The Social Child

Children's emerging communication and social skills.

Questions about how children grow up in their social worlds are of enormous significance for parents, teachers, and society at large, as well as for children themselves. Clearly children are shaped by the social world that surrounds them but they also shape the social worlds that they, and those significant to them, encounter. But exactly how does this happen, and what can we do to ensure that it produces happy outcomes? This book provides a critical review of the psychological literature on the development of personality, social cognition, social skills, social relations and social outcomes from birth to early adulthood. It uses Bronfenbrenner's model of the development of the person and up-to-date evidence to analyse normal and abnormal social development, prosocial and antisocial behaviour, within and across cultures. As well as outlining the theory, the book addresses applied issues such as delinquency, school failure, and social exclusion. Using a coherent theoretical structure, The Child as Social Person examines material from across the biological and social sciences to present an integrated account of what we do and do not know about the development of the child as a social actor. The Child as Social Person provides an integrated overview of the exciting field of developmental social psychology, and as such will be essential reading for advanced undergraduate students in psychology, education and social work, as well as postgraduates and researchers in these disciplines.

Research in the field of human social development is moving at an astonishing pace. Within psychology, children's social behaviour has attracted interest from cognitive, social, clinical, and educational psychologists employing a wide variety of techniques that range from conversational analysis to experimental designs. Contributions have also come from beyond the domain of traditional psychology such as evolutionary theorists, behaviour geneticists, cultural anthropologists, and ethologists. This book aims to bring the reader to the cutting edge of this work by including original contributions from those in the very forefront of their discipline. Each contributor has spent years working in their specialist area and the authors have been given the freedom to argue for very different positions on the origins and sequence of children's social competence. The Social Child brings together controversial and sometimes conflicting positions on issues of central importance to society. It considers the likely impact of rising divorce rates and single parenting, how media images affect children's understanding and behaviour, how genes inform development, the role parents have, whether changing sex roles have had an impact on children's social interactions, and the sources from which children acquire behaviour. This book will be relevant to those interested in children's behaviour both professionally (social workers, teachers, educational psychologists, therapists, youth workers) and academically. It can also be used as a textbook for second and third year undergraduates and by postgraduates.

Parents, this book offers direct, sense-making, step-by-step exercises that parents can do with their children to increase their social skills and awareness. Based on the highly successful social skills training groups that have been directed by Cathi Cohen for many years, Raise Your Child's Social I.Q. provides parents with the structure to work on skills at home--how to join a group, how to choose friends, how to notice what people around you are feeling, how to handle angry feelings and much, much more.

Examination of the challenges that have emerged during the past decade in the field of child development and social policy. The volume emphasizes the real connections between what we know about healthy child development, and what we are doing--and not doing--to strengthen our nation's families. At the same time, it paints a realistic picture of the complex and often frustrating context within which policy efforts made on behalf of children and families are conceived and developed. -- from publisher's description.

"Text first published in 1990 by Children's Press, Inc."

Applying an evolutionary framework to advance the understanding of child development, this volume brings together leading figures to contribute chapters in their areas of expertise. Researcher- and student-friendly chapters adhere to a common format.

This book deals with the family's contribution to socialization.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.