Early Childhood

Early Childhood

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Share Your Thoughts 2
chapter 8 Emotional and Social Development in Early Childhood
During the preschool years, children make great strides in understanding the thoughts and feelings of others, and they build on these skills as they form first friendships—special relationships marked by attachment and common interests.

chapter outline
· Erikson’s Theory: Initiative versus Guilt

· Self-Understanding

· Foundations of Self-Concept

· Emergence of Self-Esteem

· ■ CULTURAL INFLUENCES Cultural Variations in Personal Storytelling: Implications for Early Self-Concept

· Emotional Development

· Understanding Emotion

· Emotional Self-Regulation

· Self-Conscious Emotions

· Empathy and Sympathy

· Peer Relations

· Advances in Peer Sociability

· First Friendships

· Peer Relations and School Readiness

· Parental Influences on Early Peer Relations

· Foundations of Morality

· The Psychoanalytic Perspective

· Social Learning Theory

· The Cognitive-Developmental Perspective

· The Other Side of Morality: Development of Aggression

· ■ CULTURAL INFLUENCES Ethnic Differences in the Consequences of Physical Punishment

· Gender Typing

· Gender-Stereotyped Beliefs and Behaviors

· Biological Influences on Gender Typing

· Environmental Influences on Gender Typing

· Gender Identity

· Reducing Gender Stereotyping in Young Children

· ■ SOCIAL ISSUES: EDUCATION Young Children Learn About Gender Through Mother–Child Conversations

· Child Rearing and Emotional and Social Development

· Styles of Child Rearing

· What Makes Authoritative Child Rearing Effective?

· Cultural Variations

· Child Maltreatment

As the children in Leslie’s classroom moved through the preschool years, their personalities took on clearer definition. By age 3, they voiced firm likes and dislikes as well as new ideas about themselves. “Stop bothering me,” Sammy said to Mark, who had reached for Sammy’s beanbag as Sammy aimed it toward the mouth of a large clown face. “See, I’m great at this game,” Sammy announced with confidence, an attitude that kept him trying, even though he missed most of the throws.

The children’s conversations also revealed early notions about morality. Often they combined adults’ statements about right and wrong with forceful attempts to defend their own desires. “You’re ‘posed to share,” stated Mark, grabbing the beanbag out of Sammy’s hand.

“I was here first! Gimme it back,” demanded Sammy, pushing Mark. The two boys struggled until Leslie intervened, provided an extra set of beanbags, and showed them how they could both play.

As the interaction between Sammy and Mark reveals, preschoolers quickly become complex social beings. Young children argue, grab, and push, but cooperative exchanges are far more frequent. Between ages 2 and 6, first friendships form, in which children converse, act out complementary roles, and learn that their own desires for companionship and toys are best met when they consider others’ needs and interests.

The children’s developing understanding of their social world was especially apparent in their growing attention to the dividing line between male and female. While Priti and Karen cared for a sick baby doll in the housekeeping area, Sammy, Vance, and Mark transformed the block corner into a busy intersection. “Green light, go!” shouted police officer Sammy as Vance and Mark pushed large wooden cars and trucks across the floor. Already, the children preferred peers of their own gender, and their play themes mirrored their culture’s gender stereotypes.

This chapter is devoted to the many facets of early childhood emotional and social development. We begin with Erik Erikson’s theory, which provides an overview of personality change in the preschool years. Then we consider children’s concepts of themselves, their insights into their social and moral worlds, their gender typing, and their increasing ability to manage their emotional and social behaviors. Finally, we ask, What is effective child rearing? And we discuss the complex conditions that support good parenting or lead it to break down.

image1 Erikson’s Theory: Initiative versus Guilt
Erikson ( 1950 ) described early childhood as a period of “vigorous unfolding.” Once children have a sense of autonomy, they become less contrary than they were as toddlers. Their energies are freed for tackling the psychological conflict of the preschool years: initiative versus guilt . As the word initiative suggests, young children have a new sense of purposefulness. They are eager to tackle new tasks, join in activities with peers, and discover what they can do with the help of adults. They also make strides in conscience development.

