Twenty-Four%20to%20Thirty-Six%20Months

1
Twenty-Four to Thirty-SixMonths

• Fogel
• Chapter 11 Part 1

Created by Ilse DeKoeyer-Laros, Ph.D.
2
Overview Chapter 11

• Motor Cognitive Development
• Emotional Development
• Social and Language Development
• Family and Society

Experiential Exercises Co-regulating with Baby
3
Introduction

• The infancy period is not over until late in the
  3rd year of life, when children
• genuinely engage in linguistic and cooperative
  interactions with peers, siblings, parents
• use productive grammatical speech
• have an awareness of themselves as boys or girls

4
Motor Cognitive Development Motor Development

• By age 3, most children have developed their
  adult hand preference
• Early drawings
• by age 3, children are drawing squiggles and
  making simple shapes on paper
• once children begin to
  draw shapes,
  they prefer
  simple ones, such as
  
  circles and rectangles

5
Motor Cognitive Development Motor Development

• During the 2nd and 3rd years, children develop
  exercise play
• physically vigorous playful movement (e.g.,
  running, chasing, climbing)
• may or may not be social
• accounts for about 714 of behavior in day care
  settings for 3-year-olds
• on average, boys have a higher activity level
  than girls

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Motor Cognitive Development Motor Development

• Benefits of exercise play
• increases fitness, endurance, strength, skill
• may reduce fat increase the ability of the body
  to regulate temperature
• may enhance cognitive ability

• Both boys girls need exercise play for the
  healthy development of body mind

 Picture from www.greenheartsinc.org/Our_Services
.html
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Motor Cognitive Development Motor Development

• By age 3, most children have learned how to use
  the toilet
• there are no differences in age of toilet
  learning depending upon whether a child attended
  child care outside the home
• girls tend to be trained earlier (on average, at
  about 35 months) than boys (at 39 months)

8
Motor Cognitive Development Thinking Grounded
in Action

• 2-year-olds learn to flexibly combine actions
  persist until they reach a goal
• in one study, 2-year-olds were able to perform
  all the actions in a particular sequence
• e.g., build a house, clean a blackboard, dress a
  doll
• only 2-year-olds were able to correct their
  errors persist until the task was completed

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Motor Cognitive Development Thinking Grounded
in Action

• Attention span also increases
• TV watching increases markedly at 30 months,
  about the same time these other changes are
  happening
• the more children comprehend of TV programs, the
  longer they will watch

Picture from  www.momisteaching.com/.../uploads/we
emote.jpg
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Motor Cognitive Development Thinking Grounded
in Action

• Self-produced action appears to affect cognition
• In one study, 3-year-olds were taken into a
  childrens area in a natural history museum
• some of the children were allowed to explore the
  area on their own
• others were led through it by an adult
• those who went on their own had a more accurate
  spatial cognition of the layout of the area than
  those who were led

11
Motor Cognitive Development Language Aids both
Thought Action

• Piaget
• both action language develop because of
  increases in cognitive abilities such as logical
  thinking
• a 3-year-old cannot answer the following question
  because of an inability to understand the logical
  chain of comparisons
• Bill is older than Tom. Tom is older than Steve
• Who is older, Bill or Steve?

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Motor Cognitive Development Language Aids both
Thought Action

• Alternative explanation this error may be due to
  a linguistic problem
• e.g., difficulty understanding differences
  between similar words with different endings,
  such as old and older
• Research suggests that children comprehend
  something like this
• Bill is old Tom is not old. Tom is old Steve
  is not old.
• this seems like contradictory information

13
Motor Cognitive Development Language Aids both
Thought Action

• Around 30 months, children
• have developed thought an internalization of
  their social-linguistic regulatory system
• begin to talk to themselves
• private speech the use of language
  to regulate ones own
  behavior
  without the intention of a
  social communication

Picture from raisingchildren.net.au/.../todd_girl
playing.jpg
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Motor Cognitive Development Language Aids both
Thought Action

