Social and Emotional Development in Middle Childhood

• solidifying their self-concept, identity and self-esteem
• start to define themselves by comparing themselves to others and are becoming more aware of stereotypes
• better able to recognize and understand complex emotions such as gratitude, jealousy and anxiety
• now have a variety of strategies for managing emotions, such as self-talk, empathy and perspective-taking.
• often take great pride in their work and their new-found abilities to persevere and solve problems
• have more stable peer relationships
• have a ‘best friend’
• able to co-operate, share, help and show empathy for others
• are better able to self-regulate their behaviour (they are now capable of taking another person’s point of view)
• see how their behaviour affects someone else

Between the ages of 9 and 12, improving metacognitive skills (the awareness of their own thought processes) enable children to understand their emotional selves. They are also better at anticipating future outcomes which allows them to be better prepared for managing emotional situations.

Friends begin to have even more influence, known as peer pressure; the feeling that one must do what one’s peers are doing in order to be accepted by the group. Children this age start to want to put some physical and emotional distance between themselves and adults. They may begin to show interest in teen culture, e.g., music, social media, clothing and make-up. They feel strongly that they no longer want to be treated like a child.

However, tweens can still struggle to manage their emotions if they feel overwhelmed by strong emotions such as frustration or by the demands of the situation (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2014).

For Child and Youth Care Practitioners, this understanding of how emotions and social interactions develop provide us the foundational knowledge that guides how we support healthy development. While we work with children and youth at various ages, knowing the milestones that can be expected during middle childhood allow us to determine areas a child or youth may benefit from developing further.

Let’s explore middle childhood and social and emotional development in more detail.

Erik Erikson- Industry vs. Inferiority 

Erik Erikson proposed that we are motivated by a need to achieve competence in certain areas of our lives. As we’ve learned previously, Erikson’s psychosocial theory has eight stages of development over the lifespan, from infancy through late adulthood. At each stage, there is a conflict, or task, that we need to resolve. Successful completion of each developmental task results in a sense of competence and a healthy personality. Failure to master these tasks leads to feelings of inadequacy.

During middle childhood children face the task of Industry versus Inferiority. Children begin to compare themselves to their peers to see how they measure up.

Friendship

Children in middle childhood are starting to make friends in more sophisticated ways. They are choosing friends for specific characteristics, including shared interests, sense of humor, and being a good person. That is quite a departure from the earlier days of playing with the people in your group just because they are there. Children in middle childhood are starting to realize that there are benefits to friendships, and there are sometimes difficulties as well. In this section, we’ll examine some aspects of these relationships. (Lumen Learning, 2019)

Peer relationships and friendships improve during middle childhood – more social interactions, finding interests in common, and the development of social skills all come into play when making friends. Read: The 5 stages of children’s friendships (stages 0-3) (Kids First, 2022).

Want to learn about the impact of anxiety on making friends? Read: Making friends (Anxiety Canada, 2023).

Friendships during middle childhood take on new importance as judges of one’s worth, competence, and attractiveness. Friendships provide the opportunity for learning social skills such as how to communicate with others and how to negotiate differences.

Children get ideas from one another about how to perform certain tasks, how to gain popularity, what to wear, what to say, what to listen to, and how to act. This society of children marks a transition from a life focused on the family to a life concerned with peers.

In peer relationships, children learn how to initiate and maintain social interactions with other children. They learn skills for managing conflict, such as turn-taking, compromise, and bargaining. Play and communication also involve the mutual, sometimes complex, coordination of goals, actions, and understanding.

Benefits of Play

“Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human species,” says Dr. David Whitebread from Cambridge University’s Faculty of Education. “It underpins how we develop as intellectual, problem-solving, emotional adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable species.” International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to develop policies concerned with children’s right to play, and to consider implications for leisure facilities and educational programs.

Thanks to the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDaL) at Cambridge, Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers are gathering evidence on the important role of play in how a child develops. “Play supports the early development of children’s self-control,” explains Baker, “. . . our abilities to develop awareness of our own thinking processes.” If playful experiences do support this aspect of development, say the researchers, it could be extremely significant for educational practices because the ability to self-regulate has been shown to be a key predictor of academic performance.

Gibson adds: “Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development… Observing children at play can give us important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.”

(University of Cambridge, 2023).

Social interactions, comparison, bullying, and aggression

Peer relationships can be challenging as well as supportive (Rubin, Coplan, Chen, Bowker, & McDonald, 2011 as cited in Pye, Scoffin, Quade & Krieg, 2022). Being accepted by other children is an important source of affirmation and self-esteem, but peer rejection can foreshadow later behavior problems (especially when children are rejected due to aggressive behaviour). With increasing age, children confront the challenges of bullying, peer victimization, and managing conformity pressures.

Social comparison with peers is an important means by which children evaluate their skills, knowledge, and personal qualities, but it may cause them to feel that they do not measure up well against others. For example, a child who is not athletic may feel unworthy of their football-playing peers and revert to shy behaviour, isolating themselves and avoiding conversation. Conversely, an athlete who doesn’t “get” literature and language arts may feel embarrassed and avoid reading altogether.

Also, with the approach of adolescence, peer relationships become focused on psychological intimacy, involving personal disclosure, vulnerability, and loyalty (or its betrayal)—which significantly affects a child’s outlook on the world. Each of these aspects of peer relationships requires developing very different social and emotional skills than those that emerge in parent-child relationships. They also illustrate the many ways that peer relationships influence the growth of personality and self-concept.

To learn more about healthy relationships, check out PREVNet, a Canadian knowledge, education, and research hub exploring “bullying and dating violence, and promot[ing] evidence-based programs and effective policies across Canada.”