Erikson regarded play as a means through which young children learn about themselves and their social world. Play permits preschoolers to try new skills with little risk of criticism and failure. It also creates a small social organization of children who must cooperate to achieve common goals. Around the world, children act out family scenes and highly visible occupations—police officer, doctor, and nurse in Western societies, rabbit hunter and potter among the Hopi Indians, hut builder and spear maker among the Baka of West Africa (Göncü, Patt, & Kouba, 2004 ).

Recall that Erikson’s theory builds on Freud’s psychosexual stages (see Chapter 1 , page 16 ). In Freud’s Oedipus and Electra conflicts, to avoid punishment and maintain parents’ affection, children form a superego, or conscience, by identifying with the same-sex parent. As a result, they adopt the moral and gender-role standards of their society. For Erikson, the negative outcome of early childhood is an overly strict superego that causes children to feel too much guilt because they have been threatened, criticized, and punished excessively by adults. When this happens, preschoolers’ exuberant play and bold efforts to master new tasks break down.

A Guatemalan 3-year-old pretends to shell corn. By acting out family scenes and highly visible occupations, young children around the world develop a sense of initiative, gaining insight into what they can do and become in their culture.

Although Freud’s ideas are no longer accepted as satisfactory explanations of conscience development, Erikson’s image of initiative captures the diverse changes in young children’s emotional and social lives. Early childhood is, indeed, a time when children develop a confident self-image, more effective control over their emotions, new social skills, the foundations of morality, and a clear sense of themselves as boy or girl.

image2 Self-Understanding
The development of language enables young children to talk about their own subjective experience of being. In Chapter 7 , we noted that young children acquire a vocabulary for talking about their inner mental lives and gain in understanding of mental states. As self-awareness strengthens, preschoolers focus more intently on qualities that make the self unique. They begin to develop a self-concept , the set of attributes, abilities, attitudes, and values that an individual believes defines who he or she is.

Foundations of Self-Concept
Ask a 3- to 5-year-old to tell you about himself, and you are likely to hear something like this: “I’m Tommy. See, I got this new red T-shirt. I’m 4 years old. I can wash my hair all by myself. I have a new Tinkertoy set, and I made this big, big tower.” Preschoolers’ self-concepts consist largely of observable characteristics, such as their name, physical appearance, possessions, and everyday behaviors (Harter, 2006 ; Watson, 1990 ).

By age 3½, children also describe themselves in terms of typical emotions and attitudes—“I’m happy when I play with my friends”; “I don’t like scary TV programs”; “I usually do what Mommy says”—suggesting a beginning understanding of their unique psychological characteristics (Eder & Mangelsdorf, 1997 ). And by age 5, children’s degree of agreement with such statements coincides with maternal reports of their personality traits, indicating that older preschoolers have a sense of their own timidity, agreeableness, and positive or negative affect (Brown et al., 2008 ). But preschoolers do not yet say, “I’m helpful” or “I’m shy.” Direct references to personality traits must wait for greater cognitive maturity.

A warm, sensitive parent–child relationship seems to foster a more positive, coherent early self-concept. In one study, 4-year-olds with a secure attachment to their mothers were more likely than their insecurely attached agemates to describe themselves in favorable terms at age 5—with statements that reflect agreeableness and positive affect (Goodvin et al., 2008 ). Also recall from Chapter 7 that securely attached preschoolers participate in more elaborative parent–child conversations about personally experienced events, which help them understand themselves (see page 240 ).

Cultural Influences Cultural Variations in Personal Storytelling: Implications for Early Self-Concept
Preschoolers of many cultural backgrounds participate in personal storytelling with their parents. Striking cultural differences exist in parents’ selection and interpretation of events in these narratives, affecting the way children view themselves.

In one study, researchers spent thousands of hours studying the storytelling practices of six middle-SES Irish-American families in Chicago and six middle-SES Chinese families in Taiwan. From extensive videotapes of adults’ conversations with the children from age 2½; to 4, the investigators identified personal stories and coded them for content (Miller, Fung, & Mintz, 1996 ; Miller et al., 1997 , 2012 ).