• Private speech occurs when the child
• talks about an intended action (I put that
  there)
• describes ongoing action (Banging it)
• makes a statement to an inanimate object (Get
  out of my way, chair!)
• asks a question and then answers it (Why are you
  crying, dolly? Because Im sad)

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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentPretending the
World of Make-Believe

• Piaget
• complex action sequences result from developments
  in the cognitive realm
• Vygotsky
• they result from language social experience
• complex action sequences have their origins in
  earlier social interactions

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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentPretending the
World of Make-Believe

• Imaginative pretend play begins at age 2
• inventing whole new situations in make-believe
• allows the self to emerge victorious in case of
  failure or save face in case of embarrassment

• Pretend role play also begins
• acting out roles of mother, father, or other
  important figures in their lives

Picture from http//www.toddler-activities-at-hom
e.com/toddler-imaginary-play.html
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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentPretending the
World of Make-Believe

• In one study, adults pretended to pour or
  spill some pretend tea
• after 28 months, children can participate in
  these pretend episodes
• they will drink from the cup and help clean
  up the spilled tea
• their language shows they understand the
  situation is make-believe and not real

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Motor Cognitive Development Pretending the
World of Make-Believe

• Pretending is also manifested as dreaming, which
  children can talk about for the first time

• often about experiences the child has had,
  physical changes such as toileting, and strong
  emotions
• dreams other than nightmares may fulfill a wish,
  or may take a painful event and finish it off
  with a happy ending

Pictures from http//www.preschoolerstoday.com/re
sources/articles/lightsout.htm
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Motor Cognitive Development Pretending the
World of Make-Believe

• Children no longer have to be content with what
  actually happens they can make up a better
  outcome as they play

• However, 3-year-olds are never sure about the
  limits of this newfound ability
• for example, children fear their own imaginary
  monsters

Picture from notjustcute.files.wordpress.com/.../
dscn0678.jpg
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Motor Cognitive Development Pretending the
World of Make-Believe

• Patterns of individual difference cut across
  play, language, motor development, and
  problem-solving behavior
• Patterners are concerned with
  object properties, shape, and form
• Dramatists are more involved
  with storytelling, imagination,
  and social interaction

Picture from http//www.juniormagazine.co.uk/deve
lopment__your_toddler
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Motor Cognitive Development Pretending the
World of Make-Believe

• 2-year-olds were offered 16 items asked to put
  the items that were alike together
• the patterners grouped objects according to their
  external forms, shapes, and colors
• the dramatists grouped the objects by making a
  story out of them, such as a person in
  a house made
  of blocks

22
Motor Cognitive Development The Emergence of
the Categorical Self

• Around the 3rd birthday, children develop the
  categorical self the ability to identify their
  own membership in conceptual categories

• For example,
• I am a boy
• I am a sister
• I am not a baby

23
Motor Cognitive Development Autobiographical
memory

• Autobiographical memory the ability to remember
  experiences verbally
• serves to create a sense of ones life history
• More detailed when
• mothers elaborate more on childrens stories
• children have more advanced verbal skills
• children use more mental state words like
  thinking, knowing, and remembering

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Motor Cognitive Development Autobiographical
Memory

• The ability to talk about a past situation
  depends on verbal skills at the time of the event
• children who had a traumatic injury around age 2
  could recall the situation verbally up to 2 years
  later
• children who were injured before 18 months showed
  participatory memories but no verbal recall
• one boy had to be tightly wrapped in a blanket at
  16 months, to keep him from moving during the
  stitching
• at 34 months, he still refused to be wrapped in a
  smock when getting his hair cut

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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentParticipatory
Memories
Infantile amnesia is primarily a verbal amnesia

• if an incident occurs before age 2, participatory
  memories remain but are largely unconscious
  (expressed nonverbally but not verbally)
• individuals may have participatory memories of
  early infancy that persist for long periods in
  the form of nonverbal patterns of action

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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentParticipatory
Memories

• Traumatic memories may be particularly likely to
  persist in the form of nonverbal, unconscious
  participatory memories
• these will persist longer if the conditions that
  created the memories persist and continue to be
  reenacted
• the amygdala alters its cellular structure with
  trauma leaving the person vulnerable to perceive
  fear even in relatively benign situations
• the hippocampus necessary for verbal recall
  is by-passed in traumatic situations and in
  infancy

