8.2: Emotional Development and Socioemotional Learning in Middle Childhood
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Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Discuss the developing social skills of children in middle childhood
- Describe developmental achievements in emotional regulation
- Describe developmental achievements in social cognition and moral reasoning
Chandra’s parents need to meet with her teacher again. This time, it’s about an emotional outburst that happened during class. When she was supposed to be writing the names of state capitals on a test, she became frustrated. Her teacher watched as she crumpled her test, mumbled something about a waste of time, and then with tears in her eyes pushed everything off her desk. When her pencils and water bottle hit the floor, she let out a scream and stormed off to the corner of the room to calm down.
Chandra knows what she did was inappropriate. But lately she’s been having strong feelings, sometimes so strong that she becomes easily frustrated and overwhelmed. And even though her stepmom says it was Chandra’s responsibility to prepare for the test, she doesn’t feel the same way. Inside, Chandra feels frustrated that her teacher, her school, and the world seem to be making unrealistic demands.
Developing Socially in Middle Childhood
Middle childhood is often called the school-aged years because children in the United States commonly attend elementary grades one through six between the ages of six and twelve years. A typical week of school is about thirty-three hours, and on average, children attend 180 days per year (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2017). Elementary school affords many new social opportunities but also makes emotional demands. School-aged children have to complete tasks like solving math problems on the whiteboard, giving short presentations, and reading out loud in front of peers. There’s not much chance to take a break or stay away from others. These new social experiences affect the way they manage their emotions and develop social skills. In this section, you’ll learn about emotional development in middle childhood, along with coping strategies of self-regulation and the social cognition skills that grow during this age.
Emotional Intelligence and Regulation
As you’ve learned 6.1 Social and Emotional Development in Early Childhood, emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor and manage your own emotions and respond to the emotions of others (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Children with higher emotional intelligence have better attention skills, school engagement, and social relationships (Pauletto et al., 2021).
Emotional regulation, or self-regulation , describes the way we respond to events happening in our environment and manage our reactions. For example, Rafi is getting ready to give a short presentation in school. He recognizes that the funny feeling in his stomach mean he is nervous, and he thinks to himself, “I know I can do this!” and “I’m sure that other kids are feeling nervous too!” To distract himself from his nerves, he also takes a few deep breaths to calm himself and thinks about what he will do after school with friends. Rafi is showing that he recognizes his emotions (emotional intelligence) and has skills for managing his response (emotional regulation) to a meaningful challenge in his life.
Useful skills that allow children to have increased emotional intelligence and regulation continue to develop during middle childhood. For example, metacognitive skill, the awareness of their individual thought processes, allows them to understand their emotions and develop strategies to help them control their reactions. These skills continue to grow in early and middle childhood (Gascoine et al., 2017). However, regulating emotions is complex and requires a lot of skill and practice (Pennequin et al., 2020). So, during middle childhood, children may still struggle to handle their emotions, particularly when they are stressed or feeling overwhelmed by expectations (Moltrecht et al., 2021). For example, although a nine- or ten-year-old may still whine, sulk, or seek their family’s help when they are tired and stressed, more often they are practicing how to calm down and breathe deeply (Figure 8.4).
Researcher Michael Lewis (2022) discussed the development of secondary emotions that first appear during early childhood. These include other-evaluative emotion s like jealousy and compassion, which depend on the development of self-awareness, and self-conscious emotions like pride, guilt, and embarrassment, which are based on our understanding of social rules and conventions (Camras, 2022). In the elementary years, children may begin to feel these emotions more deeply as their cognitive capacity to understand and comprehend social situations increases. For instance, parents can often remedy a five-year-old’s jealousy of a younger sibling by giving attention, cuddles, or a distraction. By age nine years, a child who feels jealousy because their best friend is playing with another may experience a persistent, intense emotion sustained over hours, days, or weeks. They may reflect on this jealousy even when they are in other environments, so distraction does not help. Parents continue to play an important role in helping children process and regulate their emotions in middle childhood (De Raeymaecker & Dhar, 2022).
Increasingly, children begin to consider how they express their emotions. As they reflect, ruminate, and communicate their emotions in a more mature way, they also begin to self-regulate more independently (Lane & Smith, 2021).