Parents in both cultures discussed pleasurable holidays and family excursions in similar ways and with similar frequency. But five times more often than the Irish-American parents, the Chinese parents told long stories about their preschooler’s previous misdeeds—using impolite language, writing on the wall, or playing in an overly rowdy way. These narratives, often sparked by a current misdeed, were used as opportunities to educate: Parents conveyed stories with warmth and caring, stressed the impact of misbehavior on others (“You made Mama lose face”), and often ended with direct teaching of proper behavior and a moral lesson (“Saying dirty words is not good”). By contrast, in the few instances in which Irish-American stories referred to transgressions, parents downplayed their seriousness, attributing them to the child’s spunk and assertiveness.

Early narratives about the child launch preschoolers’ self-concepts on culturally distinct paths (Miller, Fung, & Koven, 2007 ). Influenced by Confucian traditions of strict discipline and social obligations, Chinese parents integrated these values into their stories, affirming the importance of not disgracing the family and explicitly conveying expectations for improvement in the story’s conclusion. Although Irish-American parents disciplined their children, they rarely dwelt on misdeeds in storytelling. Rather, they cast the child’s shortcomings in a positive light, perhaps to promote self-esteem.

A Chinese mother speaks gently to her child about proper behavior. Chinese parents often tell preschoolers stories that point out the negative impact on others of the child’s misdeeds. The Chinese child’s self-concept, in turn, emphasizes social obligations.

Whereas most Americans believe that favorable self-esteem is crucial for healthy development, Chinese adults generally see it as unimportant or even negative—as impeding the child’s willingness to listen and be corrected (Miller et al., 2002). Consistent with this view, the Chinese parents did little to cultivate their child’s individuality. Instead, they used storytelling to guide the child toward responsible behavior. Hence, the Chinese child’s self-image emphasizes obligations to others, whereas the American child’s is more autonomous.

As early as age 2, parents use narratives of past events to impart rules, standards for behavior, and evaluative information about the child: “You added the milk when we made the mashed potatoes. That’s a very important job!” (Nelson, 2003 ). As the Cultural Influences box above reveals, these self-evaluative narratives are a major means through which caregivers imbue the young child’s self-concept with cultural values.

As they talk about personally significant events and as their cognitive skills advance, preschoolers gradually come to view themselves as persisting over time. Around age 4, children first become certain that a video image of themselves replayed a few minutes after it was filmed is still “me” (Povinelli, 2001 ). Similarly, when researchers asked 3- to 5-year-olds to imagine a future event (walking next to a waterfall) and to envision a future personal state by choosing from three items (a raincoat, money, a blanket) the one they would need to bring with them, performance—along with future-state justifications (“I’m gonna get wet”)—increased sharply from age 3 to 4 (Atance & Meltzoff, 2005 ).

Emergence of Self-Esteem
Another aspect of self-concept emerges in early childhood: self-esteem , the judgments we make about our own worth and the feelings associated with those judgments. TAKE A MOMENT … Make a list of your own self-judgments. Notice that, besides a global appraisal of your worth as a person, you have a variety of separate self-evaluations concerning how well you perform at different activities. These evaluations are among the most important aspects of self-development because they affect our emotional experiences, future behavior, and long-term psychological adjustment.

By age 4, preschoolers have several self-judgments—for example, about learning things in school, making friends, getting along with parents, and treating others kindly (Marsh, Ellis, & Craven, 2002 ). But because they have difficulty distinguishing between their desired and their actual competence, they usually rate their own ability as extremely high and underestimate task difficulty, as when Sammy asserted, despite his many misses, that he was great at beanbag throwing (Harter, 2003 , 2006 ).

After creating a “camera” and “flash,” this pre-schooler pretends to take pictures. Her high self-esteem contributes greatly to her initiative in mastering many new skills.

High self-esteem contributes greatly to preschoolers’ initiative during a period in which they must master many new skills. By age 3, children whose parents patiently encourage while offering information about how to succeed are enthusiastic and highly motivated. In contrast, children whose parents criticize their worth and performance give up easily when faced with a challenge and express shame and despondency after failing (Kelley, Brownell, & Campbell, 2000 ). Adults can avoid promoting these self-defeating reactions by adjusting their expectations to children’s capacities, scaffolding children’s attempts at difficult tasks (see Chapter 7 , page 234 ), and pointing out effort and improvement in children’s behavior.

image3 Emotional Development
Gains in representation, language, and self-concept support emotional development in early childhood. Between ages 2 and 6, children make strides in emotional abilities that, collectively, researchers refer to as emotional competence (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore, 2001 ; Saarni et al., 2006 ). First, preschoolers gain in emotional understanding, becoming better able to talk about feelings and to respond appropriately to others’ emotional signals. Second, they become better at emotional self-regulation—in particular, at coping with intense negative emotion. Finally, preschoolers more often experience self-conscious emotions and empathy, which contribute to their developing sense of morality.