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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentThe Emergence of
the Categorical Self

• Therapeutic interventions that lead to increases
  in health allow traumas to be relived safely and
  then transformed into verbal memories
• for instance, play therapy with children
• there is controversy over whether such memories
  can be falsely implanted

Picture from www.storefront.org/vertical/Sites/7
B87DB415F..
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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentGender Identity

• Gender identity the affiliation with being
  either male or female

• early in the 3rd year, children begin to notice
  sex differences in behavior and appearance to
  show early signs of sexual behavior
• Gender labeling when the child can identify
  self or other as male or female
• begins at about 18 months

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Motor Cognitive Development Gender Identity

• Up until age 3, children do not understand that
  these labels reflect enduring characteristics
• 2-year-olds do not understand that a boy will
  always grow up to be a man
• they believe that gender might be changed by
  changing ones appearance or dress
• they may actively discourage each other from
  playing with opposite sex peers or opposite
  gendertyped toys

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Motor Cognitive Development Gender Identity

• Gender labeling is related to verbal ability, sex
  of the child, and parents emotional reactions to
  gender-typed toys

• more advanced with higher verbal intelligence
• boys begin gender labeling stereotyping earlier
  than girls
• earlier gender labeling if parents have strong
  reactions

Picture from www.adventures-in-motherhood.com
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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentGender Identity

• Parental influence over the childs choice of
  toys
• few parents explicitly instruct their children in
  the gender-appropriate choice or use of toys

• stereotypes are communicated by emotional
  reactions to the childrens choice of toys
• parents react less to toy choices that are not
  gender related to opposite-gender choices

Picture from www.delaneyfamily.info
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Motor Cognitive Development Gender Identity

• Other parental contributions to gender identity
• discouraging aggression encouraging prosocial
  behavior in girls
• encouraging responsibility in boys
• dressing children in gender-appropriate ways
• talking in general about gender and gender roles

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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentCommunication about
Emotions

• Sex differences in emotional communication

• girls talk more spontaneously earlier about
  their emotions than boys
• parents are more likely to create a shared
  emotional state with their daughters
• parents are more likely to provide a way to
  resolve daughters emotions interpersonally

Picture from www.bridges4kids.org/lead-articles.h
tml
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Motor Cognitive Development Communication
about Emotions

• Parents tend to encourage sons to resolve the
  situation on their own
• for example, parents are more likely to encourage
  sons to retaliate when angry

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Motor Cognitive Development Communication
about Emotions

• Talking about emotions
• children of this age can talk about their
  feelings and label emotional physiological
  states
• they can talk about future and past emotions, and
  can discuss the causes consequences of emotions
  
• they can also talk about others emotions

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Motor Cognitive Development Communication
about Emotions

• By 28 months, most children have extensive
  emotion vocabularies
• for positive emotions (happy, fun, good time,
  funny, like, love, feel better, proud)
• and negative ones (sad, scared, mad, yucky,
  messy, feel bad)
• 6 to 12 months later they begin to talk about
  their own and others thoughts (know, think)

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Motor Cognitive Development Empathy

• Children of this age also appear to have a sense
  of empathy toward others
• 2-year-olds are visibly affected by the emotions
  of others

• In one study,
• children expressed concern for their mother,
  sought her reassurance tried to comfort her
  when an experimenter acted angry with her

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Motor Cognitive Development Empathy

• 2-year-olds show concerned attention toward
  others who are in distress
• they try to help to elicit help from bystanders
  
• on average, girls do this more than boys
• Children show more empathy with a peers distress
  if it was the child him- or herself that caused
  the distress

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Motor Cognitive Development Empathy

• Children of mothers with severe depression show
  more caring behavior than children of
  non-depressed mothers
• perhaps because they had to prematurely attend to
  the emotional states of others in order to get
  attention
• they may become disconnected from their own
  feelings in an attempt to protect their parent
  from undue emotional arousal

