Chapter Introduction

238

image

CHAPTER OUTLINE

A Healthy Time

Children’s Health Habits

Health Problems in Middle Childhood

Cognition

Piaget in Middle Childhood

Vygotsky and the Social Context

Information Processing

The Maturing Brain

Teaching and Learning

Language

International Schooling

A CASE TO STUDY: Encouraging Child Learning

Schools in the United States

Choices and Complications

Developmental Psychopathology

Measuring the Mind

OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES: True Grit

Special Needs in Middle Childhood

A VIEW FROM SCIENCE: Drug Treatment for Children

Special Education

CHAPTER 7

Middle Childhood

Body and Mind

WHAT WILL YOU KNOW?

  • Whose fault is it if a child is obese?

  • Why are some math concepts difficult at age 4 but easier at age 8?

  • Are schools in the United States better than schools in other nations?

  • What causes a child to have autism?

Video: Middle Childhood Body and Mind: A Brief Overview

239

My daughter seemed lonely in first grade. Her teacher suggested she might become friends with Alison, who was also shy and bright. I spoke to Alison’s mother, a friendly, big-boned woman named Sharon. We arranged a play date. Soon Bethany and Alison became best friends, as the teacher had predicted.

Unpredicted, however, was that Sharon became my friend. She and her husband, Rick, had one other child, a pudgy boy. All three children thrived in our local public school.

When my daughter and Alison were in fifth grade, I mentioned to Rick my interest in longitudinal research. He recalled a friend, a professional photographer, who took pictures of Alison and her brother every year. The friend wanted them for his portfolio; Rick was happy to oblige. He then retrieved an old album with stunning depictions of sibling relationships and personality development from infancy on. Alison was smiling and coy, even as a baby, and her infant brother was gaunt and serious.

Rick was pleased with my interest; Sharon was not.

“I hate that album,” she said, slamming it shut. She explained that her pediatrician insisted she stick to a four-hour breast-feeding schedule and told her to never give her son formula. That’s why she hated that album; it was evidence of an inexperienced mother heeding a doctor’s advice while starving her son.

Decades later, my daughter and I are still friends with Alison and Sharon, whose adult son is obese. His baby photo haunts me now as well. Did Sharon cause his obesity by underfeeding him in infancy or by overfeeding him later? Or did his genes or culture harm him?

This chapter begins our description of middle childhood, usually a happy time when teachers help children learn, as my daughter’s teachers did. This chapter also describes some problems of this period, and the interaction of genes and environment that cause them. Consequences and solutions are complex: Sharon and Rick are not the only aging parents who still wonder what they could have done differently. I wonder, too.