Parenting strongly influences preschoolers’ emotional competence. Emotional competence, in turn, is vital for successful peer relationships and overall mental health.

Understanding Emotion
Early in the preschool years, children refer to causes, consequences, and behavioral signs of emotion, and over time their understanding becomes more accurate and complex (Stein & Levine, 1999 ). By age 4 to 5, children correctly judge the causes of many basic emotions (“He’s happy because he’s swinging very high”; “He’s sad because he misses his mother”). Preschoolers’ explanations tend to emphasize external factors over internal states, a balance that changes with age (Levine, 1995 ). After age 4, children appreciate that both desires and beliefs motivate behavior ( Chapter 7 ). Then their grasp of how internal factors can trigger emotion expands.

Preschoolers can also predict what a playmate expressing a certain emotion might do next. Four-year-olds know that an angry child might hit someone and that a happy child is more likely to share (Russell, 1990 ). And they realize that thinking and feeling are interconnected—that a person reminded of a previous sad experience is likely to feel sad (Lagattuta, Wellman, & Flavell, 1997 ). Furthermore, they come up with effective ways to relieve others’ negative feelings, such as hugging to reduce sadness (Fabes et al., 1988 ).

At the same time, preschoolers have difficulty interpreting situations that offer conflicting cues about how a person is feeling. When asked what might be happening in a picture of a happy-faced child with a broken bicycle, 4- and 5-year-olds tended to rely only on the emotional expression: “He’s happy because he likes to ride his bike.” Older children more often reconciled the two cues: “He’s happy because his father promised to help fix his broken bike” (Gnepp, 1983 ; Hoffner & Badzinski, 1989 ). As in their approach to Piagetian tasks, preschoolers focus on the most obvious aspect of an emotional situation to the neglect of other relevant information.

The more parents label emotions, explain them, and express warmth and enthusiasm when conversing with preschoolers, the more “emotion words” children use and the better developed their emotional understanding (Fivush & Haden, 2005 ; Laible & Song, 2006 ). In one study, mothers who explained feelings and who negotiated and compromised during conflicts with their 2½-year-olds had children who, at age 3, were advanced in emotional understanding and used similar strategies to resolve disagreements (Laible & Thompson, 2002 ). Furthermore, 3- to 5-year-olds who are securely attached to their mothers better understand emotion. Attachment security is related to warmer and more elaborative parent–child narratives, including discussions of feelings that highlight the emotional significance of events (Laible, 2004 ; Laible & Song, 2006 ; Raikes & Thompson, 2006 ).

As preschoolers learn about emotion from interacting with adults, they engage in more emotion talk with siblings and friends, especially during make-believe play (Hughes & Dunn, 1998 ). Make-believe, in turn, contributes to emotional understanding, especially when children play with siblings (Youngblade & Dunn, 1995 ). The intense nature of the sibling relationship, combined with frequent acting out of feelings, makes pretending an excellent context for learning about emotions.

Applying What We Know Helping Children Manage Common Fears of Early Childhood
Fear

Suggestion

Monsters, ghosts, and darkness

Reduce exposure to frightening stories in books and on TV until the child is better able to sort out appearance from reality. Make a thorough “search” of the child’s room for monsters, showing him that none are there. Leave a night-light burning, sit by the child’s bed until he falls asleep, and tuck in a favorite toy for protection.

Preschool or child care

If the child resists going to preschool but seems content once there, the fear is probably separation. Provide a sense of warmth and caring while gently encouraging independence. If the child fears being at preschool, find out what is frightening—the teacher, the children, or a crowded, noisy environment. Provide extra support by accompanying the child and gradually lessening the amount of time you are present.

Animals

Do not force the child to approach a dog, cat, or other animal that arouses fear. Let the child move at her own pace. Demonstrate how to hold and pet the animal, showing the child that when treated gently, the animal is friendly. If the child is larger than the animal, emphasize this: “You’re so big. That kitty is probably afraid of you!”