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Motor Cognitive Development Understanding
Emotions

• Children who score high on understanding others
  emotions are likely to come from families in
  which
• there is frequent talk about (causes of) feelings
• children have an opportunity to observe parents
  talking with siblings about their feelings and
  behavior
• children are encouraged to cooperate with their
  siblings during coordinated play
• there is a secure attachment with the mother

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Motor Cognitive DevelopmentUnderstanding
Emotions

• Temperament
• children who are either inhibited or overly
  active are less likely to show understanding of
  others feelings
• they may require a more directive style of
  parental teaching in order to understand others
  emotions

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Motor Cognitive Development Awareness of
self-other relationships

• Children of this age can
• talk about sharing activity with others
• We went down by the pool
• distinguish themselves as part of a relationship
• No one was holding my hand
• metacommunicate about their interpersonal
  relationships with others
• He wanted to play with me

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Motor Cognitive Development Awareness of
self-other relationships

• Understanding of others
• 3-year-olds can use motherese when talking to a
  baby can describe the kinds of things you might
  do to take care of a baby
• when asked to show a picture to another person,
  3-year-olds turned the picture around to face
  that person
• when they knew that the parent was unaware of an
  objects location, they were more likely to
  gesture toward the object

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Motor Cognitive Development Awareness of
self-other relationships

• Does this mean that 3-year-olds have a theory of
  mind an understanding that other people have
  psychological states, which may be different from
  their own?
• No, because
• children can copy the parents motherese, or just
  describe what others do for a baby
• 2-year-olds often try to comfort adults with
  blankets, bottles, etc. (they may be trying to
  calm their own upset by stopping the crying of
  the adult)

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Motor Cognitive Development Awareness of
self-other relationships

• Evidence for a rudimentary theory of mind comes
  from studies of the development of the ability to
  deceive others
• in one study, children
• not only slyly lied and disingenuously misled,
  but they did so with what often amounted to
  disarming delight in leading others astray
• to create a false belief, you have to have a
  theory of mind that is, you have to assume that
  others are capable of holding some beliefs

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Motor Cognitive Development Awareness of
self-other relationships

• To have a genuine theory of mind, children need
  the following
• self-awareness
• the capacity for pretending
• the ability to distinguish
  reality from pretending
• Most 2-year-olds have both self-awareness the
  ability to pretend

Picture from www.juniormagazine.co.uk/.../5.html
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Motor Cognitive Development Awareness of
self-other relationships

• However, 3-year-olds lack the ability to separate
  pretend from reality
• until children can do this, they will see others
  as mere extensions of their own desires
• A greater feeling of certainty does not emerge
  until the age of 4 years, when children solidify
  a theory of mind
• an appreciation of the feelings and desires of
  others as independent from their own

48
Emotional Development

• During the 3rd year, toddlers become more like
  children when participating in social
  relationships with others
• they have an increasingly sophisticated repertory
  of emotional forms of communication

Picture from www.stronghealth.com/.../rheumatolog
y/
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Emotional DevelopmentPositive Emotion

• Infants show different types of smiles
• Duchenne smiles more likely with peekaboo games
• play smiles with tickling games

• 3-year-olds have different types of laughs
• comment, chuckle, rhythmical, and squeal laughs
• each is related to a specific type of
  communicative situation

Picture from www.stcuthbertscare.org.uk/localauth
orities.html
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Emotional DevelopmentNegative Emotions

• By the 3rd year, children increasingly regulate
  their emotion expression depending upon the
  situation
• more likely to show negative
  emotions when with their
  parents
• more likely to show sadness
  when they have their parents
  attention

Picture from www.babyminestore.com/art_crying.htm
l
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Emotional DevelopmentAnger

• Physical aggression
• higher between 24 and 36 months than at any other
  time in life
• individual differences in aggression remain
  stable over several years
• some children show more others less or no
  aggression
• boys show more aggression overall

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Emotional DevelopmentNegative Emotions

• Longer-lasting mood states
• the first signs of depression appear at this age
• depressed 3-year-olds are sadder, grouchier, more
  whiney, have poorer appetites, more sleep
  problems, and more trouble concentrating
• they expressed the feeling that nothing was fun
  
