What is Social Development ( Types, Definition, Examples)

social Development of Child

The social development of a child begins with his relationship with his parents

One of the first manifestations of a child's recognition of others is a smile. Opinions about what makes a baby smile are contradictory, but it is well known that by the age of two months it can appear when a human face is seen.

At this age, the baby does not distinguish the mother’s face from others, but by the age of 6-7 months, the baby’s smile becomes selective. Now he smiles at his mother and those whom he knows well, and he met strangers with restraint. For children of this age, fear and embarrassment are typical when strangers appear. This indicates the development of a socially important ability to distinguish “friends” from “strangers”. Already for kids, father and mother perform different functions. According to the study, babies perceive dad primarily as a toy. For both the boy and the girl, dad is the best toy: an interactive toy from which you can learn everything. Kids perceive their mother differently: as a subject from whom they can get food, warmth and protection.

No matter how different the children are, all young children from 9 months to 9 years old have common, at least similar features and characteristics. What kind? A small child is natural energy and quick wit. Talk about the fragility of a child’s soul is a myth; a child has a stronger mentality than adults. The child is small, but helpless - no. This is a lively man, this is a trained combat unit, a small energetic predator and manipulator using any mistakes of adults, easily jumping to the neck of parents and seizing power over them. The child’s arsenal of influence is significantly poorer than that of an adult, but the child has more energy, imagination and perseverance.

A small child is a leading activity in taking care of their interests. The child has his own tasks regarding life and regarding you. While. when an adult approaches a small child with his tasks, the child does to the adult what is included in his plans and interests. Children know what they want and get it.

Situation. I'm at the airport, I'm flying on a business trip. I see a family, four adults: mom, dad, grandmother and grandfather. In the arms of the pope is a small child. The child, with live eyes shooting towards the grandmother, reaches for grandfather. Shows grandmother that with grandfather he is more interesting. Grandfather is happy, pulls his hands to the child, the child falls to him, grandmother is upset. But here is the baby turns to face the naive grandfather and cries in his face. Grandfather is washed ... Mom takes the child from grandfather, he snuggles up to her, but looks at his dad ... The child plays with these adults, pushes them together, has fun in full. At the same time, it seems that the adults themselves, included in this situation, did not really understand who actually controlled them in this situation.

Each child initially has his own world. A child was born - and created his own world. He now lives in his world, with his characters and his stories. Will he let you go there - ask him. You will not get there by force, but if the child wants to, he will open the door and you can look in there:

Interaction between children

Having become a little older, they already begin to interact, often because both simultaneously want to take the same subject and are simply forced to pay attention to each other. The game of two-year-old children is not essentially a joint activity - everyone plays on their own. In the preschool period, the game gradually becomes more socially oriented. By the age of five, babies being in kindergarten, they play alone for less than half the time, they already have joint games in which four to five people participate. In subsequent years, the social structure of games becomes more complex; partially established social roles are being developed and supported.

With age, specific types of social behavior also change with age. For example, in the preschool period, when children begin to compare themselves with others, competition between them intensifies. The number of fights and quarrels is almost independent of the age of the child. but their nature is changing. Instead of short-term purely physical conflicts, older children engage in more sophisticated, verbal quarrels, in which the offense lasts much longer.

In a similar way, the stability of friendships changes. The friendships of young children are fleeting. According to one study, even at the age of 11, only 50% of children had the same best friend as they did two weeks ago. In a similar survey of 18-year-old schoolchildren (in the same study), 80% of them named the same person both times.

Children from families and social groups with pronounced prejudices begin to assimilate the same negative attitudes in early school age; in the youthful period, these views are fixed.

The development of sensations and perceptions

It is proved that a newborn distinguishes speech sounds (phonemes), i.e. he already shows an ability that will allow him to further understand speech. The newborn seems to perceive the constancy of form. When the baby is shown the same object over and over again, it gets used to its shape, and the time of visual fixation on it becomes shorter. Despite these first achievements, the baby is still relatively undeveloped. But gradually his senses become more clear. Some early manifesting abilities then disappear and reappear after a few months in a more complex form. No matter what abilities the child shows, they improve with age, becoming more differentiated.

