Middle

Childhood

Members:
Rosilyn P. Valenzona
Marianne M. Mendoza
Evelyn R. Miraples
Cherry Mae R. Santos
Vanessa Marie R. Toling
Jersey Lyn R. Vivas
Karishma N. Narang
Lorena Boneo

MIDDLE CHILDHOOD (6-11 YEARS

OLD)
- begins at around age six to eleven,
approximating primary school age and ends
around puberty, which typically marks the
beginning of adolescence. In this period, children
are attending school, thus developing socially
and mentally. They are at a stage where they
make new friends and gain new skills, which
will enable them to become more independent
and enhance their individuality.

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT

ASPECTS OF PHYSICAL
DEVELOPMENT

Growth
-

growth during middle childhood slows considerably,

children grow about 2 to 3 inches each year between
ages 6 to 11 ,and approximately double their weight
during this period.
- girls retain somewhat more fatty tissues than boys,
a characteristic that will persist through adulthood.

Nutrition and Sleep

-

to support their steady growth and constant

exertion, school children need an average of 2,400
calories everyday (more for older children and less for
younger ones).
- to avoid overweight and prevent cardiac problems,
children (like adults) should get only about 30 percent
of their total calories from fat and less than 10
percent of the total from saturated fat.
- healthy school age children should be highly alerted
in the daytime, sleep needs to decline from about 11
hours a day at age 5 to a little more than 10 hours at
age 9 and about 9hours at age 13.

Motor Development
-

motor skills continue to develop about ages 6 to

11 .By this age, however, children in most nonliterate
and transitional societies go to work and plus more
household labor, especially for girls, leaves them little
time and freedom for physical play.
- school age children spend less time on sports and
other outdoor activities.

A DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVE ON
CHILDRENS HEALTH
There

has been great national interest in

psychological aspect of adult health, only recently has
a developmental perspective on the psychological
aspects of childrens health been proposed.

The

uniqueness of young childrens health care needs

is evident when we consider their motor, cognitive,
and social development.

Health

education programs for preschool children

need to be cognitively. There are three simple but
important goals for health educations programs for
preschool children.

1. to help children identify feelings of wellness

and illness and be able to express them to adults.
2. to help children identify appropriate
sources of assistance for health-related
problems, and
3. to help children independently initiate the
use of sources of assistance for health problems.

Illness, especially those that are not life

threatening, provide an excellent opportunity for
young children to expand their development.
The illness usually are of short duration and are
often handled outside the medical community,
through the family, day care, school
Young children may confused such terms as feel
bad with bad behavior and feel good with good
behavior.

EXERCISE

some experts suggest that television is at least

partially to blame for the poor physical condition
of our nations children.
A wise strategy is for the family to take up
activities involving vigorous physical exercise
that parents and children enjoy together.

SPORTS

most sports psychologist believe it is important

for parents to show an interact in their children
sports participation.
Children participation in sports can provide
exercise, opportunities to learn how to compete ,
increased self-esteem, and a setting for
developing peer relations and friendship.
Participation in sports can have both positive and
negative consequences for children.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

PIAGETS THEORY:
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL
THOUGHT
The

11

concrete operational stage spans the years form 7 to

during this period thought is more logical, flexible, and

organized than it was during early childhood.

ACHIEVEMENT OF THE
CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE
Conservation
Decentration
Reversibility

Classification
Groups

objects together on the basis of common features

Collections become common in middle childhood.

Seriation
Ordering

items properly
Transitive inference

Spatial Reasoning
Direction
Maps

Pre-School,
Early School age

Landmarks

Ages 8-10

Landmarks along
Organized route of travel

End of middle childhood

Overall view of large- scale space

LIMITATION OF CONCRETE OPERATIONAL THOUGHT

Children think in an organized, logical fashion

only when dealing with concrete information that
they can perceive directly.
Their mental operations work poorly when
applied to abstract ideas.
Horizontal decalage is gradual development that
occurs within a Piagetian stage.

RESEARCH ON CONCRETE
OPERATIONAL THOUGHT

The Impact of Culture and Schooling

An Information Processing View of Concrete
Operational Thought

Evaluation of the Concrete

Operational Stage
Debate about this stage centers on whether
development is a continuous improvement in
logical skills or a discontinuous restructuring of
children's thinking.

