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A Changing Sense of Self
Making sense of who you are is very much work in progress when you are six or seven. Physical and emotional changes go hand in hand, and although the external changes are very clear to see, internal changes are less apparent. In this chapter we will take a look at the ways in which six- and seven-year-olds are developing new ways of relating to the world. As their perspectives change, so too do their capacities to learn, to understand and to represent their experience.
Children are doing a great deal of growing between their sixth and eighth birthdays. Their rounder, cuddly little child appearance gradually gives way to something more robust. Top front milk teeth tend to have fallen out, but the new second teeth which will last a lifetime are not quite fully formed, giving an impression of gaps yet to be filled. So it is at an emotional level. Infancy, as represented by the milk teeth, has been left behind but adulthood is still a long way off. In between, there is a lot of learning to do. Children are developing in coordination and balance, acquiring fine motor skills like writing and drawing, amassing knowledge and information at an astonishing pace and gaining experience of all sorts, both social and intellectual. All of this is likely to be, at times, at the cost of some stress and strain which calls for sensitive adult support. Children are likely to compare themselves with others no matter how much we may wish to persuade them not to. Competition and rivalry are part of the human condition and children of this age often strive to fit in to be like the others. Some will want to be the best at something. This brings with it worries about not being able to manage, or an unwillingness to risk failure. Rather than the overconfident âI can do itâ attitude more characteristic of toddlers, this age group is coming to terms with the need for determination and effort to make headway in life. A great deal of sympathetic encouragement is often needed to help children persevere in the face of difficulty.
Itâs good to talk
A capacity to discuss things and to express thoughts and ideas in conversation is a fantastic asset. Spoken language is a vehicle for getting to know other people and becoming known by others. If children have had experiences, over time, of being listened to, thought about and understood, they will now be asking all sorts of interesting questions and articulating novel ideas. Childrenâs statements can often convey something well beyond the literal words once they start to enjoy language.
Henry was a shy and serious six-year-old who had been finding it hard to settle down again to the routine of school after the long summer holidays. He was just beginning to get used to his new status as a âtop infantâ, along with a new classroom and a new teacher. After school he was very tired and spoke very little, but during tea he volunteered some new knowledge about the school building. âDâyou know,â he told his parents, âwhen I was in reception class I didnât even know where the Resources Room was... I didnât even know there was an upstairs!â Henryâs sense that he was entering a larger world came through this simple statement, and his parents felt he was telling them something about discovering new resources in himself as well as at school.
On other occasions Henryâs typically six-year-old tendency to ask pressing questions kept his parents on their toes. âI just donât get it! Where do people come from?â was one such question. His parents wondered whether this was an enquiry about a matter of geography, biology, or human relationships. When he asked, on another occasion, âHow exactly do aeroplanes stay up?â his father tried to respond with a detailed explanation, only to find that Henryâs attention quickly wandered off elsewhere. Perhaps for Henry the point was to share his sense of wonder about the world rather than to uncover scientific fact.
Six- and seven-year-olds are discovering that language can be used to convey complicated ideas. Language can now be used in a metaphorical as well as a literal way, paving the way for sharing jokes and imaginative games as part of making friends. Of course, language can also be used under the sway of less friendly feelings, to manipulate or hurt. Swear words are often discovered and highly prized by children of this age as something dangerous, exciting and definitely prohibited. They know they are not supposed to use them, but they like to provoke and test out adult responses.
Changing perspectives
At around the age of seven there are some very significant developmental changes to the ways children are able to think. Abstract thinking becomes more possible, with most children understanding, for example, that not only does â3â represent three things, but also there can be an idea of âthreenessâ which can be manipulated in the mind together with other numbers to perform additions and subtractions. We adults, who call this process âmental arithmeticâ, rarely stop to think what a sophisticated operation this is.
