As explained in the previous two chapters, steady growth, brain maturation, and intellectual advances make middle childhood a time for more independence (see At About This Time). One practical result is that between ages 6 and 11, children learn to care for themselves. They not only hold their own spoon but also make their own lunch, not only zip their own pants but also pack their own suitcases, not only walk to school but also organize games with friends.

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They venture outdoors alone, if their parents let them, and some experts think that parents should do just that (Rosin, 2014). Over the same years, parent–child interactions shift from primarily physical care (bathing, dressing, and so on) to include more conversation. Parents talk to their children about values, a trend particularly apparent with boys and their fathers (Keown & Palmer, 2014). The child’s budding independence fosters growth. Parental guidance is still important even though the specifics may change.

Throughout the centuries and in every culture, school-age children are industrious. They busily master whatever skills their culture values. Physical and cognitive maturation, described in the previous chapters, makes such activity possible.

With regard to his fourth psychosocial crisis, industry versus inferiority, Erikson noted that the child “must forget past hopes and wishes, while his exuberant imagination is tamed and harnessed to the laws of impersonal things,” becoming “ready to apply himself to given skills and tasks” (Erikson, 1963, pp. 258, 259).

Think of learning to read and add, both of which are painstaking and boring. For instance, slowly sounding out “Jane has a dog” or writing “3 + 4 = 7” for the hundredth time is not exciting. Yet school-age children busily practice reading and math: They are intrinsically motivated to read a page, finish a worksheet, memorize a spelling word, color a map, and so on.

This was apparent in Chapter 12, in the comparison of mothers from Taiwan and New England. When Tim’s mother helped him figure out how to do a particular kind of math problem that had him “clumsy” in class, she wrote out a page of problems for him, and then he did “the whole thing lickety-split … [which made him] very happy” (Li et al., 2014, p. 1218). Similarly, children enjoy collecting, categorizing, and counting whatever they gather—perhaps stamps, stickers, stones, or seashells. That is industry.

Overall, children judge themselves as either industrious or inferior—deciding whether they are competent or incompetent, productive or useless, winners or losers. Self-pride depends not necessarily on actual accomplishments, but on how others, especially peers, view one’s accomplishments. Social rejection is both a cause and a consequence of feeling inferior (Rubin et al., 2013).

Sigmund Freud described this period as latency, a time when emotional drives are quiet (latent) and unconscious sexual conflicts are submerged. Some experts complain that “middle childhood has been neglected at least since Freud relegated these years to the status of an uninteresting ‘latency period’” (Huston & Ripke, 2006, p. 7).

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But in one sense, Freud was correct: Sexual impulses are absent, or at least hidden. Even when children were betrothed before age 12 (rare today but common earlier in some nations), the young husband and wife had little interaction.

Everywhere, boys and girls typically choose to be with others of their own sex. Indeed, boys who write “Girls stay out!” and girls who complain that “Boys stink!” are typical. From a developmental perspective, latency is a dynamic stage, not a gradual progression, as children shift away from sexual interests—only to reverse themselves when the hormones of puberty push them to do so (Knight, 2014).

As children mature, they develop their self-concept, which is their idea about themselves, including their intelligence, personality, abilities, gender, and ethnic background. Self-concept begins earlier. As you remember, the very notion that they are individuals is a discovery in toddlerhood, and a positive, global self-concept is typical in early childhood. Complexity appears in middle childhood.

The self-concept gradually becomes more specific and logical, as cognitive development and social awareness increase. Children realize they are not the fastest, smartest, prettiest person. At some point between ages 6 and 11 when they win a race with their mother, they realize that she could have run faster if she had tried.

Crucial during middle childhood is social comparison—comparing one’s self to others (Davis-Kean et al., 2009; Dweck, 2013). Ideally, social comparison helps school-age children value themselves and abandon the imaginary, rosy self-evaluation of preschoolers. The self-concept becomes more realistic, incorporating comparison to peers and judgments from the overall society (Davis-Kean et al., 2009).

This means that some children—especially those from minority ethnic or religious groups—become newly aware of social prejudices they need to overcome. Children also become aware of gender discrimination, with girls complaining that they are not allowed to play tougher sports and boys complaining that teachers favor the girls (Brown et al., 2011). Over the years of middle childhood, children most likely to develop healthy self-esteem are those who recognize prejudice and react by affirming pride in their backgrounds (Corenblum, 2014).

