Child Development

IX

Middle Childhood

During middle childhood, from about ages 6 to 12, children acquire heightened capacities for judgment, reasoning, social understanding, emotion management, and self-awareness. At the same time, the social world of middle childhood broadens beyond the family to include the school, neighborhood, peer group, and other influences. Children begin to perceive themselves in multiple roles and relationships besides those of the family, even though family relationships remain central.

A

Physical Development

In contrast to the rapid physical development of the earlier years, children grow more slowly and gradually during middle childhood. Even so, children who are well nourished gain about 6 cm (2.5 in) in height and 1.8 to 2.3 kg (4 to 5 lb) in weight each year. Children typically become slimmer as their body proportions change. Muscular growth and better coordination enable children to ride a bicycle, run faster and for longer distances, participate in organized sports, write neatly with a pencil, learn to sew, and acquire other skills that require greater strength, endurance, or precision than younger children can manage. Brain growth contributes to these physical achievements, especially as brain pathways governing sensation, action, and thinking become speedier.

Children vary in physical size, weight, and coordination. During middle childhood, these differences can affect social and personal adjustment as children compare their characteristics and capabilities to those of their peers. Although many variations in physique are attributable to individual differences in rate of maturation and are not necessarily enduring, some can foreshadow potentially long-term difficulties for children. Childhood obesity, for example, can signal a broader problem if it arises from inactivity (such as watching too much television) or poor eating habits. Moreover, obesity in middle childhood can be damaging and self-perpetuating if it causes a child to be teased and rejected by friends and to develop a self-image as unattractive, inactive, and isolated.

B

Cognitive Development

It is no accident that throughout most of the world, children begin formal education at age six or seven. The intellectual skills of middle childhood are well suited for school. Children become capable of reasoning logically and systematically, whether about a lunar eclipse, chess, or the motives of story characters. Their thinking is also more fluid and flexible: A grade-schooler can follow a line of reasoning—say, solving an equation—and, realizing that an error has been made, mentally reverse course and start from the beginning again. A grasp of logical principles helps older children readily understand science, math, and many other subjects. They can concentrate better, and longer, than before.

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Older children also begin to master and enjoy their intellect. They become more consciously aware of their mental processes—such as what it takes to memorize a spelling list or remember a specific past event—and can deliberately enlist their cognitive powers to accomplish their goals. For example, they enlist memory strategies that strengthen their recall of experiences and information. Older children seem to think more quickly than younger children (and many adults) because they know how to do so. They spontaneously monitor and evaluate their progress and thus correct and improve their work. They are more likely to use external aids, such as writing things down, to help them think. These qualities make older children more capable and motivated learners.

Many other cognitive skills also improve. Reading and mathematical ability advances significantly, along with vocabulary and grammatical skills. Many children begin to learn a second language in middle childhood. Children’s knowledge of many specific topics that interest them expands dramatically, whether of planets, dinosaurs, or rock stars. Capacities to read music and master a musical instrument grow significantly. Although children at this stage are still rather concrete thinkers—that is, abstractions and hypothetical issues are hard for them to understand—they have the intellectual skills to function competently in the adult world.

The cognitive achievements of middle childhood both contribute to school success and are, in part, a result of schooling. Effective classroom instruction strengthens children’s capacity for logical, objective reasoning through well-designed activities that promote active learning. Children also benefit from group projects as peers sharpen each other’s intellectual skills. However, intellectual growth in middle childhood is not just a result of the growth of the mind in combination with classroom practices; parental support is another crucial ingredient. Parents who value learning, have high expectations for their children’s academic success, and supervise homework and other school-related activities contribute significantly to their children’s cognitive growth and school success.

Because learning is more formalized in middle childhood, achievement is evaluated more objectively and publicly. Schoolchildren receive formal and informal evaluations of their work in the classroom and in school-wide achievement testing. Consequently, children quickly learn how their abilities measure up with their peers and with teacher expectations. In comparing themselves to their peers, older children develop a more balanced view of their intellectual strengths and weaknesses. In contrast to optimistic preschoolers, who tend to believe they can improve their intellectual skills through effort and practice, older children begin to view their intellectual abilities as relatively permanent traits. They may conclude that they are “good at” some subjects but that they “can’t do” others. These self-evaluations tend to make older children less confident and more self-critical, causing some of them to give up too early when faced with intellectual tasks that are challenging but within their reach.

