Psychosocial Development in Middle Childhood

All children and young people develop at different rates, but the order which they advance in differs very little. Children’s development tends to progress from head to toe, inner to outer, from simple to complex and from general to specific.

The middle childhood is to leave the play years to start maturing years to start adolescence (Berk, 2010). During the middle childhood, children began to have a lot physical changes. As well as, they begin to discover there identify that they are. For example, secondary sexual organs begin to develop in the boys and girls, they will confuse about identify. The puberty is the cycle when children are out of control because they will transition to leave the children to enter adolescence. For instance, physical and behavioral changes will have some consequences if pre-adolescences do not deal well with them. Middle childhood is divided into two categories 6 to 8 and 9 to 12 years that reflects on children’s behavior (Nuru-Jeter et al., 2010). For instance, children learn to interact with other children, and how they will manage emotions and behaviors. Also, how they have to act with adults and children that totally different it. Also, the girl and boy have different physical and behavior changes for the gender difference. Middle childhood development makes for some factors that influence on physical changes, brain and nervous system, and social and emotional changes.

Progressing on from 12, children are at a vulnerable stage with self-esteem. Their bodies will be changing and they will be making decisions about their futures. Boys will be starting to go through puberty whilst many girls will have completed the process. Communication and intellectual development has slightly different brackets, ages 12-18 laps over with 16-19. Young people will usually have an idea about their favourite subjects and are motivated in those areas, making sure they achieve good results. This enables them to carry over their achievements to their career choice, focussing on

In regards to key developmental aspects of human growth in my life and as I integrate Erickson’s eight stages of development into my 48 years of life, I found that many of my transitional tasks were delayed, or not developed according to Erickson’s time frame. This might be due to the dysfunctional lifestyle, neglected childhood and promiscuous teenage years I had and it has taken me many years to develop my sense of identity, my sense of intimacy, and to change my behavior (Feldman, 2011). In the argument of Piaget he says that children at the age of three to five years think abstractly and this affects their motor

Most adolescents face the same obstacles in life and experience similar difficulties. Friends in childhood are primarily found at “school” (Murray 2009). This is because they

They form relationships with their peers, develop spoken vocabulary, and began to decipher between genders and their roles. Middle childhood is the development of personality, motivation, and inter-personal relationships. Growth at this stage is usually slowed until puberty is reached. Children at this age tend to learn by hands-on learning activities.

The industry versus inferiority is the fourth stage of this theory, also referred to as the Latency stage and takes place in children from year six to twelve. During this stage, the children are able to learn, create and to accomplish a number of new skills and knowledge. This is also

Family is of great importance to having a functional or dysfunctional development; it will help or impede the child to have a support system in place.

At the age of 6 years old, a child would most likely experienced the school system which would include pre-school and kindergarten. There are many physical, cognitive and social changes that are happening in middle childhood development. This paper will examine what these changes affect the child’s ability to function in society. This analysis will focus on the normal course of development in middle childhood as it applies to the theorist Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages and then give examples of what may happen if the developments are not carried out.

Stage four is the latency stage, or the school-age child from about six to twelve. The task is to develop a capacity for industry while avoiding an excessive sense of inferiority. Children must "tame the imagination" and dedicate themselves to education and to learning the social skills their society requires of them. At this stage, the parents and other family members are joined by teachers, peers, and other members of he community at large. They all contribute: Parents must encourage, teachers must care, peers must accept. Children must learn that there is pleasure not only in conceiving a plan, but also in carrying it out. They must learn the feeling of success, whether it is in school or on the playground, academic or social.

Middle childhood is defined a number of ways, but perhaps best defined as the ages 6 to 12 years of age or prepubescent to pubescence Middle childhood is a challenging time and a major challenge is social constructs, as this is the earliest time when children begin to move away from parental influences and establish more meaningful peer and other adult relationships. It signifies a new set of social contacts with adults and other children as well as a wider variety of settings than those that characterize early childhood. Children begin to see themselves as a part of a bigger whole. Peer influences can become more powerful than the adults in the children’s life and impact their sense of self. Grouping is established and teasing of others

Human development refers to the processes of change and stability throughout human life. The early stages of development in children are important in their life span. Children in middle childhood are those who are in the age between 6 to 11 years old. Most children in middle childhood start their formal education in primary school. In this stage, they have more opportunities to expose themselves to people and environment they had never known. In general, children in middle childhood are characterized by 3 major domains which are physical, cognitive and psychosocial (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1).

From birth through adolescence, a significant amount of developmental changes occur. Children grow and develop physically, cognitively and emotionally. Each individual aspect of development has an effect on the child as a whole. If a child struggles developmentally in any of the areas (physically, emotionally or cognitively), it can affect one of the other areas of development as well. For example, if a child is underdeveloped physically, they may experience emotional development issues because they may be made fun of and teased by other children.

Children's views of self become more differentiated. As they get older, children discover that they may be good at some things and not so good at others. Children's self- concepts become divided into personal and academic spheres. During middle childhood children begin social comparison. Social comparison is the desire to evaluate one's own behavior, abilities, expertise, and opinions by comparing them to those of others. During middle childhood children deal with the crisis industry versus inferiority stage. The stage is characterized by a focus on efforts to attain competence in meeting the challenges presented by parents, peers, school, and other complexities of the modern world. This is a time of their life where the child develops a self esteem. Self-esteem in an individual's overall and specific positive and negative self-evaluation. Self concept reflects beliefs and cognitions about the self, self-esteem is more emotionally oriented. The self-esteem of most children tends to increase during middle childhood with a brief decline around age of 12. Some evidence shows that members of minority groups have lower self-esteem then those of the majority group. Children build a sense of self efficacy during their elementary years. Self efficacy refers to learned expectations that one is capable of carrying out a behavior or producing a desired outcome in a particular situation.

We need to communicate with others in our communities, solve problems, and attain goals. Around middle school, we start growing up into young adults, which requires us to expand our learning. For example, the adding and subtracting becomes more complicated as we confront difficult word problems about real life situations, and we are only able to do the math if we can read the word problem. Obviously, at middle school everything learned in earlier academic grades begins to come together.