During the preschool years, many children become quite self-assured, independent, and social. Children with social skills are often better liked and have more friends.

1. Emotional Growth in the Preschool Years

1. Early childhood is a crucial period for the formation of positive feelings toward oneself, others, and the larger world.
2. Children who are nurtured, encouraged, and accepted by adults and peers will be emotionally well adjusted
3. Children who are emotionally healthy are better able to enter into positive relationships with both peers and adults
4. Initiative V. Guilt

1. Each age is characterized by an emotional struggle between two polar internal states, one negative and one positive
2. During the preschool years, this struggle is between initiative and guilt
3. Emotionally healthy preschoolers will desire to take action and assert themselves
4. Erikson called this urge to make creative efforts initiative
5. This struggle between initiative and guilt explains why many preschool and kindergarten children are so energetic in pursuit of imaginative play activities
6. Feelings of guilt have a positive role in development in that they lead children to assume responsibility for their own behaviors
7. Overwhelming guilt inhibits emotional growth
8. Adults can promote a sense of initiative by creating noncritical environments in which children are allowed to take risks

1. Social Initiative

1. One way initiative manifests itself in the developing child is through energetic interactions with peers
2. The healthy preschool child displays an eagerness to engage others
3. Research suggests that social initiative is critical for positive peer relations
4. Children who take initiative in play are better able to sustain peer interactions and can more readily enter play groups

1. Initiative and Self-Concept

1. Self-concept is defined as an individual's theory of self
2. Because it is a theory, it is continually modified and changed with experience
3. A positive self-concept is critical for happiness and fulfillment throughout life
4. Positive self-concept is critical for happiness and fulfillment throughout life
5. Positive self-concept is related to feeling of initiative during the preschool years
6. Generally, preschool children do have positive self-concepts
7. They tend to believe that they can do almost anything
8. Erikson's explanation of these early, positive self-perceptions would be that children of this age are focusing on attempts or initiatives-that is, on the processes of playing or working-rather than on the outcomes or end products of their efforts

1. Initiative and Culture

1. Findings of several recent cross-cultural studies, however, suggest that initiative may not be universally valued
2. Affiliative obedience is defined as a high level of obedience to elders or respected authorities and a low level of self-assertion
3. Enmeshment is mutual interdependence
4. Diaz-Guerrero raises questions about whether initiative, self-assurance, and guilt are fundamental personality traits at all, or simply patterns of behavior that can vary among individuals depending on the situation

1. Social Competence

1. The term social competence refers to two interrelated aspects of human development: being liked by others and having skills to interact effectively in social settings
2. Peer Status: Popular, Rejected, and Neglected Children

1. Some preschoolers have a very hard time interacting with peers, while others are quite competent at making friends and winning acceptance and respect from their playmates
2. Sociometric status refers to the category a particular child is found to occupy in a group
3. Popular Children are those who are well liked by peers and who have many friends

1. Popular children are friendly and positive in their interactions with peers
2. They are less aggressive or bossy and often give positive feedback, attention, and affection to their classmates
3. Popular children are quite competent at resolving conflicts, and they often do so in friendly, non-aggressive ways
4. Popular children are quite savvy at gaining entrance into play in progress
5. They have acquired social skills that win their acceptance in groups
6. Popular children can accurately read social settings
7. They seem to be aware of the needs, motives, and behaviors of their peers and of the effects of their own behaviors

1. Rejected children are those who are actively avoided by peers

1. Characteristics of rejected children include negativity, whininess, unpredictable aggressiveness, inability to interpret social situations, and antisocial and isolation from peers.
2. Rejected children are sometimes disliked because they display antisocial behaviors that are extremely obvious and disruptive
3. Reactive aggression is defined as aggression in response to peer mistreatment; children who display this type of aggression are not as likely to be rejected
4. Rejected children often have difficulty understanding the feelings of their peers
5. Some rejected children are isolates; they may choose to play alone and push or hit when others move near them