INFORMATION PROCESSING
Brain

development contributes to
two basic changes in information
processing.
1.
2.

Increase in information-processing
capacity.
Gains in inhibition.

ATTENTION

DURING MIDDLE CHILDHOOD, ATTENTION BECOMES

MORE SELECTIVE, ADAPTABLE, AND PLANFUL.

Selectivity and Adaptability

Through the elementary years, children become

better at deliberately attending to just those
aspects of a situation that are relevant to task
goals.
Older children can flexibly adjust their attention to
the momentary requirements of situations.

Planning

School-age children scan detailed pictures and written

materials for similarities and differences more thoroughly
than do preschoolers.
On complex tasks, school age children make decisions
about what to do first and next in an orderly fashion

MEMORY STRATEGIES

Rehearsal

Organization

Repeating information to oneself

Grouping related items together

Elaboration

Creating a relationship between pieces of information not in

same category.

ATTENTION DEFICIT
HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER

Inattension
Impulsivity
Excessive motor activity
Results in

Social problems
Academic problems

ADHD TREATMENT

Stimulant medication

Individual counseling/training

Family intervention

Adults with ADHD need ongoing assistance

THE KNOWLEDGE BASE AND

MEMORY PERFORMANCE

Grows in middle childhood

Expanded

by exposure

Better organized
Experienced

and understanding concepts

Motivated learners acquire more retrieval skills

Leads

to greater academic success

CULTURE AND MEMORY STRATEGIES

People in non-Western cultures who have no

formal schooling do not use or benefit from
instruction in memory strategies.
Western children get so much practice using
memory strategies that they do not refine other
techniques for remembering that rely on spatial
location and arrangement of objects.
Development of memory strategies is a product of
more competent information processing system,
task demands, and cultural circumstances.

THE SCHOOL-AGE CHILDS

THEORY OF MIND

Children's theory of mind or a set of beliefs about

mental activities, becomes more elaborate and
refined. This awareness of cognitive processes is
called metacognition.
School-age children have an improved ability to
reflect on their own mental life, which accounts
for some of the advances in thinking and problem
solving that take place at this time.

COGNITIVE SELF-REGULATION

Point out important features of tasks

Stress importance of planful learning
Suggest effective learning strategies
Provide for evaluation of effectiveness
Emphasize monitoring of progress

INFORMATION PROCESSING
OF ACADEMIC LEARNING

Reading

Phonological awareness, information processing

speed, and practice contribute to reading skills.
Mix whole language and phonics

Mathematics

Learn facts and skills through practice, reasoning,

strategies
Blend drill and number sense approaches.

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN
MENTAL DEVELOPMENT

Around age 6, IQ becomes more stable and it correlates well

with academic achievement.

Defining and Measuring

Intelligence

Virtually all intelligence tests provide an overall score , which

is taken to represent general intelligence or reasoning ability.
Today, there is widespread agreement that intelligence is a
collection of many mental capacities, not all of which are
included on currently available tests.
Group administered tests- permit large numbers of pupils
to be tested at once and require little training of teachers who
give them.
Individually administered tests -demand considerable
training and experience to give well.

STERNBERGS TRIARCHIC THEORY OF

SUCCESSFUL INTELLIGENCE
Analytical Intelligence
Apply strategies
Acquire task-relevant and
metacognitive knowledge
Engage in self-regulation

Creative Intelligence
Solve novel problems
Make processing skills
automatic to free working
memory for complex
thinking

SUCCESS
FUL
INTELLIGE
NCE

Practical Intelligence
Adapt to
Shape and/or
Select.
Environments to meet
both personal goals
and the demands of
ones everyday world

GARDNERS MULTIPLE
INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence

Sensitive toOperations
the sounds,
Processing

Linguistic

Logico -mathematical

Musical

Spatial

rhythms, and meaning of

words and the functions of
language
Capacity to detect, logical or
numerical patterns; ability to
handle long chain of logical
reasoning
Ability to produce and
appreciate pitch, melody and
aesthetic quality of the forms
of musical expressiveness
Ability to perceive the visualspatial world accurately, to
perform transformations on
those perceptions and to recreate aspects of visual
experience in the absence of
relevant stimuli

Bodily-Kinesthetic

Naturalist

Interpersonal

Intrapersonal

Ability to use the body skillfully for expressive as

well as goal-directed purposes; ability to handle
objects skillfully
Ability to recognize and classify all varieties of
animals, minerals and plants
Ability to detect and respond appropriately to the
moods, temperaments, motivations and intentions
of others
Ability to discriminate complex inner feelings and
to use them to guide ones own behavior,
knowledge of ones own strengths, weaknesses,
desires, and intelligence

BETWEEN THE AGES ABOUT 6-11 YEARS.

