As explained in the previous chapter, 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 after-school games with friends.

Over the same years, parent–child interactions shift from primarily physical care (bathing, dressing, and so on) to include more conversation about choices and values, a trend particularly apparent with boys and their fathers (Keown & Palmer, 2014). Children listen to adults but express their own ideas as well. Peers and teachers become more influential than they were for younger children.

282

The drive for independence from parents expands the social world. School-age children venture outdoors alone to play with friends, if their parents let them. Some experts think that parents should do just that (Rosin, 2014).

Throughout the centuries and in every culture, school-age children develop a much more realistic understanding of who they are and what they can do. They busily master whatever skills their culture values. Their physical and cognitive maturation makes such activity possible.

SOCIAL COMPARISON 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 forms lifelong. As you remember, children discover that they are individuals in toddlerhood (the rouge test), and a positive, global self-concept is typical in early childhood (egocentrism).

Now, in middle childhood, the self-concept becomes more complex and logical, as cognitive development and social awareness increase. Children realize they are not the fastest, smartest, prettiest, best. At some point between ages 6 and 11, when they win a race with their mother, it dawns on them that she could have run faster if she had tried.

Crucial during middle childhood is social comparison—comparing oneself 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 society (Davis-Kean et al., 2009).

All children become aware of gender discrimination, with girls complaining that they are not allowed to play some sports and boys complaining that teachers favor the girls (Brown et al., 2011). Some children—especially those from minority ethnic or religious groups—notice social prejudices, and the self-concept must adjust.

Over the years of middle childhood, children who recognize prejudice and react by affirming pride in their gender and background are likely to develop healthy self-esteem (Corenblum, 2014). Parents and teachers can help by noting heroes who were female, African American, Latino, Muslim, Chinese, and so on. Of course, European American boys need heroes, too.

Affirming pride is an important counterbalance, because, for all children, 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). 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 superficial attributes (hair texture, sock patterns) become important, making self-esteem fragile (Chaplin & John, 2007). Insecure 10-year-olds might desperately want the latest jackets, smartphones, and so on. They notice their inadequacies, and they need praise for their actual accomplishments—a spelling worksheet with a gold star, getting up and dressed on time, saving their allowance, hitting a softball, protecting a younger sibling, or whatever.

ERIKSON’S INSIGHTS 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, 1993, pp. 258, 259).

283

Think of learning to read and add, both painstaking and boring. (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. Adults can encourage this.

This was apparent in the case in Chapter 7, comparing 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 view those accomplishments. Social rejection is both a cause and a consequence of feeling inferior (Rubin et al., 2013).

Interestingly, the social judgments most valued come from peers of the same sex. Everywhere, children choose to be with other boys or girls. Indeed, boys who write “Girls stay out!” and girls who insist “Boys stink!” are typical. From a developmental perspective, this temporary antipathy (which Freud called latency) is a dynamic stage. Children shift away from sexual interests—only to reverse themselves when the hormones of puberty arise (Knight, 2014).

Apparent in many of the examples just mentioned, cultures and families differ in which attitudes and accomplishments they value, and children respond to that. Everywhere, however, academic and social competence benefit from the realistic self-perception that emerges in middle childhood.

284

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

The hope is that children should develop an incremental idea of intellectual and personal traits, which means that they can develop themselves bit by bit, rather than an entity concept, which means that whatever they are (smart or dumb, handsome or ugly) is who they are by nature, for life (Dweck, 2013).

For example, children who fail a test may be devastated if failure means they are not smart. However, process-oriented children consider failure a “learning opportunity,” a time to advance metacognition by planning a better way to study. This becomes increasingly important as children grow older, as the next chapter explains.

Self-conscious emotions (pride, shame, guilt) develop during middle childhood, guiding social interaction. During these years, if those same emotions are uncontrolled, they can overwhelm a healthy self-concept, leading to psychopathology (Muris & Meesters, 2014).

Thus, as with most developmental advances, the potential for psychological growth is evident. However, advance is not automatic—family, culture, and social context affect whether the more realistic, socially attuned self-concept will be a burden or a blessing.

285

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 parents; 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, with insights from dynamic-systems theory, emphasizes that no one is impervious to past history or current context (see Table 8.1). Many suffer lifelong harm from early maltreatment, but some weather early storms and a few not only survive but also come out stronger (Masten, 2014).

Differential susceptibility is apparent because of genes and also because of early child rearing, preschool education, and culture. As Chapter 1 explains, some children are hardy, more like dandelions than orchids, but all are influenced by their situation (Ellis & Boyce, 2008).

Two leading researchers have similar definitions of resilience: “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). Both definitions emphasize that:

286

CUMULATIVE STRESS One important discovery is that stress accumulates over time, with minor disturbances (called “daily hassles”) having an impact. A long string of hassles, day after day, is more devastating than an isolated major stress.

Almost every child can withstand one trauma, especially if parents do not add to the fear. Repeated stresses, heightened reactions, daily hassles, and multiple traumatic experiences make resilience difficult (Masten, 2014; Catani et al., 2010).

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 and rape. When the war was over, 529 war-affected youth, then aged 10 to 17, were interviewed. Many were pathologically depressed or anxious.

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 had been in middle childhood, not adolescence, when the war occurred. Furthermore, 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 stability.

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), on every measure of development they were “significantly behind their low-income, but residentially more stable peers” (Obradović et al., 2009, p. 513).

The probable reasons: Residential disruption, when added to other stresses, is too much. They suffered physiologically, as measured by cortisol levels, blood pressure, and weight, and psychologically, as measured by learning in school and the number of good friends. Again, protective factors buffered the impact: Having a parent with them who provided affection, hope, and stable routines enabled some children living in shelters to be resilient.

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

287

COGNITIVE COPING Obviously, these examples are extreme, but the general finding appears in other research as well. Disasters take a toll, but 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 increase resilience (Masten, 2014).

A pivotal factor is the child’s interpretation of events (Lagattuta, 2014). Cortisol increases in low-income children if they interpret circumstances 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, resilience is more likely.

Do you know adults who grew up in low-SES families yet who seem strengthened, not destroyed, by that experience? If so, they probably did not consider themselves poor, perhaps because all their friends had similar circumstances. They may have shared a bed with a sibling, eaten macaroni day after day, dressed in hand-me-downs, and walked to school. However, if their family was not erratic or hostile, and if they did not realize how poor they were, their poverty did not harm them lifelong.

In general, children’s interpretation of family circumstances (poverty, divorce, and so on) is crucial. Some consider their situation a temporary hardship; they look forward to leaving childhood behind. If they also have personal strengths, such as creativity and intelligence, they may shine in adulthood—evident 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. They become caretakers, including of their actual parents. Here again, interpretation is crucial. If children feel burdened and unable to escape, they are likely to suffer, but if they think they are helpful and their parents and community respect their contribution, they may be resilient. This might explain a curious finding: European American children are more likely to suffer from parentification than African American children are (Khafi et al., 2014).

In one more example, children who endured Hurricane Katrina in 2005 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 especially helpful because children benefit from routines and preparation for their future. Spiritual faith and religious rituals (prayer, candles, services) also help children cope if they provide hope and meaning (Masten, 2014).

288