teach the socially approved pattern of behaviors.
- They help their children in solving problem, when he faces the adjustment problems.
- Stimulate children’s abilities to achieve success is school and is social life.
- Help in setting aspirations suited to their interests and abilities.
- They are the source of companions for all activities.

Role of Teachers / school in child’s Development

 A healthy school environment makes child released cooperative, happy and motivated to study and
confirm to rules.
 Teachers interested in pupils motivated their academic work / school work interesting and
stimulating.
 Teachers affect children’s self concept by their attitudes toward academic work and school behavior
and interest in their pupils.
 Help children to develop socially approved patterns of adjustment.
 Discipline used in the school affects child’s attitudes and behavior- gives a feeling of self worth and
encouraging being happy relaxed, cooperative and trusting worthy and fair.
 Extra contribution’s achievement in the school enhances their s do special acceptance and holding
the leader skip the roles.

Role of peer group in child’s Development

 The peer group helps child to learn to get along with age mates and to behave, in a way that is
socially acceptable to them there.
 Replace or supplement the values of parents when child tend to accept as an authoritarians
conscience.
 Child learns appropriate social attitudes by giving him emotional satisfaction from friendship.