Affirming pride is an important counterbalance, because, for all children, their increasing self-understanding and social awareness come at a price. Self-criticism and self-consciousness rise from ages 6 to 11, and “by middle childhood this [earlier] overestimate of their ability or judgments decreases” (Davis-Kean et al., 2009, p. 184) while global self-esteem falls. Children’s self-concept becomes influenced by the opinions of others, even by other children whom they do not know (Thomaes et al., 2010).

In addition, because children think concretely during middle childhood, materialism increases, and attributes that adults might find superficial (hair texture, sock patterns) become important, making self-esteem fragile (Chaplin & John, 2007). Insecure 10-year-olds might desperately want the latest jackets, cell phones, and so on.

Academic and social competence are aided by realistic self-perception. Unrealistically high self-esteem reduces effortful control (deliberately modifying one’s impulses and emotions), and less effortful control leads to lower achievement and increased aggression.

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The same consequences occur if self-esteem is unrealistically low. Obviously then, the goal is to find a middle ground. This is not easy: Children may be too self-critical or not self-critical enough. Cultures differ in defining what that the middle ground is.

High self-esteem is not universally valued. Many cultures expect children to be modest, not prideful. For example, Australians say that “tall poppies are cut down,” the Chinese say “the nail that sticks up is hammered,” and the Japanese discourage social comparison aimed at making oneself feel superior. This makes self-esteem a moral issue: Should people believe that they are better than other people, as is typical in the United States? Answers vary (Robins et al., 2012; Buhrmester et al., 2011).

Often in the United States, children’s successes are praised and teachers are wary of being critical, especially in middle childhood. For example, some schools issue report cards with grades ranging from “Excellent” to “Needs improvement” instead of from A to F. An opposite trend is found in the national reforms of education, explained in Chapter 12. Because of the No Child Left Behind Act, some schools are rated as failing. Obviously culture, cohort, and age all influence attitudes about high self-esteem: The effects are debatable.

One component of self-concept has received considerable research attention (Dweck, 2013). As children become more self-aware, they benefit from praise for their process, not for their person: for how they learn, how they relate to others, and so on, not for static qualities such as intelligence and popularity. This encourages growth.

For example, children who fail a test are devastated if failure means they are not smart. However, process-oriented children consider failure a “learning opportunity,” a time to figure out how to study the next time. The self-conscious emotions (pride, shame, guilt) develop during middle childhood, and serve to guide social interaction. However, those same emotions can overcome a child’s self-concept, leading to psychopathology (Muris & Meesters, 2014).

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Thus, as with most developmental advances, the potential for psychological growth is evident in the advance a child makes in self-concept in middle childhood. However, improvement is not automatic—family, culture, and social context affect whether this advance will be a burden or a blessing.

In infancy and early childhood, children depend on their immediate families for food, learning, and life itself. Then “experiences in middle childhood can sustain, magnify, or reverse the advantages or disadvantages that children acquire in the preschool years” (Huston & Ripke, 2006, p. 2). Some children continue to benefit from supportive families, and others escape destructive family influences by finding their own niche in the larger world.

Surprisingly, some children seem unscathed by early experiences. They have been called “resilient” or even “invincible.” Current thinking about resilience (see Table 13.1), with insights from dynamic-systems theory, emphasizes that no one is impervious to past history or current context, and many suffer lifelong harm from early maltreatment, but some weather early storms and a few not only survive but come out stronger (Masten, 2014).

Differential susceptibility is apparent, not only because of genes but also because of early child rearing, preschool education, and sociocultural values. As Chapter 1 explains, some children are hardy, more like dandelions than orchids, but all are influenced by their situation (Ellis & Boyce, 2008).

Resilience has been defined as “a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity” (Luthar et al., 2000, p. 543) and “the capacity of a dynamic system to adapt successfully to disturbances that threaten system function, viability, or development” (Masten, 2014, p. 10). Note that both leading researchers emphasize three factors in their definitions:

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One important discovery is that stress accumulates over time, including stressful minor disturbances (called “daily hassles”). A long string of hassles, day after day, is more devastating than an isolated major stress. Almost every child can withstand one trauma, but repeated stresses make resilience difficult; “the likelihood of problems increased as the number of risk factors increased” (Masten, 2014, p. 14; Jaffee et al., 2007).

One international example comes from Sri Lanka, where many children in the first decade of the twenty-first century were exposed to war, a tsunami, poverty, deaths of relatives, and relocation. A study of the Sri Lankan children found that accumulated stresses, more than any single problem, increased pathology and decreased academic achievement. The authors point to “the importance of multiple contextual, past, and current factors in influencing children’s adaptation” (Catani et al., 2010, p. 1188).