1. Neglected children are those who are largely ignored by their peers, and often by their teachers as well

1. Characteristics of neglected children include isolation from peers, shyness, lack of skill to enter play groups, lack of skill in capturing peer attention, and lack of skill in play leadership
2. Their predominant characteristic is isolate behavior
3. They tend to be loners who rarely initiate contact with others and often retreat when initiatives are directed toward them
4. Many are shy
5. They lack the social skills needed to enter a play group or capture the attention of peers
6. Neglected children may have been born with a "slow-to-warm-up" temperament that leads to quietness and wariness
7. Caution and timidity in entering into new relationships may be a fundamental aspect of such children's personalities

1. Friendships

1. Most preschool children have at least one reciprocated friendship with a peer
2. Having a friend is reaffirming: it shows children that they can be liked even if only by one other child
3. Friendships are very useful for social skills intervention in preschool
4. Playing with friends enables less effective children to try out new social skills and enjoy greater success

1. Social Participation

1. Most preschool children-regardless of their status in a classroom-play with peers
2. Social participation is the degree of their involvement with others
3. In her research, Mildred Parten discovered stages of social participation that most young children pass through during the preschool years
4. In the first of Parten's stages, unoccupied behavior, children show little interest in what is going on around them
5. They do not interact with toys, materials, or peers
6. Parten's second stage, onlooker behavior, is distinguished by an interest in what others are doing
7. Children at this stage often watch their peers play
8. In parallel play children engage in activities side-by-side with others
9. They rarely interact in these activities, however, and often do not even speak to one another
10. Associative play occurs when they pursue their own individual play themes yet interact often
11. In such activity, children might talk to one another about what they are doing or even share materials
12. Cooperative play often emerges in the later preschool years
13. This form of play represents the most complex form of social participation
14. Children now adopt a single, coordinated play theme, and they plan, negotiate, and differentiate roles in pursuit of their shared goal

1. Positive and Negative Social Behaviors

1. Specific social behaviors will determine whether children are accepted or rejected by peers and whether they make friends
2. Altruism and Empathy

1. Many preschool children display kindness or caring toward other persons in their interactions
2. Acts such as sharing a toy, helping with a puzzle, and comforting a crying peer are called altruistic behaviors
3. Maturationist would suggest that humans are born with a sense of empathy, an ability to feel vicariously others' emotions or physical pain
4. Psychoanalysts would propose that early attachment to parents and other caregivers leads to altruism and empathy
5. Behaviorist and social cognitive learning theorists would suggest that these prosocial behaviors are rewarded and modeled by adults
6. Evidence supporting this view comes from studies showing the power of adult modeling
7. From a cognitive-developmental perspective, children construct understandings of altruism and empathy
8. As their social experience increases, they come to understand that certain social behaviors lead to desirable responses by others
9. Ecological systems theorists would argue that altruism and empathy can only be fully understood by studying the family, the community, and society as a whole
10. Teachers can promote altruism by modeling and rewarding kindness in the classroom

1. Aggression

1. Negative social behaviors can also be observed among some preschool children
2. The most worrisome of these is aggression defined as any physical or verbal behavior that is intended to harm or threaten another
3. Non-aggressive behaviors include:

1. Rough-and-tumble play
2. Teasing play
3. Assertiveness: Sticking up for oneself during disputes is not usually considered aggression
4. Conflicts and arguments

1. Professionals who work with young children must be cautious in making judgments about aggressive behavior
2. True aggression requires immediate adult intervention
3. However, conflicts or displays of assertiveness may not require adult support
4. Verbal aggression involves taunts, teasing, threats, or cruel statements intended to harm others psychologically, while physical aggression includes biting, hitting, pushing, or kicking
5. Reactive aggression involves physical or verbal assaults that are provoked
6. Proactive aggression involves unprovoked physical or verbal assaults
7. Instrumental aggression involves acts that have a goal: to get a toy or to chase undesired classmates from a play area
8. Bullying, in contrast, is hostile aggression without a clear purpose
9. Maturationists would suggest that some children are born with an aggressive temperament
10. Psychoanalytic theorists would also view aggression as part of a child's biological inheritance
11. They would propose that the environment-in particular, the child's interpersonal interactions with parents-determines how aggressive drives are expressed
12. Behaviorists would argue that aggressive behavior is shaped and rewarded by the environment
13. Cognitive-developmental theorists would argue that there is an intellectual component to aggression
14. Aggressive children may be the way they are because they do not understand social situations
15. Aggressive young children have been found to be less able to accurately read social cues or to make decisions about which behaviors to perform in which situations
16. Ecological systems theorists would propose a broader view of aggression

