-according to Erikson (1950), once a 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.

-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, and values that an individual believes defines who he or she is.

-Another aspect of self-concept emerges in early childhood: self-esteem, the judgements we make about our own worth and the feelings associated with those judgements.

-after age 4, children better understand that both desires and beliefs motivate behavior & also may predict what a playmate expressing a certain emotion might do next. "angry student might hit someone"

-realize that thinking and feeling are interconnected

-come up with effective ways to relieve others negative feelings "such as giving hugs to sad friends"

-make believe play in turn contributes to emotional understanding, especially when children play with siblings, relationship, combined with frequent acting out of feeling makes pretending an excellent context for learning about emotions.

Emotional Self- Regulation

effortful control

-language improves emotional self regulation

Effortful Control-in particular, inhibiting impulses and shifting attention-also continues to be vital in managing emotion.

-warm patient parents who explain strategies for controlling feelings strengthen children's capacity to handle stress.

-feelings that involve injury to or enhancement of their are clearly linked to sense of self. Preschoolers are still self developing so they rely heavily on adults to feel proud, ashamed or guilty.

-amoung western children shame is a associated with feelings od inadequacy "im stupid, im terrible"- in contrast guilt is not accompanied by shame- is related to good adjustment. resist harmful impulses, and it motivates a misbehaving child to repair the damage and behave considerately

-serves as an important motivator of prosocial, or altruistic, behavior- actions that benefit another person without any expected reward for the self.

-empathy does not lead to sympathy-feelings of concern or sorrow for another's plight.

-children who are sociable, assertive, and good at regulating emotion are more likely to help, share and comfort others in distress.

-parents show sympathy children are more likely too as well

Social Development

developmental sequence of cognitive play categories

-proceeds in 3 steps

- it begins with nonsocial activity- unoccupied,onlooker behavior and solitary play. Then 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 interation. In associative play, children engage in sparate 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.

-simple, repetitive motor movements with or without objects, especially common during the first 2 years

-creating or constructing something, especially common between 3 and 6 years old

-serve as important contexts for emotional and social development

-capacity to form friendships enables children to intergrae themselves into classroom environments in ways that foster both academic and social competence.

-children first acquire skills for intereacting with peers within the family. Parents influence children's peer sociability both directly, through attempts to influence children's peer relations, and indirectly, through their child-rearing practices and play behaviors.

-parents arrange peer play activities

-better social skills and handaling conflict

-secure attachments to parents are linked to more responsive,harmonious peer interaction, larger peer networks, and warmer, more supportive friendships during the preschool and school years.

-conscience begins to take shape at early childhood

-at first, child's morality is externally controlled by adults.

-gradually, it becomes gradually regulated by inner standards

-stresses the emotional side of conscience development-in particular, indentification and guilt as motivators of good conduct.

-focuses on how moral behavior is learned through reinforcement modeling.

-emphasizes thinking-children's ability to reason about just and fairness.

-in contrast conscience formation is promoted by a type of discipline called induction, in which an adult helps the child notice feelings by pointing out the effects of the child's misbehavior on others.

- "she's crying because you won't give back her doll"

-guilt is an important motivator of moral action. Expression of personal responsibility and regret such as "I'm sorry I hurt him".

-by explaining that the child is harming someon and has disappointed the parent is a means of influencing children without using coercion.

-parents must help children deal with guilt constructively

-observing and imitating people who demonstrate appropriate behavior. Once children acquire a moral response,such as sharing or telling the truth, reinforcement in the form of praise increases its frequency.

- most influential in early years

-children who have had consisten exposure to caring adults have internalized prosocial rules and follow them whether or not a model is present

-models aggression

-it induces a chronic sense of being personally threatened, which prompts children to focus on their own distress rather than respond sympathetically to others.

-depression

-alcohal abuse

-criminality

-poor acedemic performance

-a technique called time out involves removing children from the immediate setting-for example by seding them to their rooms-until they are ready to act appropriately.

-consistency

-a warm parent-child relationship

-explanations

-use transgression as opportunities to teach

-reduce opportunities for misbehavior

-provide reasons for rules

-arrange for children to participate in family routines and duties

-when children are obstinate, try compromising and problem solving

-encourage mature behavior

-Preschoolers distiguish moral imperatives, which protect people's rights and welfare, from two other types of rules and expectations: social conventions, customs dtermined solely by consensus, such as table manners; and matters of personal choice, which do not violate rights are up to the individual, such as choice of friends and leisure activities.