Intense fears

If a child’s fear is intense, persists for a long time, interferes with daily activities, and cannot be reduced in any of the ways just suggested, it has reached the level of a phobia. Sometimes phobias are linked to family problems, and counseling is needed to reduce them. At other times, phobias diminish without treatment as the child’s capacity for emotional self-regulation improves.

As early as 3 to 5 years of age, knowledge about emotions is related to children’s friendly, considerate behavior, willingness to make amends after harming another, and constructive responses to disputes with agemates (Dunn, Brown, & Maguire, 1995 ; Garner & Estep, 2001 ; Hughes & Ensor, 2010 ). Also, the more preschoolers refer to feelings when interacting with playmates, the better liked they are by their peers (Fabes et al., 2001 ). Children seem to recognize that acknowledging others’ emotions and explaining their own enhance the quality of relationships.

Emotional Self-Regulation
Language also contributes to preschoolers’ improved emotional self-regulation (Cole, Armstrong, & Pemberton, 2010 ). By age 3 to 4, children verbalize a variety of strategies for adjusting their emotional arousal to a more comfortable level. For example, they know they can blunt emotions by restricting sensory input (covering their eyes or ears to block out an unpleasant sight or sound), talking to themselves (“Mommy said she’ll be back soon”), or changing their goals (deciding that they don’t want to play anyway after being excluded from a game) (Thompson & Goodvin, 2007 ). As children use these strategies, emotional outbursts decline. Effortful control—in particular, inhibiting impulses and shifting attention—also continues to be vital in managing emotion during early childhood. Three-year-olds who can distract themselves when frustrated tend to become cooperative school-age children with few problem behaviors (Gilliom et al., 2002 ).

Warm, patient parents who use verbal guidance, including suggesting and explaining strategies and prompting children to generate their own, strengthen children’s capacity to handle stress (Colman et al., 2006 ; Morris et al., 2011 ). In contrast, when parents rarely express positive emotion, dismiss children’s feelings as unimportant, and have difficulty controlling their own anger, children have continuing problems in managing emotion (Hill et al., 2006 ; Katz & Windecker-Nelson, 2004 ; Thompson & Meyer, 2007 ).

As with infants and toddlers, preschoolers who experience negative emotion intensely find it harder to shift attention away from disturbing events and inhibit their feelings. They are more likely to be anxious and fearful, respond with irritation to others’ distress, react angrily or aggressively when frustrated, and get along poorly with teachers and peers (Chang et al., 2003 ; Eisenberg et al., 2005 ; Raikes et al., 2007 ). Because these emotionally reactive children become increasingly difficult to rear, they are often targets of ineffective parenting, which compounds their poor self-regulation.

Adult–child conversations that prepare children for difficult experiences also foster emotional self-regulation (Thompson & Goodman, 2010 ). Parents who discuss what to expect and ways to handle anxiety offer strategies that children can apply. Nevertheless, preschoolers’ vivid imaginations and incomplete grasp of the distinction between appearance and reality make fears common in early childhood. See Applying What We Know above for ways adults can help young children manage fears.

Self-Conscious Emotions
One morning in Leslie’s classroom, a group of children crowded around for a bread-baking activity. Leslie asked them to wait patiently while she got a baking pan. But Sammy reached over to feel the dough, and the bowl tumbled off the table. When Leslie returned, Sammy looked at her, then covered his eyes with his hands and said, “I did something bad.” He felt ashamed and guilty.

As their self-concepts develop, preschoolers become increasingly sensitive to praise and blame or to the possibility of such feedback. They more often experience self-conscious emotions—feelings that involve injury to or enhancement of their sense of self (see Chapter 6 ). By age 3, self-conscious emotions are clearly linked to self-evaluation (Lewis, 1995 ; Thompson, Meyer, & McGinley, 2006 ). But because preschoolers are still developing standards of excellence and conduct, they depend on the messages of parents, teachers, and others who matter to them to know when to feel proud, ashamed, or guilty, often viewing adult expectations as obligatory rules (“Dad said you’re ’posed to take turns”) (Thompson, Meyer, & McGinley, 2006 ).