• these symptoms are similar to those of depressed
  older children and adults

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Emotional DevelopmentNegative Emotions

• Adults responses to happy expressions versus
  temper tantrums ultimately affect the childs own
  emotional understanding

• Adults should accept childrens emotions, while
  working toward changing the way in which emotions
  are expressed
• I can see that youre angry, but I dont permit
  throwing things in the house

Picture from micnac.motime.com/archive/2008-08
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Social Language Development

• During the 3rd year, there is a spurt in the mean
  length of utterance (MLU)
• the average number of morphemes in each utterance
  spoken by the child
• a morpheme is a meaningful unit of language it
  is usually a word, but it can also be a word
  ending, such as -ed, -s, or ing

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Social Language Development

• Speaking in a sentence requires at least two
  basic components a subject and a verb
• does not emerge until the end of the 2nd year

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Social Language Development

• Usually, children acquire verbs more slowly
  (around 20 months) than nouns (around 10 months)
• Languages such as Korean and Mandarin organize
  sentences around verbs
• children have more verbs in their early
  vocabularies
• but in all languages, nouns predominate over
  verbs during the 2nd and 3rd years

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Social Language Development

• Nouns
• represent the descriptions of things or objects
• serve a referential function
• refer to concrete things (you can see, touch, or
  feel)
• Verbs
• tell us about the relationship between things
• can express nontangible things
• can represent abstract properties that are
  difficult for a young child to appreciate (e.g.,
  to think and to feel)

58
Social Language Development

• When children first start to express action
  words, they often combine the action and its
  result in the same word

• the word up can be used for
• being lifted, being put down, asking to be picked
  up or to climb on someones lap, climbing up or
  down stairs, requesting out-of-reach objects
• off, on, out, and open can be used in similarly
  extended ways

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Social Language Development

• Next, children express action by
• the use of simple verbs (do, make)
• using an object word to talk about the action
• The man is keying the door (opening the door
  with a key)
• Im souping (eating soup)
• Pillow me! (throw a pillow at me)

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Social Language Development

• As children begin to acquire verbs it also helps
  them to understand more nouns
• Errors in the use of verbs
• children accidentally substitute verbs that are
  similar in meaning
• put and give are both words that a person uses to
  make an object move from one place to another

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Social Language Development

• Certain words are acquired in this order
  source-path-goal
• the source of the action (end of 1st year)
• from, out, off, away
• the path of the action (middle of 2nd year)
• back, up, down, across, through
• the goal or end point of the action (end of 2nd
  year)
• to, in, at, there

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Social Language DevelopmentAdding the Proper
Endings

• Overregularization just after acquiring the
  past tense of regular verbs, children apply the
  -ed rule to all verbs
• e.g., saying goed instead of went
• happens only 2.5 of the time the child intends
  to use an irregular past tense
• occurs from age 2 through the elementary school
  years

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Social Language DevelopmentAdding the Proper
Endings

• Plurals
• children first acquire irregular forms, such as
  men and children
• once they acquire the general rule (adding an s),
  they apply that rule to anything
• even to words they previously had acquired in the
  irregular forms mans and childs

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Social Language DevelopmentAdding the Proper
Endings

• Negation
• Younger infants say no or not
• 2-year-olds use contractions (cant, dont)

65
Social Language DevelopmentWhen Do Children
Begin to Ask Questions?

• After they master the subject-verb-object
  composition of sentences!
• Questions usually begin with wh- words
• what, where, and who ask for single-word
  responses that usually are simply extracted from
  a situation
• why, how, and when require a more extended
  response giving a reason, process, or time

66
Social Language DevelopmentWhen Do Children
Begin to Ask Questions?

• Children want information when they ask
• they will stop asking questions when they get an
  answer that satisfies the intention of their
  question
• Metalinguistic knowledge
• awareness about the function of language of the
  implicit relationship between speakers
• shown by asking questions (suggests awareness of
  the importance of language for communication)

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Social Language DevelopmentLimitations of
2-Year-Olds Language