DURING THIS PERIOD OF INTELLECTUAL

DEVELOPEMENT, KIDS BECOME
INCREASINGLY SKILLED AT UNDERSTANDING
LOGICAL AND CONCREATE INFORMATION.

KIDS ARE ABLE TO FOCUS ON MULTIPLE

ASPECTS OF A PROBLEM OR SITUATION AND
BECOME LESS EGOCENTRIC.

CONCENTRATION AND MEMORY IMPROVE

SIGNIFICANTLY DURING THE MIDDLE
CHILDHOOD YEARS.
BETTER ATTENTION SPAN THAN THEY DID IN
EARLY CHILDHOOD.
BETTER ABLE TO REMEMBER INFORMATION
LONGER SPAN OF TIME.

NOT ONLY IS THEIR ABILITY TO PAY ATTENTION

FOR LONGER PERIOD, SELECTIVE ATTENTION
IS MUCH BETTER.
IMPROVES MEMORY CAPACITY, SPEED,
INFORMATION PROCESS BECOME
IMMEDIATELY APPARENT IN CLASSROOM.

INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT

NATURE vs. NURTURE

ADOPTION

RESEARCH CONFIRMS THAT

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT CONTRIBUTE
JOINTLY TO IQ.
ADOPTION FINDINGS DO NOT COMPLETELY
RESOLVE QUESTIONS ABOUT ETHNIC
DIFFERENCES IN IQ. NEVERTHELESS, THE IQ
GAINS OF THE BLACK CHILDREN REARED IN
THE CULTURE OF THE TESTS AND SCHOOLS
ARE CONSISTENT WITH WEALTH OF EVIDENCE
THAT POVERTY SEVERELY DEPRESSES THE
INTELLIGENCE OF ETHNIC MINORITY GROUPS.

CULTURAL INFULENCES
A CONTROVERTIAL QUESTION RAISED ABOUT
ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN IQ HAS TO DO WIH
WHETHER THEY RESULT FROM TEST BIAS. IF A
TEST SAMPLES KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS THAT
NOT ALL GROUPS OF CHILDREN HAVE HAD
EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN OR IF THE
TESTING SITUATION IMPAIRS THE
PERFORMANCE OF SOME GROUPS BUT NOT
OTHERS THEN THE RESULTING SCOE IS BIASED
OR UNFAIR.

 COMMUNICATION STYLE
COMMUNICATION STYLES
TEST CONTENT
STEREOTYPES

-STEREOTYPE THREAT
REDUCING CULTURAL BIAS IN TESTING
DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
SCHOOL AGE KIDS DEVELOP LANGUAGE
AWARENESS.
SCHOOLING CONTRIBUTES GREATLY TO
LANGUAGE COMPETENCE.
FLUENT READING IS A MAJOR SOURCE OF
LANGUAGE LEARNING.

VOCABULARY AND GRAMMAR

DURING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL YEARS,
VOCABULARY INCREASES.
40,000 WORDS
MORE REFLECTIVE AND ANALYTICAL
APPROACH TO LANGUAGE PERMITS
APPRECIATION OF MULTIPLE MEANING OF
WORDS.

PRAGMATICS
LEARNING TWO LANGUANGE AT A TIME.
BILINGUAL DEVELOPMENT
BILINGUAL EDUCATION

LEARNING IN SCHOOL
TEACHERS AND CHILDREN ARE PARTNERS
IN LEARNING
EXPERIENCES WITH MANY TYPES OF
SYMBOLIC COMMUNICATION IN
MEANINGFUL ACTIVITES
TEACHING ADAPTED TO EACH CHILDS
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT

TEACHER- STUDENT INTERACTION

EDUCATIONAL SELF FULFILLING
PROPHECIES
CHILDREN MAY ADOPT TEACHERS
POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE VIEWS AND START
TO LIVE UP WITH THEM.

