Self-concepts in early childhood starts once the child began to develop self- awareness. In early childhood, they don’t understand the difference of their real and idea self. At this stage of life, they are slowly grasping the concept of their emotions. Around the age of 5 to 7 they began to describe themselves. Usually around 7 they define themselves as popular, smart, or dumb. They normally start with single representation, they always speak of themselves in the term of “I”. Then from there they began representational systems were the child sees unified features of themselves in the image of being ordinary, but yet complicated.
They began to show their self-esteem in their behavior (i.e. happy, sad, upset, good, or bad). A child with high or low self-esteem show their emotion through the way they perform academically or physically. They also go through the stage of wanting and needing their mothers’ approval. Usually around the age of 5 they are not realizing their emotions but not understanding how to control them. The child gets upset and say I hate you or you are a mean mommy. Their initiative to do things become very complicated for them as they continue to grow. They began to do and want to do more and more. However during this period they are understanding the emotion of what is accepted or not accepted by their peers, and others.
Soon they began to understand and recognize that there are gender differences between themselves. They normally are alike more than they are different. They began to identify with their gender roles. Starting with the acceptances of their differences in behaviors, interests, attitudes, skills, and personality. Society expects young girls to be nurturing and submissive and boys to be active, aggressive, and competitive. There are a few differences in behavior between the sexes. One approach is behavioral, which can be hereditary, neurological, and hormonal. The evolutionary approach is normal sexual preferences.
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Another way is psychoanalytic approach which is the natural process of the same sex parent relating to the child (i.e. son and father). Eventually the children become aware that they are a girl or boy and began to act according to the behavior of a male or female. The gender schema theory is where the child realize their cultural behavior of how they should respond to others. Once they began to socialize with others their behavior is considered as the social approach of gender development.
Early childhood have various forms of play. Starting as a baby, they began with their basic movements which is considered as functional play. They then learn the use of objects in their cognitive play. During this phase, children are known to have imaginary friends when playing. While attending school and even with family they achieve the process of playing games with rules.
Parenting practice is an important role in development, it molds the child into the person they will become. This can be done through discipline (i.e. punishment and reinforcement), also inductive reasoning, power assertion, and withdrawal of love. In each culture the parenting styles may be different.
Some behaviors to be concern about is altruism, curb aggression, and deal with the fears. When a child isn’t looking to gain anything, we call this altruism, Parents influence is considered aggression. Recollection of habits and skills It is where the child is trying to achieve a goal, be openly direct at a target, and intruding upon another’s well-being. The fearfulness of a child is natural during the early years. It can come from not knowing reality of situations, being alone, or from other people experiences that the child has heard.
Children relationship with or without others can vary. It can be with siblings learning how to play and share with each other, or fighting with each other over possessions. Some children has problems with being an only child because it can be hard to adjust. However being an only child can make them be selfish, feel lonely and spoiled. Children having playmates and friends teaches them how to get along with others.