Emotional Awareness
A valuable element of self-regulation is emotional awareness , being able to name and identify emotions (Lane & Smith, 2021). Emotional awareness depends on our ability to understand internal sensations and connect them to an emotion based on the current situation as well as past experiences (Satpute & Lindquist, 2019). Being upset, irritable, or grumpy without knowing why you feel that way can be a bewildering and overwhelming experience, but naming and identifying emotions allows children to better understand their internal state and decide how best to manage their emotional responses. Emotional awareness and coping techniques develop substantially in childhood, but our ability to understand our emotions and cope with our emotions continues to develop and influences our well-being across the lifespan (De France & Hollenstein, 2019).
Coping Techniques
Children develop several coping strategies as a set of techniques for overcoming stress, a major step in achieving self-regulation. Stressors that affect any social group regardless of culture or gender are transcultural stressors (Kim et al., 2018), such as family economic stress and lack of family cohesion. People of color or the children of immigrants may experience culture-specific stressors, such as learning a new language or facing discrimination. These may require unique coping strategies such as developing a new cultural identity that combines elements of multiple cultural groups (Nguyen & Benet–Martínez, 2013). In middle childhood, children’s coping techniques are shaped by their caregivers and culture.
Coping strategies vary in effectiveness, and some are healthier than others (Table 8.1). The most commonly used coping strategies in middle childhood are problem-solving , distraction , and support seeking (Skinner & Zimmer–Gembeck, 2016). Often, optimal coping strategies differ based on the situation. As children develop improved emotional regulation and coping strategies, they learn to use a varied approach and may improve in their ability to problem solve and take action to cope effectively (Eschenbeck et al., 2018). For example, if a child had a recent conflict with a close friend when they couldn’t agree on what to play at recess, they may benefit from a combination of strategies. They might start by telling their teacher they are upset (support seeking), then ask for advice on what to do (information seeking), and then return to their friend with a proposed compromise (problem-solving).
| Coping Strategy | Description |
|---|---|
| Problem-solving | Identifying and using a solution to a problem to resolve the issue |
| Behavioral and cognitive distraction | Shifting attention away from stress-causing situation |
| Support seeking | Relying on adults or peers for help with coping |
| Escape/avoidance | Leaving the stressful environment or avoiding the problem |
| Cognitive reframing | Trying to think of the problem differently such as focusing on the positive |
| Self-reliance | Accepting responsibility or otherwise regulating emotions alone |
| Opposition | Blaming others for problems |
| Rumination | Thinking about the problem over and over |
Negative coping techniques escalate a situation and make it worse, or they are maladaptive and become harmful in the long term. Positive coping techniques are adaptive, helpful, and healthful strategies that will de-escalate a situation. For example, when a sibling takes something without asking, a positive coping technique may be to breathe deeply to calm down, then calmly ask them to give it back or ask a parent for assistance. A child struggling to complete a task in school may try again, try another strategy, ask for help, or take a temporary break. Using positive coping techniques is a lifelong skill and one that helps us develop other positive skills such as communication, conflict resolution, and problem-solving. In middle childhood, children are likely to shift from heavily using their caregivers for coping (support seeking) to using their own improved emotional regulation skills (e.g., self-reliance) and other internal coping techniques (Perry et al., 2020; Skinner & Zimmer–Gembeck, 2007).
Emotional Display Rules
A culture- and context-specific social rule for outwardly showing emotion is known as an emotional display rule . The understanding of display rules emerges during middle childhood as children begin to understand that the emotion a person is experiencing is not necessarily the one they are expressing. By the age of seven years, children can use the emotional expressions of others to determine what these others want and/or believe (Wu & Schulz, 2019). They are also learning to control their own emotional expressions in certain situations. For instance, when children are playing with friends outside, the rules may allow them to squeal, giggle, and exhibit high-energy excitement. At school, however, the rules may require them to be calm, quiet, and attentive. Suppressing strong emotions such as sadness, embarrassment, and fear takes intense focus and self-regulation (Savina, 2021). Children in middle childhood often need to practice these skills to adhere to social display rules in a given setting.