• At age 2, children
• still make errors in pronunciation
• fail to comprehend certain words sentences
• have only rudimentary conversational skills

Picture from www.ellinghamhouse.co.uk/toddler.htm

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Social Language DevelopmentLimitations of
2-Year-Olds Language

• Young children learning English have an endearing
  tendency to make both r and l sound like w
• sound spectrographs of children who said gwass
  could detect differences between the childs
  pronunciation of glass and grass (but the human
  ear could not)
• Children have been observed to practice their
  pronunciation during private speech,

69
Social Language DevelopmentLimitations of
2-Year-Olds Language

• Continuing pronunciation difficulties into the
  4th and 5th year may be a reason to have a child
  assessed for possible language intervention
• show more delay in learning other features of
  language such as MLU, grammar, and vocabulary
• are more likely to have difficulty learning to
  read

70
Social Language DevelopmentLimitations of
2-Year-Olds Language

• 2-year-olds have trouble comprehending unusual
  grammatical sequences
• If you were told that the robin is being kissed
  by the bluejay, how would you answer
• who did the kissing? and Who was the kisser?
• 2-year-olds could not get the right answer
• half the time they said the robin was the kisser,
  and half the time they said the bluejay

71
Social Language DevelopmentLimitations of
2-Year-Olds Language

• When children hear a noun followed by a verb,
  they assume the noun represents the actor
• Not until children are in elementary school can
  they understand sentences such as Donald Duck
  was liked by Goofy

72
Social Language Development2-Year-Olds
Conversations

• At this age, the child does not have a mature
  ability to carry on dialogue
• Parents help by
• prompting (e.g., asking
  questions)
• using gestures (more complex
  than those used with
  toddlers)

Picture from gallery.hd.org/_exhibits/baby/_more2
007
73
Social Language Development2-Year-Olds
Conversations

• By age 2, there are social class differences in
  linguistic parent-child communication
• one U.S. study found that middle-income dyads
  spend twice as much time in mutual play as
  lower-income dyads
• mothers in lower-income groups spend more time
  reading to themselves, and their children are
  observed more often in independent play

74
Social Language Development2-Year-Olds
Conversations

• In middle-income families
• children have more advanced language larger
  vocabularies than lower-income children
• parents with professional backgrounds (e.g.,
  teachers) are more likely to read to
  interact with their children
  than blue- or
  white-collar parents
• parents tend to see infants as
  precocious to create
  pseudodialogues

Picture from www.vanillajoy.com/reading-with-todd
lers.html
75
Social Language Development2-Year-Olds
Conversations

• In observations of parents reading picture-books
  to their children, Ninio (1980) found that
  middle-income Israeli mothers

• asked more questions
• talked more during the reading session
• modeled more new words than the low-income mothers

Picture from www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/learning/LD5-.html  
76
Social Language DevelopmentDiscipline

• During the 3rd year, parents introduce a wide
  variety of controls
• children are told when to do things
• Tie your shoe
• when not to do things
• Dont yell
• and they are asked to control their future
  actions
• Be good while Im gone

77
Social Language DevelopmentDiscipline in
Parent-Child Relationships

• Parents ask children to perform actions requiring
  a high level of competence
• Take care of your brother Put the crayons
  away Say thank you Dont write on the
  wall Go play in the other room
• Children can either comply or resist.
• Resistance can be passive or defiant, with the
  child exploring all the different ways of using
  the word no

78
Social Language DevelopmentDiscipline in
Parent-Child Relationships

• Authoritative parental discipline is related to
  cooperation and compliance
• firmness, respect for the child, warmth
• Oppositional children receive fewer demands for
  competent behavior fewer requests to control
  their future actions
• related to parental control of the childs
  behavior
• relational pattern
• a cycle in which the parents avoid confronting
  the child and the child is deprived of
  opportunities to become more competent

