New Perspectives on Happiness and Mental Wellbeing in Schoolchildren

A Developmental-Psychoanalytical Explanation of the Latency Stage

Hannah Fisher-Grafy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367730697
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429784224
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

New Perspectives on Happiness and Mental Wellbeing in Schoolchildren presents a revolutionary approach to handling social rejection during the latency period. It offers the reader an innovative educational approach, adapted to this pre-adolescent age group, for systemic intervention in classes experiencing negative social phenomena. Presenting latency as a significant developmental stage, it explains children's cruelty in social rejection from a developmental perspective.

The book presents the "Envelopes" therapy method to improve children's status immediately and proposes a school intervention for social rejection. It also offers an educational approach appropriate to the developmental needs of latency age children. The approaches described are based on a new developmental psychology paradigm that can illuminate latency with far-reaching insights that aid in adapting approaches suitable to this age. This new paradigm of significant and unique intrapsychic development during early childhood asserts that the most important human development occurs during latency.

With informative case studies used throughout, this book will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the fields of clinical psychology, educational psychology, and teacher training.

1
Characteristics of “cruelty” during latency

Emotion – where is the emotion?

In my experience, patients during the latency stage who are socially rejected don’t cry. Even when they tell me about the most serious harm their classmates caused them, they don’t cry. Almost all children, with some exceptions, describe the harm they suffer in a dry, laconic manner. On the other hand, the rejecting children who cause pain to the rejected children don’t express any remorse or guilt during the latency stage. They don’t have a bad conscience or feel shame about what they did. One boy came to me in a very serious state of social rejection. His rejection was so severe that when he described it, he wrote a list of the hierarchy of all the boys in the class, with him appearing last in the list. After improving his social status using the “envelope method”, he got close to the social leaders and became one of them, and at some stage even led the social rejection of another boy in the class. When I tried to awaken his empathy toward the suffering of the rejected boy and to remind him of how he had felt just the month before, he seemed to become completely impervious and there was no opening, not even a small crack, through which I could make him listen to me and arouse even a drop of empathy and compassion.

It’s obvious that children during the latency stage are not coldhearted or emotionless. As I learned from my adolescent patients, the same children, a few years later, during adolescence (Hughes et al., 2016), feel severe guilt for their actions during latency. They ask themselves: How could I have treated that boy that way? How could I have been so insensitive? How could I have lacked consideration for the weak? Avoided helping them? In addition to the feelings of guilt and damage to their self-image, they feel regret and hurt for the harm they caused. They don’t know how to contain their heartless behavior. I have often heard adults looking back on the stage of their latency age and wondering aloud how they could have behaved like that, and how to contain this episode of their lives when they are now very moral adults, full of consideration for others, who couldn’t harm others.

All children during latency are hurt by social rejection

It appears to adults, parents, and teachers that only the socially rejected children suffer from social rejection. In my experience, all the children in the class suffer from the experience of social rejection, and that everyone, without exception, is under constant social pressure. Even children who don’t participate at all in the serious social moves, who are passive and avoid taking part in the social harm, bear a heavy burden in adulthood, just like those post-traumatic children who were not harmed themselves but were exposed to family violence.

I have seen several couples, parents of socially rejected children, who told me that when they were the same age as their children in elementary school, they were popular and didn’t suffer from social difficulties, but this experience that happened to another child in their class deterred them so much and fixated such a terrible threat in their souls that they raised their own child with constant fear of rejection, and in the end what they had feared actually happened.

It seems to parents and teachers that some children are immune to the social harm of social rejection. There is a tendency to believe that the class king, the class queen, and the popular children in the class don’t suffer, that they’re protected, stronger than the social forces around them. Adults and children are convinced that the popular children and the class rulers are those who determine the character of the social harm and that they don’t have to deal with the social stresses and pressures that the “unpopular” and “rejected” children do, and that they are never hurt. However, in conversations with former class kings and queens, bitter memories arise of severe social behavior directed at them. A large proportion of their classmates fight against them, on various occasions show them contempt, harass them, and don’t accept their high place in the hierarchy. In addition, due to their great social power, they often experience a hostile attitude from the teachers as well.

From my experience, I can conclude that all the children in the class absorb the experiences of social rejection and are affected by them.

Expanding circles of cruelty

Inequality – status hierarchy

The cruelty is not only expressed in the difficult social status of the socially rejected children. The whole social perception during the latency stage is founded on inequality and on harming individual rights. The mental development of young children makes them capable of making comparisons. Children aged 5 or 6 express displeasure when they see other children receiving more than them (Sroufe, Cooper, & DeHart, 1996). Children show great sensitivity to equality and are hurt when others are given more than they are given. During latency, this mature mental ability stands in contrast with the social reality in their class. The mental and moral maturity to demand equality is accompanied by the understanding that something is starting to change in the class hierarchy. A group of children becomes strong and dominant, controls the class, becomes a closed group that doesn’t make friends with other children, and it’s impossible to enter it even with the mediation of parents and teachers. Each child’s status becomes obvious and clear. The injustice in the distribution of resources and the inequality between the children are really blatant.