Display rules vary by gender and culture. For example, in some cultures, there are different expectations for the emotions expressed by boys and girls (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013). This can lead to gender differences in emotional expression as children enter middle childhood, such as girls expressing more sadness and boys expressing more anger. In other words, these differences are not seen in infancy, meaning they are likely learned from the cultural environment (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013). Gender differences in emotional expressions are also much more present when children are with peers than when they are with their caregivers (Chaplin & Aldao, 2013). It also shows us that children are still seeking support from their caregivers and may feel more comfortable showing a wider range of emotions when they are in their home environment with parents who provide emotion coaching. For example, a child who has secure attachment with caregivers that use emotion coaching may contain their sadness over a bad test grade until they get home from school.
Social Cognition
Children often base their coping strategies on their level of social cognition , the ability to understand and think about what others are thinking and to engage in prosocial behaviors. Social cognition emerges during childhood and continues to develop in adolescence. Infants and younger children begin to understand that others have intentions, wants, and beliefs that may vary from their own. Skills necessary for social cognition include the ability to do the following:
- identify the emotions of others through facial expressions and body posture
- understand the mental states and perspectives of others, composed of theory of mind and perspective-taking skills
- show empathy, the ability to relate to the feelings of others (Arango–Tobón et al., 2023)
Theoretical Perspectives on Social Cognition
Many theories have considered the way social cognition develops during childhood. One of the most popular is the stage theory of cognitive development , which states that during infancy and early childhood, children are very egocentric and unable to see the world from someone else’s perspective (Piaget, 1954). As they move into middle childhood, Piaget believed, children get better at thinking about how others think and why they behave as they do. In other words, children become less egocentric and more capable of considering the perspective of others.
Another element of social cognition is theory of mind . Recall that when children acquire theory of mind, they can consider how the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of others influence their behaviors and differ from their own individual perspective. In other words, having theory of mind allows a child to explain why people do the things that they do. In particular, the development of empathy and of imitation , observing and repeating the behavior of others, supports theory of mind. Theory of mind and perspective-taking skills support better peer relationships and improve children’s ability to use reasoning to understand others (Lecce & Devine, 2022). As children develop improved social cognitive skills, such as perspective taking, and improve their use of emotional regulation and positive coping techniques, they are better able to have healthy relationships with friends and family (Figure 8.5). Theory of mind continues to develop into middle childhood and is shaped by our social experiences just as it shapes our social interactions and understanding (Devine & Lecce, 2021).
Interpreting and Responding to Social Situations
Imagine you are in second grade and on the playground during recess. You see your best friend walking toward you. You wave and say hello, but they walk right past without making eye contact or acknowledging you. Researchers have used scenarios such as this to understand social cognition in children (Dodge et al., 2015). Specifically, scenarios like this help us understand more about how children interpret social situations and the behaviors of others. Children with a negative bias, or hostile attributional error, are more likely to interpret the friend’s behavior as an aggressive or purposefully unkind act (Dodge et al., 2015; Gardner et al., 2017). They may judge their best friend as committing an offense and in response would aggressively confront them, blame them, raise their voice, push, or say mean things. This hostile reaction increases a child’s risk of unhealthy relationships and conflicts with peers. However, teaching children to have kinder attributions or use perspective taking may help them respond better in similar situations (Bengtsson & Arvidsson, 2011).
Finally, children who have developed positive coping strategies and emotional regulation skills tend to react with better emotional competence and have healthier relationships (Raine et al., 2023). For example, they are more likely to use cognitive reappraisal to cope and consider other factors, such as whether their friend wasn’t feeling well, was busy or late, or had just received bad news. When asked for their response, these children are more likely to reach out to their friend in a calm, friendly way to make sure everything is all right. Of course, a child’s personality and temperament will also play a role in how children respond to social situations. For example, a quieter, shyer child may be less likely to reach out, whereas an exuberant, outgoing child may be more likely to feel comfortable taking the first step.
It Depends: Should Adults Intervene with Shy Children?
When caregivers notice that their child is shy, they may worry that it will make it difficult for their child to interact with other children and adults. So, should adults intervene? Do children who are shy need help to develop social skills with peers?