-most common is proactive aggression, in which children act to fulfill a need or desire obtain an object, privilege, space or social reward, such as adult or peer attention and unemotionally attack a person to achieve their goal.

-the other type, reactive (or hostile) aggression is an angry defensive response to provocation or blocked goal and is meant to hurt another person.

-phsyical aggression- harms others through physical injury-punishing, hitting, kicking or punching others or destroying others property.

-verbal aggression- harms others through threats or physical aggression, name calling, or hostile testing

relational aggression- damages another's peer relationships through social exclusion, malicious gossip or frienship mamipulation

-the same child-rearing practices that undermine moral internalization-love withdrawl, power assertion, physical punishment, and inconsistency-are linked to aggression from ealy childhood through adolesence, in children of both sexes and in many cultures, with most of these practices predicting both physical and relational forms.

-concluded that TV violence increases the likelihood of hostile thoughts and emotions and of verbally, physcally, and relationally aggressive behavior. - this also includes violent video games and computer games

-boys devote more time to violent media than girls

-attitudes with time match the violent media

-best begun early

-breaking the cycle of hostilities between family members, promoting effective ways of relating to others, and monitoring and limiting TV and computer use are crucial

-refers to any association of objects, activities, roles, or traits with on esex or the other in ways that conform to cultural stereotypes.

Sex Differences

Gender differences

-sex differences- biological differences

-gender differences- cultural differences in the roles and behaviors between males and femals

-age 2- gender-related preferences and play patterns apparent

          -can identify other childrens parents as mommies or daddies

-age 3- understanding that male/female distinctions are lifelong

-age 4- children are convinced that certain toys(dolls,trucks) and certain rolls(nurses, doctors) are only appropriate for one gender

-age 5- children play with children of their sex

-age 6- know which sex is better (their own) and which sex is stupid (the other one)

-begin around 18 months- men:shar, rough -women: soft, round

-strengthen and become rigid through early childhood

           -divide toys, clothing, tools, jobs, games, emotions& more by gender

           - one-sided judgments are a joint product of gender stereotyping in environment and cognitive limitations

-genetic- evolutionary adaptiveness && hormones

-environmental- family, teachers, peers, broader social environment

-David Reimer-- circumcision accident

--psychoanalytic-- freud called it "phallic stage" center of focus is around penis, oedipus complex, electra complex/penis envy

--social learning- behavior leads to gender identity, boys criticized for being "sissies"

--cognitive developmental- self-perceptions come before behavior, gender constancy, think about what a boy or girl would do and then do it

--gender schema-combines social learning and cognitive developmental theories, only men can be soldiers

-an image of one self as relatively masculine or feminine in characteristics

-scoring high on both masculine and femine personality characteristics

-a full understanding of the biologically based permanence of their gender, including the realization that sex remains the same even if clothing, hairstyle, and play activities change.

-is an information processing approach to gender typing that combines social learning and cognitive-developmental features. it explains how environmental pressures and children's cognitions work together to shape gender-role development.

-delay exposure to stereotyping

-limit traditional family gender roles

-provide nontraditional models

-encourage flexible beliefs

-are combinations of parenting behaviors that occur over a wide range of situations, creating an eduring child-rearing climate.

-authoritative-most successful, involves high acceptance and involvement, adaptive control techniques, and appropriate autonomy granting.

-authoritarian-low acceptance and involvement, high in coercive control, low in autonomy granting.

Psychological control- authoritarian parents engage in more subtle control.Behaviors that intrude on and manipulate children's verbal expression, individuality, and attachments to parents

-permissive-is warm and accepting but uninvolved. engage little control. allow children to make many of their own decisions at an age when they are not yet capable of doing so.

-uninvolved-low acceptance and involvement with little control and general indifference to issures of autonomy.

-compared  to middle class european americans some groups:

-use more firm control

-use more phsycial punishment

-can seem less warm

-May be more appropriate to context

-Physical abuse

-sexual abuse

       -preschool and school aged children at greatest risk

-neglect

-emotional abuse

-parent characteristics

-child characteristics

-family charcteristics

-community

-culture

-emotional problems- poor emotional self-regulation, depression

-brain damage

-adjustment difficulties- aggression, peer problems, substance abuse

-school, learning problems

-training high-risk parents

-social supports for families

         -parents anonymous, hom visitaiton

-Texas reporting laws:

      all citizens must report suspected abuse, misdemeanor or felony if fail to report, can report anonymously