The development of emotions and feelings in childhood

According to one of the most interesting hypotheses, there is a limited number of so-called Anger, for example, is caused by interference with a child’s actions; facial expressions and behaviors expressing anger can be recognized at a very young age. The emotions and feelings of children are the product of social learning, and this social learning goes in two directions: while children learn the conditions that most effectively protect them from their parents or allow their parents to control, adults teach children those conditions that are convenient and interesting to adults. The child, with the help of adults around him and the influence of culture as a whole, masters the feelings accepted in this society. It is thanks to socialization that children develop their composure and will, boys master the role of men and lay the foundations for the future role of father, girls master female roles, internalize the values ​​of being a wife and mother, and master the necessary skills.

Value-semantic sphere of the child and the formation of life values

How do life values ​​appear in a child’s life? Differently. Once this is a gradual maturation, crystallization of something initially amorphous into something definite, once it happens abruptly, suddenly, like an insight. Sometimes it comes from the inside, sometimes it is set outside, by the traditions and rituals of society. The birth of life values ​​usually occurs as a result of the addition of several factors: 1) existing or ready to take shape behavior, 2) an internally or externally motivating situation, and 3 semantic formulas, prompting a person the name and status of his new life value. If the child began to behave "boy", if his "boyish behavior" is supported by others; if everyone calls him his "boy" and especially those whom he would like to be like, soon the child will have masculine values.

However, the same question can be posed in a more meaningful way: thanks to what are the future life meanings and values ​​of the child formed (or not formed)? The main sources here, it seems, are the children's subculture, (still) the family and the virtual reality of the media and computer games, which already has a serious influence.

Exploratory behavior

Healthy children are usually curious, although there is no evidence to suggest that children have a natural tendency toward self-development. Rather, the evidence suggests that children develop only when parents develop them.

From the moment of birth, the child actively explores, and in the first place, those objects that move or somehow change. The baby studies his surroundings, although at first it is not too skillful; He begins to follow the eyes of large moving objects very early. At the same time, auditory and visual perception is already coordinated to some extent. The visual field does not remain a vague spot for long - the infant is trying to make it clear. If the experiment is organized in such a way that the fast sucking of the nipples causes the subject to move into focus the infant’s body, it will suck very quickly; in the opposite situation, that is, when the subject goes out of focus with fast sucking, the baby begins to suck slowly.

In early infancy, research behavior is unsystematic and not too well controlled, but by the age of five months the baby is already able to get items and take them in their mouths. A few months later he begins to search for objects himself and by the end of the first year he is actively exploring everything that surrounds him. When a child begins to walk, his research activities expand significantly.

Speech development

From the moment of birth, the child begins to make sounds, but in reality he begins to use speech only when he reaches about two years of age.

A gradual change in baby talk occurs under the influence of both congenital and environmental factors. Many sounds of modern languages ​​are difficult to pronounce, and at first only simple articulatory movements, such as closing and opening lips, are available to the child. Therefore, the syllables “pa” and “ma” or, when repeated, “dad” and “mom” appear early. During the first year of life, the articulation of a child becomes more complicated, and the number of sounds that he can make increases many times over. In the second year of life, the sounds made by the child already correspond to the language that he hears around him.

Intelligence development

Piaget identified four stages in this development. Sensorimotor stage covers the period of infancy. In the first months of life, the child behaves as if objects that he cannot currently observe simply do not exist, and only gradually begins to search for objects that have gone out of sight, starting to guess where they are. He is also able to coordinate information, coming from different senses, so that the tactile, visual and auditory perception of an object is not three independent elements of its experience, but three aspects of the same object. Initially, they are based only on previously mastered arbitrary movements; at Further, the child begins to independently and intentionally vary his behavior.

Stage of preoperative thinking. For example, he will find out an object, if it sees it from a different angle, but is not able to predict how it will look in a new position. However, his thinking is not yet systematic.