The social context—especially supportive adults who do not blame the child—is crucial. A chilling example comes from the “child soldiers” in the 1991–2002 civil war in Sierra Leone (Betancourt et al., 2013). Children witnessed and often participated in murder, rape, and other traumas. When the war was over, 529 war-affected youth, then aged 10 to 17, were interviewed. Many were pathologically depressed or anxious, as one might expect.

These war-damaged children were interviewed again two and six years later. Surprisingly, many had overcome their trauma and were functioning normally. Recovery was more likely if they were in middle childhood, not adolescence, when the war occurred. If at least one caregiver survived, if their communities did not reject them, and if their daily routines were restored, the children usually regained emotional normality.

An example from the United States comes from children temporarily living in a shelter for homeless families. (Cutuli et al., 2013; Obradović, 2012). Compared to other children from the same kinds of families (typically high poverty, often single parent), they are “significantly behind their low-income, but residentially more stable peers” in every measure of development (Obradović et al., 2009, p. 513). Presumably the residential disruption, when added to their other stresses, was too much. They suffered physiologically, as measured by cortisol levels, blood pressure, and weight; they also suffered psychologically, as measured by learning in school and number of good friends.

Again, protective factors buffered the impact: Having a parent with them who was supportive and who provided affection, hope, and stable routines enabled some homeless children to be resilient.

This echoes research from England during World War II, when many children were sent to loving families in rural areas to escape the daily bombing of London. To the surprise of the researchers, those children who stayed in London, hearing bombs and frequently fleeing to air raid shelters, were more resilient than those who were physically safe but had no parent nearby (Freud & Burlingham, 1943).

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Similar results were found in a longitudinal study of children exposed to a sudden, wide-ranging, terrifying wild fire in Australia. Almost all the children suffered stress reactions at the time, but 20 years later, the crucial factor in their reactions was not how close they had been to the blaze but whether or not they were separated from their mothers (McFarlane & Van Hooff, 2009).

Obviously, these examples are extreme, but the general finding appears in other research as well. Disasters take a toll, but resilience is possible. Factors in the child (especially problem-solving ability), in the family (consistency and care), and in the community (good schools and welcoming religious institutions) all help children recover (Masten, 2014).

One pivotal factor is the child’s own interpretation of events (Lagattuta, 2014). Cortisol increases in low-income children if they interpret events connected to their family’s poverty as a personal threat and if the family lacks order and routines (thus increasing daily hassles) (E. Chen et al., 2010). When low-SES children do not take things personally and their family is not chaotic, they may be resilient.

Think of people you know: Many adults whose childhood family income was low did not consider themselves poor. They may have had to share a bed with a sibling, and they may have eaten macaroni day after day, but that did not bother them because their parents seemed strong and happy, or at least not erratic and angry. They did not realize how poor they were. Therefore, poverty did not harm them lifelong.

In general, a child’s interpretation of a family situation (poverty, divorce, and so on) determines how it affects him or her. Some children consider the family they were born into a temporary hardship; they look forward to the day when they can leave childhood behind. If they also have personal strengths, such as problem-solving abilities and intellectual openness, they may shine in adulthood—evident in the United States in thousands of success stories, from Abraham Lincoln to Oprah Winfrey.

The opposite reaction is called parentification, when children feel responsible for the entire family, acting as parents who take care of everyone, including their actual parents. Here again, the child’s interpretation is crucial.

If children feel burdened and wish they could have a carefree childhood, they are likely to suffer, but if they think they are helpful and their parents and community respect their contribution, they are likely to be resilient. This may explain a curious finding: European American children are more likely to suffer from parentification than African Americans are (Khafi et al., 2014).

In another example, children who endured hurricane Katrina were affected by their thoughts, positive and negative, more than by other expected factors, including their caregivers’ distress (Kilmer & Gil-Rivas, 2010). Especially in disasters, getting school routines started again quickly is sometimes especially helpful because children benefit from their cognitive accomplishments and the expectations for their future. Spiritual convictions and restoring religious routines (prayer, attending services) also help children cope if they provide hope and meaning (Masten, 2014).

Prayer may also foster resilience, because it changes a person’s thinking. In one study, adults were required to pray for a specific person for several weeks. Their attitude about that person changed (Lambert et al., 2010). Ethics precludes such an experiment with children, but it is known that children often pray, expecting that prayer will make them feel better, especially when they are sad or angry (Bamford & Lagattuta, 2010). As already explained, expectations and interpretations can be powerful.

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