When parents repeatedly comment on the worth of the child and her performance (“That’s a bad job! I thought you were a good girl!”), children experience self-conscious emotions intensely—more shame after failure, more pride after success. In contrast, parents who focus on how to improve performance (“You did it this way; now try doing it that way”) induce moderate, more adaptive levels of shame and pride and greater persistence on difficult tasks (Kelley, Brownell, & Campbell, 2000 ; Lewis, 1998 ).

Among Western children, intense shame is associated with feelings of personal inadequacy (“I’m stupid”; “I’m a terrible person”) and with maladjustment—withdrawal and depression as well as intense anger and aggression toward those who participated in the shame-evoking situation (Lindsay-Hartz, de Rivera, & Mascolo, 1995 ; Mills, 2005 ). In contrast, guilt—when it occurs in appropriate circumstances and is neither excessive nor accompanied by shame—is related to good adjustment. Guilt helps children resist harmful impulses, and it motivates a misbehaving child to repair the damage and behave more considerately (Mascolo & Fischer, 2007 ; Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007 ). But overwhelming guilt—involving such high emotional distress that the child cannot make amends—is linked to depressive symptoms as early as age 3 (Luby et al., 2009 ).

Finally, the consequences of shame for children’s adjustment may vary across cultures. As illustrated in the Cultural Influences box on page 267 and on page 189 in Chapter 6 , people in Asian collectivist societies, who define themselves in relation to their social group, view shame as an adaptive reminder of an interdependent self and of the importance of others’ judgments (Bedford, 2004 ).

Empathy and Sympathy
Another emotional capacity that becomes more common in early childhood is empathy, which serves as an important motivator of prosocial , or altruistic, behavior —actions that benefit another person without any expected reward for the self (Spinrad & Eisenberg, 2009 ). Compared with toddlers, preschoolers rely more on words to communicate empathic feelings, a change that indicates a more reflective level of empathy. When a 4-year-old received a Christmas gift that she hadn’t included on her list for Santa, she assumed it belonged to another little girl and pleaded with her parents, “We’ve got to give it back—Santa’s made a big mistake. I think the girl’s crying ‘cause she didn’t get her present!”

As children’s language skills and capacity to take the perspective of others improve, empathy also increases, motivating prosocial, or altruistic, behavior.

Yet in some children, empathizing—feeling with an upset adult or peer and responding emotionally in a similar way—does not yield acts of kindness and helpfulness but, instead, escalates into personal distress. In trying to reduce these feelings, the child focuses on his own anxiety rather than the person in need. As a result, empathy does not lead to sympathy —feelings of concern or sorrow for another’s plight.

Temperament plays a role in whether empathy occurs and whether it prompts sympathetic, prosocial behavior or self-focused personal distress. Children who are sociable, assertive, and good at regulating emotion are more likely to empathize with others’ distress, display sympathetic concern, and engage in prosocial behavior, helping, sharing, and comforting others in distress (Bengtsson, 2005 ; Eisenberg et al., 1998 ; Valiente et al., 2004 ). In contrast, when poor emotion regulators are faced with someone in need, they react with facial and physiological indicators of distress—frowning, lip biting, a rise in heart rate, and a sharp increase in EEG brain-wave activity in the right cerebral hemisphere (which houses negative emotion)—indications that they are overwhelmed by their feelings (Jones, Field, & Davalos, 2000 ; Pickens, Field, & Nawrocki, 2001 ).

As with other aspects of emotional development, parenting affects empathy and sympathy. When parents are warm, encourage emotional expressiveness, and show sensitive, empathic concern for their preschoolers’ feelings, children are likely to react in a concerned way to the distress of others—relationships that persist into adolescence and early adulthood (Koestner, Franz, & Weinberger, 1990 ; Michalik et al., 2007 ; Strayer & Roberts, 2004 ). Besides modeling sympathy, parents can help shy children manage excessive anxiety and aggressive children regulate intense anger. They can also teach children the importance of kindness and can intervene when they display inappropriate emotion—strategies that predict high levels of sympathetic responding (Eisenberg, 2003 ).

