How parents can help ?

         While it is natural for young children to resist surrendering their infantile impulses to social regulation, youngsters who are basically well adjusted and who feel loved will also eager to please. Rest assured that with your patience and understanding, your child will eventually master the basic tenets of “do unto others” no matter how recalcitrant she may seem at the outset. From the time she begins the most rudimentary parallel play, you can start her on the road to winning friends by following a few simple guidelines.

       Your first impulse may be to rush in and straighten things out when your child tangles with playmates, but you should resort to direct intervention only if you see that a situation is getting out of hand. However fierce these frays may seem to a grownup , to the little ones involved these are passing aggravations, quickly settled and soon forgotten whenever possible give children a chance to work out their own problems ; they will learn that a little friction and frustration in play is not really fatal.  And they will get valuable practice in fending and thinking for themselves.

            When you do feel the need to step into a dispute, to prevent someone from getting hurt or perhaps to bring a chaotic situation back under control, keep your messages short direct and immediate, lengthy sermons will go unheeded in the heat of the moment and if you wait until things calm down to deliver the lesson, your advice will be difficult for the children to apply.

The role of social emotions Part.II

             They signal to the child that his behavior is right or wrong according to the rules that govern the world he lives in, thus serving as sign posts along the youngster’s path to social acceptance. He feels shame; for example, when he believes that someone he cares about has been him do something that he knows is not allowed. Deep inside he may fear the loss of love and respect, and he will very likely either consciously or subconsciously adjust his behavior in the future to avoid that distressing possibility.

             Guilt, by contrast, wells up in the socialized youngster when he senses privately that he has violated a rule and fears that punishment may result, or if the child realizes that he has failed to meet his own internalized standards of behavior. Because the process of absorbing other peoples standards and making them truly your own takes time, guilt is usually the last social emotion to mature.

            Both shame and guilt are negative emotions, sufficiently unpleasant that the socially mature child will eventually learn to avoid the antisocial behaviors that trigger them. The emotion of pride on the other hand, comes when the child knows that he has measured up to the group’s expectations. It rewards the child with good feelings, encouraging him to repeat the behavior that brought them on. Over time, these social emotions become powerful forces in molding the child’s overall personality, in determining how well he succeeds in play, at school, in his family life.