79
Social Language DevelopmentDiscipline in
Parent-Child Relationships

• During the 3rd year, defiance and refusals
  gradually diminish
• children start to use negotiation strategies
• by 30 months, children may say things like Let
  me play a little longer and then Ill clean up,
  You clean some and Ill clean some, or Dont
  leave and Ill clean up
• more likely if parents were less confrontational
  during conflicts more open to hear the childs
  perspective and to negotiate

80
Social Language DevelopmentPeer Interactions

• Between 22 and 30 months, children
• increase their rates of verbalizations to peers
• watch each other more
• increase their rates of social interaction

• Near the end of the 3rd year, they engage in more
  mutual social play less parallel play

Picture from www.openeducation.net
81
Social Language DevelopmentPeer Interactions

• Children gradually incorporate symbolic play into
  peer interactions
• preschool children work together to elaborate a
  pretend game
• at first, children simply copy or echo their
  partners in their peer exchanges
• later they provide complementary responses
• finally they elaborate and embellish the others
  responses

82
Social Language DevelopmentPeer Interactions

• Three developments relevant for peer
  relationships
• Peers begin to imitate each
  other, first nonverbally and
  later verbally
• Emergence of complementary
  roles alternative responses
• The growing use of language

83
Social Language DevelopmentPeer Relations

• Friendships
• In one study, children were left in an unfamiliar
  room either with a familiar peer, with an
  unfamiliar peer, or by themselves
• the children with the familiar peer were the most
  comfortable the children left alone were the
  most upset
• Another study found that children were more
  likely to be upset when their friends left them
  alone than when nonfriends did so

84
Social Language DevelopmentPeer Relations

• At this age, childrens play groups begin to form
  dominance hierarchies
• the members of a group are ranked according to
  their relative power or lack of power over others
• a child who is with a more dominant peer will be
  less assertive and active
• the same child with a subordinate peer will take
  more of a leadership role have more initiative

85
Social Language DevelopmentPeer Relations

• Peer competence was related to
• birth order
• children without siblings were more sociable with
  unfamiliar peers than firstborns with siblings
• firstborns were more sociable than children born
  later
• secure attachment self-control
• insecure-avoidant more likely to show
  hostile-aggressive behavior with their peers
• insecure-resistant less self-assertion less
  able to concentrate on pretending and exploring

86
Social Language DevelopmentPeer Relations

• Socio-cultural factors
• Israeli kibbutzim children showed more
  cooperative play than urban children
• The more a society is family oriented rather than
  peer-group oriented, the less the children will
  be encouraged to play in peer groups
• Western preschools tend to be age segregated
  mixed-age groupings are rare
• Societies differ in the amount of adult
  supervision of peer groups

87
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Sibling pairs share both positive negative
  interactions
• no matter what the interaction is, the children
  get something specific from their siblings that
  they do not receive in other relationships

Picture from www.babybitesnyc.com/special_events.
htm
88
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Younger siblings
• imitate older siblings more often than they are
  imitated by older siblings
• are more likely to follow older siblings
  directions and suggestions
• are more compliant in taking designated roles in
  games
• imitate other people more (follower rather than
  leader)

89
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Younger children have the advantage of an older
  guide as they begin to explore the environment
• one study showed that 23-month-olds acted more
  boldly when observed both with their older
  siblings

• Parents often remark that laterborns seem to do
  things at a younger age than firstborns
• perhaps partially due to imitative behavior

Picture from blog.mellenger.com/IMG_2704siblings.
jpg
90
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Older siblings are more likely
• to give directives
• to orient the attention of the younger children
• to command and prohibit
• to support
• and to tease
• Older siblings address infants in
  a form of motherese, except
  they rarely ask
  questions

Picture from www.bounty.co.nz/.../OtherFamilyMemb
ers
91
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• After the birth of a new baby, older children
  become somewhat more dependent
• they tend to seek help more, seek proximity to
  their mothers more, and cry more
• Older siblings who had experienced more
  discussion of internal states emotions with
  their mothers were more likely to be sensitive to
  the emotional states of their younger siblings

92
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• The mothers behavior changes also
• even when the mother is not occupied with the
  baby, she tends to spend less time with the older
  child
• confrontation with the firstborn increases and
  positive involvement decreases

