Week 10 — Early Childhood: Social-Emotional Development

Why this matters

A preschool teacher calming a 4-year-old after a fight over a toy and a parent answering a candy request at the grocery store both read young children's feelings and replies without labelling anyone.

In plain language

This chapter is about how children from about 3 to 6 come to know themselves, handle big feelings, and get along with other people. You will meet initiative vs. guilt (Erikson's name for a young child's push to start things, and the worry about going too far). You will meet emotion regulation (managing how strong a feeling gets and how it comes out), and the difference between helping and hurting. You will also sort parents' replies by two questions: how much does the parent expect, and how warmly does the parent answer? Together they build the four parenting styles (research categories for patterns of replies, never labels for a real family), and last you will see how young children come to understand gender, taught as development.

• Already covered: Week 7's Erikson stages and Week 9's early childhood thinking.
• This week: initiative, feelings, aggression, parenting styles, AAP positions, gender.
• How they connect: the same years, seen through feelings and the adults nearby.
• Where we're going next: Week 11, middle childhood thinking.

Focus

How do children from about 3 to 6 build a self and manage feelings, and how do you read a parent's reply fairly?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] place initiative vs. guilt among Erikson's stages
• [ ] tell instrumental from hostile aggression
• [ ] rate a reply on demandingness and responsiveness
• [ ] state the AAP's 2018 and 2026 positions as its own
• [ ] order gender identity, stability, and constancy

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 10 (~40–50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes).
3. Try the practice set (15–25 minutes).
4. Do the workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment, then the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: sort a parent's reply on both dimensions and describe the reply, not the person.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor if a step snags.

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