Child Psychology
The author of this brief report has been asked to answer a number of questions relating to child psychology and the development thereof as a child ages and grows. The primary source of answers that shall be used for the answers shall be the tenth chapter of the Berger book. However, the text itself offers other sources and there is a wealth of information on the topics to be discussed in the scholarly sphere. While every child is different and thus develops in their own way, there are tried and true patterns and standards that most children are held to based on the development and progress of millions of prior children.
Emotional development is indeed something that is very strong and in motion when it comes to the early childhood time. As a young child grows, this is when their emotional regulation comes into focus and this in turn brings on a child's self-concept and self-esteem. Lack of this process in motion is commonly and widely accepted to be a sign of psychopathology in a young child. Examples of good or normal development in motion are a child that has an imaginary friend. However, these imaginary friends should be limited to ages three through seven years old. There needs to be monitoring of these imaginary friends as they are sometimes emblematic of a child that is lonely, thus the need to create friends. Further, if a child is having problems with their development of emotional regulation, they will have issues with externalizing and internalizing of emotions and so forth. Self-esteem is something that should start to emerge in young childhood. For example, a child being very proud of artwork that they created would be an example of this. Self-concept emerges around the same time as Erik's concept of guilt (Berger, 2012).
Question Two
Something else that clearly emerges during childhood is aggression. What...
The four types of aggression that tend to emerge are instrumental aggression, reactive aggression, relational aggression and
bullying aggression. Instrumental aggression is very common with children and is typified by a child not having something that they want, they see that thing they want with another child and they thus try to take that item from that other child, or at least think about doing the same. Reactive aggression is also extremely common and is typified by a child retaliating for an action, intentional or accidental, from another child. For example, if a child is flailing their arms around and accidentally strikes a child, the latter child will tend to react and strike back, or at least try to. The other two types of aggression can come up but they are much more "destructive" and otherwise problematic. Relational aggression is typified by things such as gossip or social exclusion while bullying is exactly what it sounds like. These are described on pages 294 and 295 of the Berger text. As far as what violent programs tend to do, children are drawn to them because of the colors and images and
violence in particular is shown as leading to aggression. This is not to say that children can never be exposed to violence and such. Rather, it is just something that should be strongly avoided during the childhood development process as they are not able to synthesize and learn about such things like an older child or adult can do (Berger, 2012).
Question Three
Another question to be asked is how rough-and-tumble play is a type of play and how it is in actuality a pro-social activity. Berger speaks to this in her text when she says that there is the concern that the play if physical. At the same time, the actions are "just pretend" and are not typified by aggressive feelings. The key is to look for both provocation and self-control that is pre-planned and restrained. However, there are limitations. If…
