Middle Childhood Research

1176 Words3 Pages

As children develop into middle childhood important changes occur, it is a time for exploring and becoming more independent and for developing their identity and moving away from family. Changes occur within parent-child relationships and child peer relationships and these interactions between one another differ in many ways. Children's actions towards adults start to lead into more arguments about decisions and important issues, ethics, and beliefs, while the actions of adults consist of more naturalness and power Influences. The types of relationships they form with peers are more balanced and teach them unique skills that impact on their development. (Ladd, 2006). Children begin to spend more time with peers than family and even though …show more content…

Middle childhood is a time when children move into wider social contexts that strongly influence their development, Erickson, (1999, cited in Eccles, 1999). Friends and culture start to have greater influences on children than family during middle childhood as children are trying to seek independence and autonomy, establish social connections and fit in within social groups, Blume, (2006, cited in Galatea-Garrett et al, 2011). It is these interactions that lead to friendships and social support which play an important role in social development. Family and peers can both be influential on children and on their development, in positive or negative ways, and these influences can affect social competence, social-cognitive processes, emotional regulation and social risk factors at home and school. This essay seeks to investigate whether children learn most from peers or parents and who has more influence on them. It will also discuss the significance of peers and family and attempt to demonstrate what influence they have on child development in middle childhood while looking further at three aspects of children's developmental areas of attachment, identity and emotion and what impact these have on …show more content…

First, I would like to discuss the ways in which a child's friend, peers, and culture can influence their development. Looking particularly at how these can impact upon a child's identity. During middle childhood, friendships and peer relations see lots of significant changes within relationships and are very important as children begin to spend more time with each other, learn what their culture deems important, form stronger lasting bonds and try to find a place to socially fit in. Barker & Wright (1955, cited in Hartup, 1984) revealed that time spent with peers rose from ten percent at the age of two, to forty percent between the ages of seven and eleven, so it can be concluded that children spend many hours together. However, they are other reasons too why peers may spend so much time together. It may have been that they spent more hours with their peers than parents, due to many children being raised by daycare providers and schools, or simply because parents have had little time for them. Therefore, in these circumstances, it is not unusual for peer pressure to outweigh parental influence. (Sharma, 1996). Peer and parents do exert some influence on children, and the influence of peers appears to override the parents' influence and become more dominant Harris

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