All the children I spoke with knew how to describe the hierarchy with precision, from the class king or queen to the lowest ranked. One of the children, a particularly gifted and creative boy, described the hierarchy as follows: there’s an emperor, who is king of the class. Below him are the senators, who make most of the decisions. Their opinion is binding even for the emperor. He listens to them. Below them are the soldiers, who listen to the senators, and the king/emperor hardly has any right to decide about them. Below all these are the simple people, the slaves, who are isolated from society, and whom society doesn’t like very much. In parallel to this order, this boy told me, there is also a ranking based exclusively on the ability to play soccer (or any other group sport the boys play). In the top place here is the emperor, who is the best player, and this is not necessarily the class king. Below him are the senators and soldiers, the same children as in the previous hierarchy, and the simple people and slaves are those who don’t participate in the game at all.

In a short time, from entering the latency stage until its end, the children are subject to an insufferable reality that contradicts all the values of Western society, including: the aim for equality and the war against prejudice and discrimination for reasons of gender, race, and class. Human society is established on moral values, such as: love thy neighbor like thyself, shaming others in public is equivalent to bloodshed, those who respect others are respected, and so on. The social reality during latency contrasts with these moral values and the democratic values of justice and equality. The social hierarchy at this age determines that some children are important and valued while others aren’t (Östberg, 2003).

The important and valued children receive privileges and preferential treatment. Love, admiration, and empathy are only directed at the class rulers and the popular children. Rejected children in the class don’t receive such treatment. Often, socially rejected children say that when they propose a game, nobody listens, but when a “popular” child suggests it, everyone listens and wants to play his or her game.

One girl, who was socially rejected and who broke her leg just before a school trip, limped all through the trip with her leg in a cast and dragged behind on her own, without any of the other girls taking any interest in her or showing any gesture of understanding or consideration. In contrast, the popular children receive an empathic response even for the most minor things. When the class queen is upset about a broken pencil tip, all the girls, like a school of fishes, gather around her and show sensitivity, offer help, while heaping on affection, compensation, encouragement, and comfort.

Children at this age accept the hierarchy and the inequality as the law of the world. They accept it as the one and only reality, which can’t be changed. All fourth and fifth grades have a class king or class queen; every class has popular and unpopular children. This division is unchangeable. It occurs as part of the developmental stage and is inherent for the intrapsy-chic development, as will be explained later.

One day, the children awaken to the internal and external reality of a social hierarchy. It happens by itself, without the children doing anything deliberate to create it. Even though they are all capable of comparing and knowing that there are those with privileges and those who are disadvantaged, they don’t fight it. They cooperate and even take it for granted. Not so the rejected children. They refuse to accept the inequality. Many children argue: why should I treat him (the class king) or her (the class queen) in a certain way if he or she doesn’t treat me that way? Why should I give her something of mine when she doesn’t give me something of hers? Other socially rejected girls say that the empathic treatment of the class queen is “fake”. The girls don’t really pity the class queen. The important point is the following oxymoron: the socially rejected children are not rejected due to the social hierarchy that marginalizes them. They are rejected precisely because they fight and are unwilling to accept the reality in which a clear and explicit social hierarchy exists.

The destructive implications of children’s cruelty

The destructive implications of the cruelty entailed in social rejection for the children’s futures have been found and confirmed in many studies. The damage of social rejection is found in the present and the future, in all areas of functioning: health (Einsenberg et al., 2014); behavior (McDougall et al., 2001); education (Benner & Graham, 2013); and emotion (Greene, Way, & Pahl, 2006). Other findings include phenomena of criminality, crime, and psychopathology in adulthood (Reijntjes et al., 2011), and damage to professional development, employment status, satisfaction with social connections, and insecurity in forming romantic attachments during adulthood (Ashton, 2006).