1. Culture and Social Competence

1. Culture influences children's social interactions, communication patterns, and play interests
2. Culture and Prosocial Behaviors

1. Prosocial behaviors, such as altruism and empathy, vary significantly across cultural groups
2. Great variation in helpfulness and cooperation has been found
3. Young children in American society scored lowest on measures of these behaviors
4. Children in American families are not assigned crucial household work as often
5. Cooperation comes more naturally to children who grow up in cultures where collective thought and action are valued

1. Friendliness and Shyness

1. Friendliness is another dimension of social behavior that varies significantly by culture
2. Social initiative has been identified as an important prerequisite to making friends and being accepted by peers

1. Other Sources of Variation in Social Competence

1. Social Competence and Challenging Conditions

1. Some researchers believe that peer rejection and its causes-in particular, hostile, aggressive behavior-are themselves a disability
2. For example, the condition serious emotional disturbance (SED) is defined, in part, as an inability to function effectively in social contexts
3. Studies suggest that children with hearing and visual impairments are viewed by peers as unfriendly or unable or unwilling to play
4. By age 5, young children are likely to report negative attitudes toward children wit physical disabilities
5. Children with mental retardation or learning disabilities also have been found to be deficient in social skills and more often rejected by classmates

1. Poverty and Family Stressors

1. Children in poverty are more likely to suffer emotional challenges and, as a result, to be less successful in their relationships with peers
2. Most researchers believe that it is poverty's devastating effect on parenting that explains most poor social outcomes
3. Abused children have been found to have particularly poor relationships with peers

1. Siblings

1. Siblings can contribute to positive social development
2. Although problems with siblings certainly exist, the impact of siblings on social development may be more positive than negative
3. Consider the case of sibling rivalry
4. It is true that conflicts exist, particularly between same-sex siblings of similar age, but this conflict may not be all bad
5. Older children may gain confidence and leadership ability by directing their younger siblings
6. Younger children may acquire skills at resisting bullying
7. Children appear to feel more comfortable in their conflicts with brothers or sisters

1. Child Care

1. If availability of peers influences social development, it stands to reason they young children in child care will show advanced social competence
2. Many preschoolers in the US spend over half of their waking time interacting with other children in centers or family child care homes
3. More recent research shows that the impact of child care depends on its quality
4. Child care quality has been defined as the degree to which both structural and dynamic features of care meet the social, emotional, and intellectual needs of young children
5. Structural features include physical and social characteristics of the center or home-staff-to-child ratio, available play space and toys, and group size
6. Dynamic features consist of caregiver behaviors-warmth or responsiveness-which promote children's development

1. Gender and Social Development

1. Boys and girls can be very different in their social interactions and play
2. Children of all socioeconomic groups and cultures show gender differences in play
3. By 18 months of age, most children prefer to play with sex-stereotyped toys; boys play with trucks and girls play with dolls
4. As early as 2 years of age, they prefer to play with same-sex peers
5. Play styles of boys and girls differ markedly
6. Boys are usually more active and rough in their play, and girls quieter and more elaborate
7. There are two prominent perspectives regarding gender identity and sex-role stereotyping
8. The first perspective is that children acquire sex-typed behaviors because of modeling and reinforcement in the environment
9. A second perspective of gender differences is that early sex stereotyping stems from cognitive limitations
10. During the preschool years, children tend to believe that being a boy or girl is determined by clothing, hair, or other physical characteristics
11. Once children come to view themselves as male or female, according to this perspective, they actively strive to understand their gender role more fully
12. Older and cognitively advanced children have been found to show less rigidly stereotyped beliefs and behaviors than younger or less intellectually competent children