TEACHING CHILDREN WITH

SPEACIAL NEEDS
CHILDREN WITH LEARNING DIFFICULTIES
GIFTED CHILDREN

VYGOTSKY SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

EMPHASIS
OBSERVED THAT VERY YOUNG CHILDREN
TEND TO TALK OUT LOUD AS THEY
PROBLEM SOLVE AND TRY TO LEARN
MENTAL TASK.
BY MIDDLE CHILDHOOD, AS CHILDREN
BECOME MORE EFFICIENT AND SKILLED
AT VARIOUS MENTAL OPERATIONS ; BUT
LOUD COMMENTS TRANSFORM TO
BECOME THE INTERNALIZED THOUGHT
FAMILIAR TO ADULTS.

PSYCHOSOCIAL
DEVELOPMENT

ERIKSONS THEORY : INDUSTRY

VERSUS INFERIORITY

According to Erickson, children who successfully

resolve the psychological conflict of industry
versus inferiority develop a sense of competence
at skills and tasks, a positive but realistic selfconcept, pride in accomplishment, moral
responsibility and the ability to work
cooperatively with agemates.

SELF-UNDERSTANDING
During middle childhood, childrens self-concepts
include personality traits , competencies and social
comparisons with agemates.
Self-Esteem differentiates further becomes
hierarchically organized and declines over the early
schol years to a realistic level. Authoritative parenting
linked to favorable self-esteem.
Children who make mastery-oriented attributions
credit their successes to high ability and failures to
insufficient effort. In contrast, children who receive
negative feedbacks about their ability are likely to
develop learned helplessness, attributing their
successes to external factors, such as luck and failures
to ability low.

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
In middle childhood, the self-conscious emotions of
pride and guilt become clearly governed by personal
responsibility. Experiencing intense shame can
shatter children's overall sense of self-esteem.
School-aged children recognized that people can
experience more than one emotion at a time.
Because of advances in perspective taking, empathy
increases.
By the end of middle childhood, most children can
shift adaptively between problem-centered coping
and emotion-centered coping in regulating emotion.
Emotionally well-regulated children are optimistic,
prosocial and well-liked by peers

MORAL DEVELOPMENT

By middle childhood, children have internalized a

wide variety of moral rules. Their concepts of
distributive justice change from equality, to
merit, to equity and benevolence. They also
clarify and link moral rules and social
conventions. In judging the morality of role
violations, they take into account the purpose of
the rule, peoples intentions and the context of
their actions. School aged children also make
strides in understanding individual rights.

PEER RELATIONS
Williard Hartup (1989), who has extensively
studied peer relations among children, asserts
that the peer group is rivaled only by the family
as the childs major developmental setting.
In the beginning peer relationships are the
hallmark of the preschool years, friendship
networks are the hallmark of the middle
childhood years.

DEVELOPING A SENSE OF
GROUPNESS

Like conceptions of friendships, conceptions of

the peer group also change with age. In addition,
however, peer groups joint activities tend to
foster recognition of shared values and goals,
accompanied by a sense of we.

ADHERENCE TO PEER GROUP

NORMS

If you have ever observed a group of elementary

school children scrupulously dividing a large
piece of candy so that all can receive precisely the
same amount, you are aware of how concerned
children this age are about enforcing peer group
norms, or rules of conduct.

SOCIALIZATION WITHIN THE

PEER GROUP

Since peer group norms generally agree with

those of the family and community, the peer
group must be considered a major agent of
childhood socialization.

STATUS AND POPULARITY IN

THE PEER GROUP

Not all children have equal status and popularity

within their peer group. Some children seem to
emerge naturally as leaders, while others are
more inclined to follow. Some are highly popular,
while others are less well liked. Among less
popular children, some are actively rejected by
their peers, while others are merely neglected or
ignored.

FAMILY INFLUENCES ON
DEVELOPMENT
-Family influences remain strong throughout
middle childhood and into adolescences. The
primary family influences is usually exerted by the
parents. In addition, however, many school-age
children are also influenced by older and younger
siblings.
-While parents remain authorities for children,
parent-child relations move more toward coregulation in middle childhood (Eleanor Maccoby ,
1980)
-The hallmark of effective parenting in this period
is monitoring the child rather than always
directing him or her.