My impression is that the harmful implications are extensive and profound. I argue that the harm during latency influences the majority of children, and the depth of the harm touches upon essential layers of self-image and self-esteem. Studies have yet to be conducted on this issue, but from my experience, most of the latency age children in the class are “unpopular” children. In an average class, I estimate that about a third of the classmates are “popular”. Some other children are socially rejected, and the vast majority of the class’s children are “unpopular”. They will experience the label of being “unpopular” for most of their years in elementary school. For three or four years of the latency stage, every day they experience sensations of lack of popularity and unequal treatment. They experience a reality where other children are worth more than them. Often, the overt excuse given for this by the society of classmates is very frustrating, because it isn’t related to the rejected children themselves or their skills or behavior. For example, an unpopular boy was rejected from soccer games due to physical clumsiness and often humiliated for this. Or a girl rejected by the popular girls due to her low socio-economic status. The children give their rejection overt reasons, external to the rejected children, that don’t depend on them, their personality, or their behavior, and this is very difficult for the rejected children. The feeling that there’s something that doesn’t depend upon me that determines my fate, that I can’t change, fixates a sense of low self-esteem along with great frustration due to the injustice and the inability to change. In practice, the external factors given to explain the unpopularity are not the source and origin of this feeling, as will be explained later.

Children can change their status. As we’ll see later on, the power and control are in their hands. The reason isn’t external to the children, though it is related to their developmental progress. The natural experience, common at this age, places the blame for unpopularity or rejection on some external factor that doesn’t depend on them and their behavior and is therefore unchangeable. According to the perception of latency age children, they receive treatment that doesn’t take them and their desires into account. The unpopular children feel inferior to the others. They don’t receive appreciation, admiration, and belonging the way the popular children do. They are not sought after by them; they don’t receive empathy and understanding like the popular children. To their great frustration, they are transparent in the eyes of their classmates, unimportant, invisible, and unheard. The discriminatory attitude comes in addition to the terrible knowledge that this bad treatment indicates, unfortunately, their low status. Throughout the years of elementary school, most children in the class experience themselves in the horrible way described here. The low self-esteem of the unpopular children is based on their inferior status and on what this implies for their value in the eyes of others. Thus, during latency, when the self-image and self-esteem are formed mainly around the company of classmates, for most of the years of elementary school, most children in the class form low self-image and self-esteem.

The situation of the socially rejected children is much worse. In addition to what we described about the “unpopular” children, there are hard feelings of rejection, not belonging, and the worst damage is the cessation of psychic development. They observe from the sidelines the social lives, events, conversations, games, and social activities of their classmates, feeling that this is where real life happens. Where the popular children are, a vivid, dynamic social life occurs. That’s where the significant psychic life exists, while they, the rejected children, are not there, not part of it. Their psyche doesn’t continue to develop in the natural developmental environment of this stage – the society of children.

Let’s collect the four features mentioned so far: lack of emotion; hierarchy and inequality; all children suffering from social rejection; most children suffering from low self-image and low self-esteem. We can ask: What is actually happening during latency? Why is cruelty so widespread at this age? We see that the children can act cruelly during social rejection, without the active presence of feelings of empathy and morality. We also see that the cruelty is not just in the children’s behavior, but that the entire social reality of social hierarchy and status inequality happens universally in all societies of children in a natural developmental manner. Also, we identify severe damage to self-image and self-esteem. This damage is common to almost all children: rejected, unpopular, but also the popular children and class rulers. Even those who seem not to share the damage experience the social trauma passively and may even transfer it onto their own children.

So, how can we explain this cruelty, which we have seen is extensive and encompasses all the children at this stage? The hierarchy that starts to exist in the class naturally, the social status, the inequality, the manipulative feelings, the lack of empathy and emotion? How can we explain the extensive phenomenon that occurs at this age, that a society of children treats each other with injustice and inequality, often with an insulting, humiliating, and cruel attitude, without emotion and empathy, with none of the children daring to condemn and stop these phenomena, and when one righteous person does, he or she is sentenced to a severe social response? Is the inclination of the human heart evil from his youth? Do we naturally have the morality of Lord of the Flies, living according to the cold rules of the jungle, man to man is a wolf? After all, the phenomena common during latency can also be seen in adulthood, in the relations between groups, when one group treats another group immorally.

In their chapter on group morality, Leach, Bilali, and Pagliaro (2015) asked this question about general morality. The chapter’s conclusion states that morality is a group phenomenon in which an oxymoron exists whereby morally trampling an out-group relieves the group members of personal morality. Individual immoral behavior has been found in a range of famous social psychology experiments. For example, Milgram’s experiment in 1962, Zimbardo’s prison experiment, and Asch’s experiment testing group conformity. Is this our true nature, and do we become good people only through education? If this is true, those who accuse teachers and parents of faulty education are right. But just a moment, we are born with the capacity for morality, and children’s morality develops, as studies have found. Developmental research has found that babies have an internal moral basis, the ability and willingness to judge the actions of strangers, a preliminary sense of justice, and an intuitive response to evil ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Characteristics of “cruelty” during latency
• 2 Social rejection
• 3 Analogy: the self as a biological cell
• 4 Envelopes: an individual therapy method
• 5 Teacher interventions for social difficulties
• 6 Happy schoolchildren
• Conclusion
• Index