Developmental Play Processes, Essay Example

Middle childhood occurs when children are between the ages of 6 and 12.  Now almost every developmental theorist recognizes that there is a huge amount of development that occurs beginning around age 6. This wasn’t always the case however, as several famous theorists such as Freud and Piaget, did not believe children in this age range were particularly active developmentally.  They believed middle childhood was a time when children’s development leveled off and remained stable until puberty when developmental changes would once more occur at a rapid rate.  Ericson, however, realized the enormous amount of growth that occurred in middle childhood and later theorists agreed with his views (Eccles, 1999). There are four general domains discussed when considering child develop.  These include the physical, cognitive, social and emotional developmental domains.

As children go through the years preceding puberty, they experience a number of physical changes as their bodies prepare for the next stage of development.  During middle childhood, children show noticeable differences in weight and height as both boys and girls go through a number of growth spurts.  Usually, girls reach their full height before boys, so in this stage girls are often taller than boys.  They also show major gains in coordination and motor abilities including athletics.  Both grow and fine motor movement improves during this stage as they continue to practice these skills with many things that they do, both purposeful and unknowingly. Children in this age group also start to gain an understanding of cause and effect t regarding health and illness.  They start to eat based not only on what they desire and enjoy but also based on their understanding of nutrition.  They also start to engage in physical activity not just for fun but also for exercise. (Eccles, 1999).

In middle childhood, cognitive abilities improve in a number of areas.  Language ability gets better due to more advanced thought processes, executive functioning improves including memory, problem solving and reasoning, they become able to understand concrete logic, and learning strategies begin to develop so achievement usually improves at this age. Children in this age group also start to integrate their knowledge and skills from different learning areas such as reading, writing and arithmetic (Eccles, 1999).

Socially, children in middle childhood start to replace parents with peers as the ones they spend time with and look to for approval. This is the basis of social development and awareness of feedback from peers lets children know what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They also gain perspective taking ability and start to be able to see things from another child’s point of view.  These skills are the building blocks of more complicated friendships and children begin to choose friends based on some similarity such as likes and dislikes rather than proximity (Eccles, 1999).

Around this age, children also begin to gain better understanding of their emotions and the ability to manage them.  They develop emotion regulation skills such as distraction to prevent themselves from displaying negative emotions.  At this age children are also starting to be capable of hiding negative emotions especially when they are in reaction to another child’s behavior or what they say so they don’t get rejected.  They have developed basic empathy which is necessary for perspective taking (Santrock, 2011).

As early as 1959 the United Nations recognized the importance of play so that children could develop properly and live happy, healthy lives.  In fact, the U.N. issued a declaration which included play as a child right.  The declaration stated, “The child shall have full opportunity for play and recreation, which should be directed to the same purposes as education; society and the public authorities shall endeavour to promote the enjoyment of this right” (UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child art. 7, para. 3).

Play is an important activity for the development of all four domains during middle childhood (Bergen, 2002). In particular, imaginative play is very important for social development during these years.  Play helps children in the stage of middle childhood develop social cognition (a combination of the social and cognitive domains of development).  Social cognition is the way children (and adults) think about others It helps them interpret other children’s behavior so they can act appropriately in order to gain acceptance from peers.  Imaginative play requires children to make up the rules of the activity together, negotiate, take other children’s perspective, cooperate with others and read social cues in order to determine if they acting out their role in the in a way that gets approval from peers.  Examples of pretend play at this age include playing family, school, superhero’s, prince and princess, or acting out favorite parts of movies or television programs. These activities help children better learn to interact socially with peers because there are no rules provided until they make them up.  This helps them expand their ability to adjust to new social situations even when they don’t have experience in similar circumstances.

References

Bergen, D. (2002). The role of pretend play in children’s cognitive development. Early Childhood Research & Practice, 4(1), n1.

Crisp, R. & Rhiannon, T. (2010).  Social cognition.  In Essential Social Psychology, (2^nd ed.) (pp.38 – 71).  Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications.

Eccles, J. S., (1999).  Development of children ages 6 – 14.  The Future of Children: When School is Out, 9, 30-44.

Santrock, J. (2011).  Emotional development.  In A Topical Approach to Life-Span Development (6^th ed.) (pp. 358-395). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child art. 7, para. 3.