PARENTING STYLES AND THEIR

INFLUENCES
-Love v/s Hostility
-Control v/s Autonomy
-Anxious Overinvolvement v/s Calm Detachment

PARENTING STYLES AND THEIR

INFLUENCES
Efforts to tie childrens characteristics to their parents style of
child rearing have taught developmental researchers an
important lessons: In order for parenting styles to predict
developmental outcomes with reasonable accuracy, the
conceptual models of parenting that are used must be quite
complex.
-School-age youngsters raised in authoritative homes tended to
score higher than others in what is sometimes called Agency.
Interestingly, an added dimension to the parent-child
relationship seemed to contribute to the development of agency
in daughters, although not in sons.
-As children move into middle childhood, they have a greater
understanding of the legitimacy of parental authority (Damon,
1983). They come to grasp that parents are far more
experienced than they are and that parents decision are
meant for their childrens good

MALTREATMENT, PARENTAL
CONFLICT, AND DIVORCE
-The childs success at negotiating the task of middle
childhood- consolidating a sense of self, forming close
relationship with peers, and achieving in school- is strongly
affected by violence in the family, both when it is directed at
them and when it surrounds them.
-Children are also affected by an ongoing climate of conflict
in the family and by divorce and separation from parents,
even when not including physical violence.
-Divorce typically follows a history of conflict, and often the
conflict continues. This history of conflict is an important
part of the impact of divorce on children.
-Parental divorce is difficult for children of any age. The
impact is greater for the children who are very young at the
time of the divorce. It was once thought that the
consequence of divorce are greater for boys than girls.

LINKAGES BETWEEN FAMILY

AND PEER RELATIONSHIPS
*Attachment History and Peer Relationship
in Middle childhood
-Children who had no knowledge of the childrens
histories, to be more socially skilled and to form
friendships more often, as well as to be more
confident and less dependent.
-Those with secure histories tended to choose
other secure children as their partners, and their
partners selection were more often reciprocal;
that is the other child also viewed them as friend.

LINKAGES BETWEEN FAMILY

AND PEER RELATIONSHIPS
*Current Family Influences on Peer
Relationships
-Direct Influences: The encouragement and
support parents provide, and may even involve
explicit suggestion, training, and advice.
-Indirect Influences: Parental depression or other
psychopathology, the amount of stress the family
experiencing, and the quality of marital
relationship.
*Past and Current Experience Together
-Both family experiences, such as attachment
relationship, and current family circumstances
influence peer relationship.

SIBLING RELATIONSHIP
-As part or the childs social network, sibling
relationship influence development in middle
childhood and are influenced by the childs other
relationships.
-By the end of the middle childhood youngsters
rate alliances with both parents and siblings as
more enduring and reliable than those formed
with people outside the family.
-However, siblings relationship are far more
equal in status than those between parents and
children.

SIBLING RELATIONSHIP
*Emotional Qualities of Sibling Relationship
-Quite complex, often involving both positive and
negative feelings.
-Strong rivalry among siblings for their parents
attention and approval is a fairly common issue,
especially in siblings of the same sex.
*What Siblings Learn from Each Other
-The emotional ambivalence that often characterized
sibling relations has important implications for the
learning opportunities that siblings provide each
other.
-siblings offer a unique opportunity to learn on how to
deal with anger and aggression in relationship.

CHILDREN IN SCHOOL
-Schools may encourage cooperation and pro-social
behavior.
-School is an important developmental arena.
-childrens self-esteem can be affected by the
structure of the classroom, depending on whether
the emphasis is on competition and comparison or
on cooperation and diversity.
-Provide opportunities for interaction and friendship
between children of different ethnic groups, which
may not be available in the neighborhood.
-teachers encourage social comparison.
-School is a very powerful agent of socialization.

THE COHERENCE OF
DEVELOPMENT
-development is coherent in that the tasks of middle
childhood consolidating a sense of self, establishing
confidence in ones capacity to do things and to
master challenges, forming close relationships with
peers, being effective in the peer group, and
adjusting successfully to school- are closely
interconnected.
-development reveals coherence from the earlier
years across this period. Despite dramatic change in
the way children describe themselves and in their
behavior with the peers and relationships with
parents, there often is a thread of individual
consistency in core self-concept and social relations.