Western parents tend to react to their children’s shyness with disappointment and worry, which is not generally the case among Chinese or other Asian parents. Xu and Krieg (2014) 2 point out distinct differences between being anxious and shy, which may be part of their temperament, and learning to display shyness based on the cultural values or context, which may be an adaptive strategy. In their empirical study with fourth and fifth graders, some children of Asian immigrants were adaptively shy and others anxious shy. The outcomes for these children were different in terms of their reported feelings of loneliness, even though their solitary behavior was not that different. Anxious-shy children were also more often socially excluded and experienced more anxious behavior. The less acculturated into U.S. values Asian American parents were, the more they accepted and encouraged regulated shyness in their children.
As this study and many others indicate, shyness might be considered a temperamental condition in the United States, and one that is not valued or encouraged. Even if a child has a shy temperament, it is not necessarily a concern. Many children are shy with adults, but it is less common for children to be shy around children their own age. However, if a child is so shy that they don’t interact with their peers, it may be helpful to intervene. Caregivers can schedule play dates and encourage their child to take part in extracurricular activities. They can also give their child helpful hints for ways to interact with other children and then offer positive feedback when they see their child do so. In addition, many schools offer social skills support groups for children. If the shyness persists and seems to be causing the child a great deal of social anxiety, a therapist can help.
Resilience and Positive Coping
Positive coping strategies support resilience, which further aids children in coping with stress and trauma (Twum–Antwi et al., 2020). The ability to successfully adapt and respond to stressful events is resilience (Masten, 2019). So, how do we help develop resilience in children?
Positive attachment relationships between a child and at least one caregiver is one critical factor supporting this goal (Thompson et al., 2021). As discussed in 4.4 Social Development in Infants and Toddlers, when attachment security is present, caregivers are responsive and nurturing and focus on the child’s protection, emotional regulation, and cognitive stimulation (Berástegui & Pitillas, 2023). Children with a history of a positive child-caregiver relationship are able to express their emotions and have strong emotional regulation (Kural & Kovacs, 2021), both key aspects of positive coping and resilience.
Healthy social relationships and adaptive responses to social interactions are also predictors of resilience. Strong social cognitive skills are essential for developing healthy relationships with others, which in turn matters for making friends, bonding with teachers at school, and spending enjoyable time with family. In middle childhood, children also show improved use of empathy and altruism to facilitate prosocial behaviors (Glen et al., 2020). Cognitively, empathy requires understanding the perspective and emotional states of others. Affectively, we need to vicariously feel what others are feeling and mirror their emotion. The awareness of what another might be feeling and the motivation to do something for them is sympathy . For instance, saying you are sorry to a friend who lost their toy requires sympathy. But feeling sad along with the friend requires empathy. Empathy and sympathy help to facilitate relationships because they let us take others’ perspectives and treat them as we would like to be treated, respond to their emotional needs, and strive to play fair.
A type of prosocial behavior called altruism involves acts of kindness even when at a cost. Altruism requires empathy and is associated with theory of mind (Rose et al., 2024), but it takes those cognitive and emotional components and translates them into action. Children in middle childhood display altruism when they help others in a way that is a cost to themselves. Examples include stopping to help someone, inviting a lonely child to play, sharing, taking turns, and teaching others. Children benefit from acting altruistically because it can strengthen friendships and family relationships, make them feel like they belong and are included, and help them to develop new skills and abilities (Butovskaya et al., 2020). It is not selfish if despite these benefits it still comes at a cost, such as stopping a game, giving up a toy, or choosing to wait for others.
Children who develop strong prosocial skills are more likely to trust others, to feel confident in themselves, and to feel comfortable working with others. Caregivers can take several steps to promote the development of prosocial skills throughout childhood. In addition to forming the high-quality caregiver-child relationship, they can apply a technique called emotion coaching (Gus et al., 2015). This consists of recognizing a child’s emotion, responding to the child with empathy, validating their feelings, and helping them label their emotions (Lisitsa, 2013). Positive coping behaviors, social cognition, and healthy relationships are all adaptive strategies that can promote resilience in middle childhood and across the lifespan.
Moral Reasoning
Moral development is the process by which children learn about the difference between what is right and wrong. Jean Piaget was interested in what children believe about moral issues (Carpendale, 2000), in other words, their moral reasoning rather than moral behaviors. He felt that a child’s moral reasoning was very closely tied to their cognitive development, and that this reasoning could not become more sophisticated until children were cognitively mature enough to consider the perspectives of others.