In contrast, punitive parenting disrupts empathy at an early age (Valiente et al., 2004 ). In one study, physically abused preschoolers at a child-care center rarely expressed concern at a peer’s unhappiness but, rather, reacted with fear, anger, and physical attacks (Klimes-Dougan & Kistner, 1990 ). The children’s behavior resembled their parents’ insensitive responses to others’ suffering.

image4 Peer Relations
As children become increasingly self-aware and better at communicating and understanding others’ thoughts and feelings, their skill at interacting with peers improves rapidly. Peers provide young children with learning experiences they can get in no other way. Because peers interact on an equal footing, children must keep a conversation going, cooperate, and set goals in play. With peers, children form friendships—special relationships marked by attachment and common interests. Let’s look at how peer interaction changes over the preschool years.

Advances in Peer Sociability
Mildred Parten ( 1932 ), one of the first to study peer sociability among 2- to 5-year-olds, noticed a dramatic rise with age in joint, interactive play. She concluded that social development proceeds in a three-step sequence. It begins with nonsocial activity —unoccupied, onlooker behavior and solitary play. Then it shifts to parallel play , in which a child plays near other children with similar materials but does not try to influence their behavior. At the highest level are two forms of true social interaction. In associative play , children engage in separate activities but exchange toys and comment on one another’s behavior. Finally, in cooperative play , a more advanced type of interaction, children orient toward a common goal, such as acting out a make-believe theme.

Follow-Up Research on Peer Sociability.
Longitudinal evidence indicates that these play forms emerge in the order suggested by Parten but that later-appearing ones do not replace earlier ones in a developmental sequence (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006 ). Rather, all types coexist in early childhood.

TAKE A MOMENT … Watch children move from one type of play to another in a play group or preschool classroom, and you will see that they often transition from onlooker to parallel to cooperative play and back again (Robinson et al., 2003 ). Preschoolers seem to use parallel play as a way station—a respite from the demands of complex social interaction and a crossroad to new activities. And although nonsocial activity declines with age, it is still the most frequent form among 3- to 4-year-olds and accounts for a third of kindergartners’ free-play time. Also, both solitary and parallel play remain fairly stable from 3 to 6 years, accounting for as much of the child’s play as cooperative interaction (Rubin, Fein, & Vandenberg, 1983 ).

We now understand that the type, not the amount, of solitary and parallel play changes in early childhood. In studies of preschoolers’ play in Taiwan and the United States, researchers rated the cognitive maturity of nonsocial, parallel, and cooperative play, using the categories shown in Table 8.1 on page 262 . Within each play type, older children displayed more cognitively mature behavior than younger children (Pan, 1994 ; Rubin, Watson, & Jambor, 1978 ).

Often parents wonder whether a preschooler who spends much time playing alone is developing normally. But only certain types of nonsocial activity—aimless wandering, hovering near peers, and functional play involving repetitive motor action—are cause for concern. Children who watch peers without playing are usually temperamentally inhibited—high in social fearfulness (Coplan et al., 2004 ; Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006 ). And preschoolers who engage in solitary, repetitive behavior (banging blocks, making a doll jump up and down) tend to be immature, impulsive children who find it difficult to regulate anger and aggression (Coplan et al., 2001 ). In the classroom, both reticent and impulsive children tend to experience peer ostracism (Coplan & Arbeau, 2008 ).

These 4-year-olds (left) engage in parallel play. Cooperative play (right) develops later than parallel play, but preschool children continue to move back and forth between the two types of sociability, using parallel play as a respite from the complex demands of cooperation.

TABLE 8.1 Developmental Sequence of Cognitive Play Categories
PLAY CATEGORY

DESCRIPTION

EXAMPLES

Functional play

Simple, repetitive motor movements with or without objects, especially common during the first two years

Running around a room, rolling a car back and forth, kneading clay with no intent to make something

Constructive play

Creating or constructing something, especially common between 3 and 6 years

Making a house out of toy blocks, drawing a picture, putting together a puzzle

Make-believe play

Acting out everyday and imaginary roles, especially common between 2 and 6 years

Playing house, school, or police officer; acting out storybook or television characters

Source: Rubin, Fein, & Vandenberg, 1983.

