Free Middle Childhood and Adolescence Essay Sample
The middle childhood has in history never been seen as a crucial stage in an individual’s development. The psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud considered this life period to be a latency stage, or a period when the aggressive and the sexual urges are not active but repressed. Sigmund Freud argued that this period has no significance in making any contribution to the development of personality. But recent theorists found d the middle childhood plays a crucial role in the development of personality, cognitive skills, inter-personal relationships and motivation. The middle childhood helps the children in learning the societal values. Therefore this period acts as a stage for it plays the crucial role of an individual primary development and can be considered as an integration of an individual development that occurs inside them and the development of the individual that occurs in their social context.
Adolescence according to the set up is defined in a number of ways: culturally, physiologically or cognitively; by defining it using any way there is a small difference in definition. Culturally, adolescence is seen as a period when an individual attain sexual maturity and the period ends the establishment of an adult identity within their social context by the individual. The crucial developmental task that is associated with adolescence is identity formation.
The period of middle childhood and that of early adolescence are for the children who are in the elementary and also in the middle school, which are the children between ages 5 to13. These children who are in this age group are disadvantaged as they will be accorded less attention than other children who are in the other stages such as adolescence, infancy or even early childhood, or adolescence. Studies have shown that the long-term individual behavior and also life adjustment are formed by children during the period of middle childhood and early adolescence.
A lot of children quickly make advancement in their ability of solving problems, task organization, how to reason and how to master knowledge, in a method that can be considered to be independent and mature. The growth of the brain happens at a fast rate between the ages of 5 to13, and this has is the reason that all these changes are seen in this children. By the adult guiding these children by them participating and collaborating with their peers in solving problems and also helps in creation of skills, this acts in influencing the children.
A lot of children will develop ability in behavior control which will assist the children in avoiding bad behaviors that may lead them to problems while they are in the elementary and middle school. Some of the important ingredients for the development of these abilities by the children are; the children leaning how to cope with challenges that affect them and how to deal with situations that are frightening, they also learn how to control anger and aggression.
The children in this period will spend less than half the time they used to spend with their parents like they used to before they were at the age of 5. These children now spend more time in the world outside their home either alone or with their peers who are also children and not with adults as they used to before. Therefore these children will interact with a lot of diverse of their age than it had happened before. A lot of children will now be in large networks of children and this networks act as a crucial source of social support and learning to these children. The children at this age will value the social resource than they had before. They will use the social resource effectively and ask for more from this resource.
Also at this age the children will be more able to recognize their personal strengths and weaknesses in those aspects of their life that affect them everyday these are: in school, by the social relationships they have established with their friends, and also in their physical skills this is by them comparing themselves and the others they interact with. The social comparisons that are done by the children does gradually become a big source of information for the children, they use this information in building of self esteem and also the formation of self-concepts.
The experiences of the children in the family play a very huge role in the development of the child’s personality. The family should play a crucial role of overriding or buffering any detrimental experiences the child has undergone away from the family, like at school, in relating with their friends, the Neighborhood among others. A stable and supportive family for children in their middle childhood and adolescence period is crucial to a child’s life success. Good family experiences of children in their middle childhood and adolescence may play a bigger role in a child’s later development than at any other time in their life. The family has to provide love, care, education and above all the protection of the children and endure that they are protected from any values, practices, behavior that are detrimental to their development. The proper virtues should be inculcated by the family at this time.
Studies have shown that dysfunctional family will lead to the children, increases in incidence of violent crime and other delinquent behaviors by the juveniles. The abuse of alcohol and drugs is increasing everyday amongst the children in the middle childhood and adolescence from families that are not working. This is due to lack of love which they desperately need and low self esteem.
Because of the little time in face-to-face interaction between the children and their parents, there is an increases challenge of monitoring the children behaviors and experiences. The monitoring of children by their parent plays a very huge role in protection of children from being negatively influenced. All the children in middle childhood and adolescence need after school programs. As a child who is in self care have a lot of time at their disposal and can lead to the exposure to bad information or content from the televisions or the internet. Many experts believe many children who have a lot of time that indoors in America are affected by the problems of obesity and become more sedentary