Piaget used short stories, or vignettes, to learn more about how children think about what is right or wrong. For example, the stories might entail one child breaking a cup while sneaking a cookie while another child breaks multiple cups by accident. After telling the story, Piaget asked children whether they thought the child was right or wrong and why. Based on his research, Piaget (1932) described stages of moral reasoning. In the first stage, in children under age five years, they have not yet learned morals. In the second stage, demonstrated by children between the ages of five and ten years, their morality is forming, and children follow rules and authority without any flexibility (Helwig & Turiel, 2002). Thus, they might believe the child who broke the cup was wrong regardless of if it was an accident or not. In Piaget’s third stage of moral development, starting around age eleven years, children become more adult in their moral perspective. They are more likely to be flexible in their thinking, considering the moral situation and the perspectives of others. They are now capable of understanding why rules might be beneficial to everyone and begin to value cooperation and mutual respect (Helwig & Turiel, 2002). They also understand that rules are flexible and are quick to tell you if they think a rule is unfair. For example, they may say a child who broke multiple cups should not be punished if it was an accident.
Lawrence Kohlberg developed Piaget’s theory of moral reasoning into a more comprehensive theory (Carpendale, 2000). He also presented vignettes to children of different ages to see how they reasoned whether someone’s actions were right or wrong. Consider the following, one of the most famous scenarios Kohlberg used in his research:
In Europe, a woman was near death from a very bad disease, a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together $1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, “No, I discovered the drug, and I’m going to make money from it.” So, Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife. (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969)
When Kohlberg asked children to tell him whether they believed Heinz was right or wrong, he was primarily interested in why the children gave the answer they gave. Based on his interviews with children, Kohlberg identified three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.
In the preconventional level of moral development, typical of children under ten years of age, we make decisions based on what will happen to the individual as a result of their actions. For example, children might say Heinz was wrong to steal the drug because he will be punished or that he was right because his spouse will be so grateful and will reward him. Ultimately, moral decisions are made to avoid punishment, to be obedient, or to get some type of reward.
A child at the conventional level of moral development will judge an action based on what others might think of the individual taking it. They might therefore say that Heinz should not steal the drug because it is illegal, and others would think he was a criminal. Conversely, a child might say he should steal the drug because other people will think he is a good spouse. In both cases, the judgment is based on what others will think of Heinz.
The third and final level of moral development is the postconventional level . At this level, children internalize a moral code and principles based on abstract ideas like justice and compassion and ideas about what is best for humanity. For example, Heinz should steal the drug even though it is against the law, because his wife’s life is more important than the law or the potential consequences he might face because he broke it. However, a child could also focus on their interpretation of the value of justice and decide that Heinz is wrong to steal the drug because stealing is morally wrong and may harm others in society. This level is called postconventional because it goes beyond what other individuals may think is right or wrong (conventional) and is based on more universal ethical principles. However, critics of Kohlberg have pointed out that his theory is not universal and may not apply well when researching the moral development across multiple religions and cultures (Moheghi et al., 2020).
Kohlberg’s research was also done almost entirely with males. Researcher Carol Gilligan , who initially was a research assistant of Kohlberg’s, argued that his theory was biased against women by failing to consider various moral perspectives (Gilligan, 1982). To better assess moral reasoning in ways that were more gender inclusive, Gilligan developed a theory of moral development based on ideas about caring and interpersonal relationships. Ultimately, she argued that individuals have different moral perspectives, focusing either on their own personal needs, the needs of others, or both their needs and the needs of others, but that none of these moral reasons were better or worse.
More recent research on moral development and prosocial behaviors shows that there are many individual and contextual factors that can shape moral development and beliefs. For example, in one study, children in China were found to lie more than children in Canada about prosocial acts (Fu et al., 2016). This was based in part on the cultural values that were most important. Chinese children were more like to believe lying was acceptable if it helps promote group harmony, whereas Canadian children were more likely to focus on whether the lie helped or harmed the individual (Fu et al., 2007, 2016). Findings like these show the way children’s moral beliefs and choices are in part based on their understanding of cultural values.
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