Picture from richardsim.spaces.live.com/
93
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Sibling conflicts
• tattling between siblings of
  this age occurs in the
  majority of families
• siblings tattle primarily about physical
  aggression property damage and disputes
• older siblings do not shy away from causing
  conflict with the younger ones

Picture from parenting247.org
94
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Older siblings sometimes diffuse conflict between
  mother and younger sibling by
• repeating the siblings action that the mother
  did not like
• giving the younger child a similar object to the
  one the mother had just taken away
• prohibiting or scolding the mother for her
  punishment of the sibling
• comforting the sibling

95
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Siblings have a special relationship that is
  different from the parent-child relationship
• they like to talk more about their emotions with
  each other than with parents
• they like to share jokes about yucky bugs or
  gender categories
• they express feelings of liking and disliking
• they form attachments to each other and would
  rather be together than with an unfamiliar peer

96
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• In some societies, it is common for older
  siblings (even at age 3) to have some
  responsibilities for taking care of babies
• typically in societies that are relatively less
  complex and more traditional
• if the mother cannot stay at home to take care of
  the infant, siblings are likely to take over this
  function

97
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Each siblings attachment to mother
• securely attached 2-year-olds are less likely to
  be aggressive to mother or their older sibling
  when mother plays exclusively with the older
  sibling
• securely attached older siblings are more likely
  to respond to the needs and distress of the
  younger sibling in the mothers absence

98
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Higher-quality sibling relationships are
  associated with older siblings peer
  relationships
• children who are more positive with their
  siblings show more positive peer play, fewer peer
  conflicts, more extended pretend play with peers,
  and more lasting peer friendships
• children with more knowledge of emotion and
  role-taking skills are more positive with their
  younger siblings
• Both sibling interaction peer competence are
  related to the childs security of attachment

99
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Sex and age differences between siblings
• same-sex pairs tend to have fewer instances of
  aggression than mixed-sex pairs
• parents are more likely to treat children in
  same-sex pairs equally than children in mixed-sex
  pairs
• some (but not all) studies find that
• firstborn females are somewhat more prosocial
• firstborn males are somewhat more aggressive

100
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Temperament
• if one of the siblings has a generally negative
  mood and is nonadaptable, the siblings are less
  likely to engage in joint play
• a mismatch in the temperament of the siblings is
  related to higher levels of conflict

101
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Sibling de-identification
• parents try to differentiate between siblings by
  viewing them as different individuals
• parents tend to rate the first two children in
  the family as having different temperaments
• temperaments for laterborn children are rated as
  more alike

102
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Many factors are likely to play a role in how
  well siblings get along with each other
• from a family systems perspective, it is
  difficult to say with certainty that a single
  factor taken in isolation is the cause of sibling
  aggression
• temperament, although strongly related to sibling
  conflict, could be multiply determined by
  parent-child and child-child interactions over
  the course of the first years of life

103
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Parent intervention in sibling conflicts
• when the older child is under 3, parental
  noninvolvement tends to predispose the siblings
  to continued conflict
• before the intervention, children are most likely
  to use aggression coercion in disputes
• after the intervention, children are more likely
  to use negotiation strategies to resolve their
  conflicts
• parents can help siblings negotiate

104
Family and SocietySibling Interactions

• Parents typically intervene as third-party
  mediators
• parents tend to favor younger siblings to
  discipline the older sibling
• if both parents pick on the older sibling, that
  child is more likely to show behavior problems in
  preschool
• better developmental outcomes are likely when
  parents expect the older sibling to be the more
  responsible person and when the younger sibling
  is sometime disciplined by at least one parent

105
Observing Children using Naturalistic Qualitative
Methods

• Naturalistic observation is the practice of
  studying real-world situations as they unfold
  naturally
• Arrange to observe at a day care center, nursery
  school or home where there are children aged 2-4
  years
• During your observation or following your
  participation at one of the sites, record field
  notes about your observations
• emphasize your experience as a participant and as
  an observer (even if you are not in direct
  contact with the children)
• report any insights that you may have about
  personal experiences or memories that are
  elicited through your observations