An Urge for Independence

       For your child, beginning to walk is more that the first step toward physical freedom. Moving about independently- opening a closet door, walking though a flower bed, pushing his stroller – he develops an entirely new view of himself as a separate person.

           Yet this new awareness of self is frightening as well as exciting. Your child sits atop an emotional see aw. At one end is his wish to be independent, to make his own choices and to break loose from your controls. At the other is his desire to remain the baby who can depend on your absolutely. One minute he insists that you leave him alone; the next, he wails for you to return. Over the next few years, the two of you will rock back and forth, trying to achieve a balance.

          If you are unprepared for this inevitable experience, you may find it frustrating, even exasperating. The rebellious child of 18 months to three years old, with his stubbornness, unpredictable actions, rapid mood swings and negativism, can try the patience of even the saintliest parent. By the time he is three, much of the storm may have passed, and the transition from babyhood to childhood may seem largely accomplished. Your child’s self esteem and competence will have deepened, his emotional dependency on you lessened, and his view of the world widened to include other children. But the process is not truly complete. For years to come you will find that for short periods he suddenly becomes a baby again, cowed by the world, needing to cling to you for reassurance. A child’s fashioning of his independent self continues through the preschool years and beyond.

The power of the positive approach

        

               Even the youngest children may accept social rules more readily if they are shown the reasons. Rather than a flat “No!” try suing “No: you line up on this end” to explain to a toddler why she must not butt into the front of a line. Older children can absorb a more detailed explanation: “Everyone wants to be first in line, but only one child can have that place, and she got there first.” Pointing out what is gained by cooperative behavior the fact that she will have more friends and fewer battles lets the youngster know that your instructions are not merely parental whims.

            As in every other area of child rearing, you will get much more mileage from a pinch of positive reinforcement that from a bucketful of nagging criticism. Watch for opportunities to praise your youngster’s positive behavior, and discourage antisocial actions not with scolding and punishment, but by demonstrating praiseworthy alternatives. If your toddler is overly possessive of his toys when other children visit, for example, you might ask him before a guest arrives to think about which toys he might like to share and which ones he wants to put away ahead of time. In this way, you reaffirm the importance of sharing while acknowledging the toddler’s deep seated need to own his toys. When sharing goes well, be sure to praise him- not just for being good, but specifically for sharing, which reinforces the concept once more in his mind and gives him a rush of pride that will prompt him to do it again.

          

 It will probably take dozens of small lessons such as this one before your child is ready to practice the social graces on his own, but the ultimate goal- the abiding pleasures of having friends and being a friend to others- is well worth your efforts.

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.

The role of social emotions Part.I

             Finally by the age of five most youngsters add interludes of “cooperative play”, working together at recreational tasks while engaging in conversations that show their newfound ability to listen and respond each other. The fears from three to five are an expansive period, a time when children actively seek out the company of their peers. Antisocial incidents are fewer now, becoming more verbal and less physical in nature as the children mature. Preschoolers, while aware that others have feelings, have not yet acquired the tact to handle them gently. Gathering in cliques and excluding unwanted playmates are unintentionally cruel ways that children of this age explore social bonds. Four years olds tend to be particularly bossy and boastful, although peer pressure will usually solve this problem by kindergarten age.

             By the age of five or six, your child will have learned a great deal about social behavior, figuring out which actions please and displease by interpreting the verbal and facial expressions of the people around him. Through these trial and error lessons, he develops a whole new layer of complex emotional responses, the so called social emotions that include embarrassment, envy, guilt, shame and pride.

             As an infant, he used more basic emotional expressions such inborn responses as distress, interest and fear as wordless signals to communicate his fundamental needs to you. Like those primal emotions, these newer ones are survival tools, but their aim is social rather than physical survival. 

The evolution of children’s play

                A child’s pattern of play is a good guide to how far he has matured mentally and emotionally. At eighteen months, toddlers are already very interested in playing, but not with children their own age. Rather, their energies are directed toward exploring and mastering things- a toy car, a ball, a stacking tower of colorful rings.

             Sometimes during the third year, youngsters begin to enjoy the first stages of social play, playing side by side with another child, though with no real interaction, in what psychologist’s term “parallel play.” Toddlers of this age, in the process of defining themselves as individual personalities, are absorbed in the lessons of “me”, “my”, and ” mine”. In their view, wanting something is tantamount to owning it, and sharing something seems the equivalent of losing it forever. These early play sessions are likely to be filled with frequent, though fleeting, conflicts.

            By about four years of age, the well adjusted child has broadened his play to include a greater degree of involvement with others. In this next stage, called “associative play,” children still play separately and individually, but they begin to engage in social chatter. If you listen closely to the conversation between two children of this age, you will notice that they are not really talking to their playmate, but are conduction separate monologues, each child talking about his own concerns without regard to the others. “Me first” is still the ruling sentiment, and a certain amount of friction is inevitable: hitting and pushing and fighting over toys typically peak at this age.

From ego centered to empathetic

              

             As the babies and toddlers, children envision themselves squarely at the center of the universe and understand their own needs only. This so called egocentric viewpoint is not deliberately selfish, but simply results of their inability at this stage to comprehend that other people have independent existences and feelings of their own. Watch a pair of two years olds playing in a sand box:  They seem hardly aware of each other’s presence, until one decides suddenly she must have the pail and shovel her friends is holding, and snatches it away as though the other child were not there. The victim, surrendering the toys in wordless surprise, runs waling to her mother for solace as her companion plays on unperturbed.

             But then observe the same two fiends after two years’ passing. Chances are they will be working together on a sand castle, playing and chatting away so peaceably that their mothers feel no need for supervision at all. What has happened in the interim is a watershed development that experts have identified as the first stirrings of empathy: a widening of the child’s self absorbed viewpoint into a broader understanding of other people and their feelings. The growth of empathy between the third and fifth years, coupled with an increasing ability to detect and follow society’s unwritten rules, will be the key to your child’s social adjustment for the rest of her life.