Social Competency, Essay Example

Introduction

Urie Bronfenbrenner was psychologist who lived from1917-2005. He came up with ecological system theory to explain the developmental stages of a child. In his arguments, Urie Brenfenbrenner insisted that the environment that surrounds the child affected his growth and development. This environment included the family, school and relationships with other peers.

Family Influence on Children Development of Social Competency

Family is the basis on which the child exists and through which it identifies itself as a human being. Psychologists like Brenfenbrenner and Piaget have argued that the development of child’s social competency depend upon the type of family in which the child exists, gender, number of parents around and sexual manifestation of the parents. In addition, parents have a big role to socialize their children as they grow. For instance, in lone parent homes, mothers have less influence in socializing their child than in the families where both parents are there as children drawn from the latter seems to be socially incompetent. This is because lone families lack adequate continuous emotional support for their children since they are held up doing other activities than in two parent families that have next party to socialize the child (Gwendolyn, 2002).

Children from lone parent families lack exposure to positive role models and good social relationship unlike children in two parent families where the parents exposes the child to healthy social relationship thus enabling the child to develop positive interaction with their peers and environment around it.

Lone parents in most situations are faced with economic stagnation than in two parent families. Lack of enough economic resources implies that the child can not be provided with necessary material need. This situation leads to increased stress that affects how they parent their children. In addition, there is lack of enough social support from the external environment leaving them isolated than in two parent families who are accessible to outside environment (Gwendolyn, 2002).

It is important to note that mothers are responsible for emotional development of children in family. Fathers for long time have been seen to have influenced the physical and cognitive development of the child apart from being the bread winner in the family.

How the School Affects Child’s Development of Social Competency

The school age exposes the children to environment outside the family and prepares it to face the wider society with courage. Child attention will shift to co-curricular activities that contain intricate rules. They try to comprehend the rules that accompany games and prepare to meet competition from their peers. This forms a great skill in social competency as they play in mixed groups thus being able to develop good qualities like loyalty. As they progresses with school life, differentiation starts to occur. Children start to choose friends who they consider good to them. This move shows that the child is accepted by his or her peers thus being socially competent and it is an important developmental progress (Jim, 2004).

Social Competency Among Children Aged 2-6 Years and Adolescent

Social competency can be described as those emotional, cognitive and social skills that the child should possess in order for it to adapt successfully to social environment. Social competency is an important concept that is needed for strong social development in children. This concept is not constant as it varies with age. In this project, children aged 2-6 years and the adolescent are evaluated to show the similarities and differences that occur at each stage when the child develops to the next stage. A child aged two years is definitely a pre school child therefore it will behave in a different manner as compared to an adolescent. More importantly some behaviors like aggressiveness and shyness come with different results on social adaptation of the child’s age and its entire social universe that it exists in (Gwendolyn, 2002).

Social competency of a child is facilitated and determined by various factors that comprises building of self confidence, social awareness and skills. This factor implies that the child is able to acquire and acquaint itself with knowledge of different social behaviors that are useful during interaction with other people.

Social competency should help the child to grow emotionally as it aims at improving the quality of emotional smartness like intelligence. Social competence can be greatly influenced by factors like self confidence and anxiety. More so, the child gains ability to create a fruitful and friendly relationship with others while avoiding embarrassing situations from his or her peers. This is especially so with adolescent than a two or four year child who is egocentric and selfish.

Apart from child’s social skills affecting the social competency of a child, the social context also has an impact on child’s social competency in that it determines the child’s interests, abilities and skills with those of their peer (Marjorie, 2002). Children will interact differently when with their peers as compared to when they are still at age six.

The family plays a big role in upholding and enhancing social and emotional support of the children at the early stage of development. Eventually, when the child grows and reach an adolescent stage, his or her peers are vital in supporting his or her emotional and social development. During this fantasy play, children will pretend to be mothers, fathers or even grandmothers thus shaping their social- emotional development when they grow up.

Children will interact with their peers during events such as peer plays as they learn about the needs of the other person. Social competencies among children aged between two to six years are very good as it involves give and take attitudes therefore providing an opportunity for development of social competencies like negotiations and cooperation. But with onset adolescent stage this attitude changes as children becomes more egocentric and does not want to share his or her fantasies with any body because of fear and feeling of shame. Also, this pretend play enables children at age two to six years to practice roles that they later adopt in life as mothers and fathers (Jim, 2004).

At adolescent stage, peer interaction and bonding becomes very vital for children because it is during stage that children starts identifying themselves with persons they like unlike in stages prior to adolescent where everybody is a friend to the developing child. Adolescent children will start graduating from stage of emotional dependency on the parents, will prefer to take different roles as they relate with their peers as they move to another stage in life to be an independent entity and function as an adult.

Peer relations are very essential according to Piaget and Bronfenbrenner because children are able to learn how to interact with wider society apart from his family. In addition, it gives children chance to learn some important facts about life like intimacy and reciprocity. These new attitudes will go on to shape the entire life of the children as they relate with people on jobs, markets and intimate partners (Jim, 2004).

It is evident that when there is strain in peer relation, children will suffer social competency in their future life as they are not properly socialized. Children may start piling up stress as a result of denial by peers leading to the feeling of isolation and low self esteem. Furthermore, this feeling may result in development of negative behaviors for those children who possess poor social skills as they will be denied by there peers from interacting and socializing with others limiting their chances of developing social skills. This denial eventually leads children to losing important opportunities of developing good social behaviors. The aftermath of this action is feeling of inadequacy, low self esteem and social anxiety (Marjorie, 2002).

Piaget’s Theory of Child Development

Jean Piaget was a re-known psychologist who carried his research on development of children. He came up with developmental stages to explain his theories. The first stage was the sensory motor that makes the child to be aware that in this world things exist despite them being out of sight. This stage takes place between times of birth to second year. The second stage is pre operational stage between 2-7 years. Child thinking is selfish and egocentric (Marjorie,2002). Third stage is concrete operational 7-11 years where the child learns to think in wider manner. Important skills like toilet training take place during this stage. If the child is poorly socialized then most he or she will be egocentric, violent and aggressive in later years. Final stage is formal operation. The child learns to fully cooperate with the society as it starts to interact with its peers at school.

Conclusion

In a nut shell, child development of social competency depends upon the environment that surrounds the child. Brenfenbrenner in his discussion has shown how ecosystem interacts to shape the development of the child. More so, it has been seen that there are differences at each stage of development as the child progresses to the next stage but also similarities are inevitable because of nature of the environment. In addition to Brenfenbrenner development theory, Piaget also studied how the child develops and adapts to the environment using his cognitive development theory.

References

Gwendolyn, C. et al (2002).Teaching Social Skills to Children. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.

Marjorie, K et al (2002). Guiding Children’s Social Development: Theory to Practice, 4th ed. Albany, NY: Delmar.

Jim, O. et al (2004). Getting Along: Teaching Social Skills to Children and Youth. Eden Prairie, MN: Sparrow Media Group.