Pillars in the Making - Oct 2012

Children’s Social and Emotional Development

Have you ever realized that little babies have their specific emotions? In the last issue I have introduced three different types of babies, which have different features and characteristics, and these characteristics will influence their social and emotional developments.

 

Photo: ruthparbel.com/children

 

Developmental psychologists who interested in social development focus on how individuals develop social and emotional competencies. For example, they study how children form friendships, how they understand and deal with emotions, and how identity develops. Research in this area may involve study of the relationship between cognition or cognitive developments and social behaviors.

 

American psychologist Erick Erickson believed that all humans undergo lifelong stages to achieve social and emotional developments, which is called stages of psychosocial development. There are eight stages starting from birth to old age.

 

The stages were:

• trust vs. mistrust;
• autonomy vs. shame;
• initiative vs. guilt;
• industry vs. inferiority;
• identity, vs. role diffusion;
• intimacy vs. isolation;
• generativity vs. stagnation; and
• ego integrity vs. despair

 

Emotional regulation or ER refers to an individual's ability to control one’s emotion in different variety of contexts. In young children, this modulation is controlled externally, by parents and other authority figures. As children develop, they take on more and more responsibilities for their internal states. Studies have shown that the development of ER is affected by the emotional regulation which children learn it from their parents and/or caretakers, the emotional climate at home, and the reaction of parents and/or caretakers to the children's emotions.

 

By then we know that apart from genetic influence, social factors can also determine how children are like.

Vicky Wong

References:

Amanda Morris et. al.(2009) National Institute of Health. "The Role of the Family Context in Development of Emotion Regulation." pp 1-36
"Erik Erikson, 91, Psychoanalyst Who Reshaped Views of Human Growth, Dies", New York Times, March 13, 1994.