But most preschoolers with low rates of peer interaction simply like to play alone, and their solitary activities are positive and constructive. Children who prefer solitary play with art materials, puzzles, and building toys are typically well-adjusted youngsters who, when they do play with peers, show socially skilled behavior (Coplan & Armer, 2007 ). Still, a few preschoolers who engage in such age-appropriate solitary play—again, more often boys—are rebuffed by peers. Perhaps because quiet play is inconsistent with the “masculine” gender role, boys who engage in it are at risk for negative reactions from both parents and peers and, eventually, for adjustment problems (Coplan et al., 2001 , 2004 ).

Cultural Variations.
Peer sociability in collectivist societies, which stress group harmony, takes different forms than in individualistic cultures (Chen & French, 2008 ). For example, children in India generally play in large groups, which require high levels of cooperation. Much of their behavior is imitative, occurs in unison, and involves close physical contact. In a game called Bhatto Bhatto, children act out a script about a trip to the market, touching one another’s elbows and hands as they pretend to cut and share a tasty vegetable (Roopnarine et al., 1994 ).

Agta village children in the Philippines play a tug-of-war game. Large-group, highly cooperative play is typical of peer sociability in collectivist societies.

As another example, Chinese preschoolers—unlike American preschoolers, who tend to reject reticent classmates—are typically willing to include a quiet, reserved child in play (Chen et al., 2006 ). In Chapter 6 , we saw that until recently collectivist values, which discourage self-assertion, led to positive evaluations of shyness in China (see pages 194 – 195 ). Apparently, this benevolent attitude persists in the play behaviors of Chinese young children.

Cultural beliefs about the importance of play also affect early peer associations. Caregivers who view play as mere entertainment are less likely to provide props or to encourage pretend than those who value its cognitive and social benefits (Farver & Wimbarti, 1995 ). Preschoolers of Korean-American parents, who emphasize task persistence as vital for learning, spend less time than Caucasian-American children in joint make-believe and more time unoccupied and in parallel play (Farver, Kim, & Lee, 1995 ).

Recall the description of children’s daily lives in a Mayan village culture on page 236 in Chapter 7 . Mayan parents do not promote children’s play—yet Mayan children are socially competent (Gaskins, 2000 ). Perhaps Western-style sociodramatic play, with its elaborate materials and wide-ranging themes, is particularly important for social development in societies where the worlds of children and adults are distinct. It may be less crucial in village cultures where children participate in adult activities from an early age.

First Friendships
As preschoolers interact, first friendships form that serve as important contexts for emotional and social development. To adults, friendship is a mutual relationship involving companionship, sharing, understanding of thoughts and feelings, and caring for and comforting each other in times of need. In addition, mature friendships endure over time and survive occasional conflicts.

Preschoolers understand something about the uniqueness of friendship. They say that a friend is someone “who likes you,” with whom you spend a lot of time playing, and with whom you share toys. But friendship does not yet have a long-term, enduring quality based on mutual trust (Damon, 1988a ; Hartup, 2006 ). “Mark’s my best friend,” Sammy would declare on days when the boys got along well. But when a dispute arose, he would reverse himself: “Mark, you’re not my friend!”

Nevertheless, interactions between young friends are unique. Preschoolers give far more reinforcement—greetings, praise, and compliance—to children they identify as friends, and they also receive more from them. Friends are more cooperative and emotionally expressive—talking, laughing, and looking at each other more often than nonfriends do (Hartup, 2006 ; Vaughn et al., 2001 ). Furthermore, children who begin kindergarten with friends in their class or readily make new friends adjust to school more favorably (Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999 ; Ladd & Price, 1987 ). Perhaps the company of friends serves as a secure base from which to develop new relationships, enhancing children’s feelings of comfort in the new classroom.

Peer Relations and School Readiness
The ease with which kindergartners make new friends and are accepted by their classmates predicts cooperative participation in classroom activities and self-directed completion of learning tasks—behaviors linked to gains in achievement (Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999 ; Ladd, Buhs, & Seid, 2000 ). The capacity to form friendships enables kindergartners to integrate themselves into classroom environments in ways that foster both academic and social competence. In a longitudinal follow-up of a large sample of 4-year-olds, children of average intelligence but with above-average social skills fared better in academic achievement in first grade than children of equal mental ability who were socially below average (Konold & Pianta, 2005 ).

Because social maturity in early childhood contributes to later