C

Social and Emotional Development

Children begin to develop a more complex, balanced self-image in middle childhood. Grade-schoolers view themselves as unique people with distinct strengths and weaknesses in their different roles of family member, student, teammate, and friend. They also begin to perceive themselves as skilled in different domains—such as academic, social, athletic, and recreational—with capabilities and weaknesses in each. When asked to describe themselves, therefore, older children often provide perceptive judgments that closely match how they are viewed by others.

As they move in different social worlds, older children begin to grasp the informal rules for each setting and manage themselves accordingly. Children act differently at home and in the classroom, for example, calibrating their behavior to the expectations of others in each setting. They also learn to manage their emotions in social settings, looking undisturbed in the face of a peer’s taunting and laughing appropriately at a teacher’s joke. Social understanding develops in other ways also, as older children perceive family members, friends, and others as psychologically complex beings with their own emotions, motives, and perspectives.

Peer relationships become richer and more complicated in middle childhood. Whereas preschoolers master basic social skills as they play with friends, older children begin to face issues of acceptance, fitting in, exclusion, and social comparison in their peer groups. The nature of friendship changes in middle childhood to incorporate psychological closeness as well as shared activities, and friendships thus become more intense and exclusive. Children create a smaller circle of close friends and are more upset when friendships end. Friendships also coalesce into larger peer groups or clubs with their own norms for dress, vocabulary, hair style, activities, and behavior. These norms distinguish those who are included (and excluded) from the group and create strong pressures on group members to conform. At the same time, such groups can help children build self-esteem and social skills.

Socializing in middle childhood requires considerable social understanding and self-awareness, especially when conflict occurs. Older children can negotiate, bargain, cajole, compromise, and redirect conflict—such as through humor—in ways that reflect developing psychological understanding and social maturity. Not all children are so successful, however, and some become rejected by peers because of their aggressive, confrontational behavior. Developmental researchers have found that peers rejected for aggressiveness are impulsive and deficient in social problem-solving skills, often misinterpreting casual social encounters as hostile and considering few alternatives to reacting confrontationally. They also develop negative reputations. A rejected child’s lack of acceptance can, unfortunately, foreshadow long-term social difficulties if these problems are not remedied in childhood.

The social and cognitive achievements of middle childhood also provoke advances in moral development and altruistic behavior—behavior performed for the benefit of others without expectation of a reward. As American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg theorized in the mid-1960s, children begin to perceive themselves as responsible to others because of the importance of getting along and of being a good citizen. They seek to act appropriately because people matter to them, not just to avoid punishment. Children’s developing psychological understanding heightens their sensitivity to human needs and contributes to empathy for others. Whereas a preschooler may sympathize with another but not know what to do, older children are more likely to assist a classmate who is attacked by a bully or to raise money to help children in a developing country.

Parents remain central in the expanding social world of middle childhood. Although it is common to view peers as replacing parents in importance to older children, parents continue to support their children’s self-esteem, define and reinforce values, promote academic success, enable participation in neighborhood and community activities, and offer a sensitive ear and perceptive judgment. They are reliable cheerleaders as their children face the challenges of middle childhood and adolescence.

X

Beyond Childhood

The onset of puberty marks the beginning of adolescence. Physical growth and development, including sexual maturation, is an important part of adolescence. But this period of life is also shaped by other changes: entry into middle schools that are larger and more impersonal than elementary schools, peer groups that include older children, and greater independence in extracurricular activities. Adolescents achieve new cognitive skills permitting highly abstract thinking, engage in new kinds of social intimacy with peers, and embark on a search for identity that results in greater awareness of the self. Adolescence includes risks for psychological turmoil, but most children make their way through this period without undue stress. See Adolescence.

People continue to develop through adolescence and, indeed, throughout adulthood. As people age, they may continue to be influenced by childhood experiences, positively or negatively. The lasting influence of childhood on a person’s relationships, self-esteem, and well-being is one reason why efforts to improve the lives of children are so important. Few developmental scientists believe, however, that one’s behavior and personality as an adult are inevitably determined by earlier influences. Childhood sets the stage, but a person’s traits may be changed by subsequent events and experiences.

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