Children of this age are starting to grasp the idea of place value. Now a child has to bear in mind that 3 can actually mean 30 or 300, depending on whether it is in the âunitsâ, âtensâ or âhundredsâ column. It is often easier to grasp abstract ideas when they relate to something better known. When Sabah was doing some number work with her mother, she told her, âUnits are like - not many, like when you stay at home.â For Sabah, âunitsâ were linked to thoughts about being one of only two children at home, whereas âtensâ and âhundredsâ reminded her of being at school. Sabahâs way of thinking shows that children make sense of abstract concepts by making a link with what is on their mind already. Often, what is on their mind is their family. When children feel thought about and listened to by those they love and care for most, they learn more readily. Worries or concerns which are home-related can inhibit learning.
Childrenâs understanding of the world is informed by a great deal of practice with measuring of various kinds, which helps them to begin to orient themselves in space and time. Measuring height and length is straightforward enough, but it is only at around age seven that children can really begin to understand concepts such as volume and capacity, which require two factors to be taken into account at the same time. In other words, three-dimensional thinking is required. Children are now more likely to understand that liquids do not change in volume when they are poured from one container to another of a different shape. Similarly, if shown two balls of plasticine of the same size, they can understand that rolling one into a sausage shape does not alter the overall amount of plasticine. A younger child will probably focus on one dimension such as the height of the liquid in the container, or the length of the sausage-shaped piece of plasticine, but the slightly older child will see that if nothing is added or taken away, the volume remains the same. This development in thinking comes in due course if children feel secure enough to experiment and to make these sorts of discoveries through play. At an emotional level this security is linked to a sense of being remembered and thought about in a flexible way in the minds of the adults who care for them as they move around fitting in with different social environments of home, friendships and the classroom. They come to experience themselves as having a more consistent identity which moves with them between situations in which different things are expected of them.
Social understanding, or empathy, plays a very important part in six- and seven-year-oldsâ ability to think and learn. When children can put themselves, imaginatively, into the shoes of others in order to get to know them, they are broadening their horizons in a very meaningful way. Empathy is an essential aspect of making and keeping friendships because it is part of getting to know about othersâ lives and cultures and, by implication, what it feels like to be human. But most six- and seven-year-olds can be empathetic, flexible thinkers for only a few moments in an average day. Especially if they are tired, they are more likely to be irritable and inflexible when asked to see things from any perspective other than their own. This theme is explored in an amusing little book by David McKee entitled Two Monsters. These monsters live on opposite sides of a mountain, which serves as an obstacle to them seeing eye-to-eye in more ways than one. They cannot agree about anything until their squabbling leads to knocking the mountain down. Finally they come to see that their views had more in common than they had supposed.
Children of this age are, indeed, beginning to understand differing points of view. In a test devised to explore this aspect of development (and also, by coincidence, involving a mountain), a psychologist showed seven-year-old William a three-dimensional model of a mountainous landscape. A doll was placed on the opposite side of the model, facing William, and he was asked to describe what the doll could see. William found this a difficult task and he decided the best thing to do was to turn the model round so that the dollâs view was roughly the same as his own. Williamâs approach to the task was typical of how children begin to understand new situations. We all come to know the new with reference to the more familiar, and in this way our expectations when faced with a new situation are coloured by earlier experiences. It is, therefore, understandable that childrenâs ways of relating to their teacher will be based on their pool of experience of relationships with the adults they know best, their parents, while relating to classmates will initially be based on the way in which earlier relationships such as those with siblings have been negotiated in the family.
A sense of balance
Physical and emotional balance are required in order to learn to ride a proper bicycle, and the processes involved illustrate the sorts of dilemmas involved in greater independence. Learning to ride a two-wheeler bike can be an important rite of passage, and children who have mastered this skill can take their place alongside the older children without shame. On the other hand, as the pace of propulsion away from the parental orbit accelerates, parents are often left feeling somewhat like the discarded stabilizers. In order to learn to ride properly, children have to learn a number of new skills. They have to learn how a bicycle works and how to use their body and mind in a coordinated way. At an emotional level they have to tolerate setbacks and difficulties, and, above all, be able to accept help from an adult. Most importantly, a child needs to let go of the idea that new skills can be acquired magically by simply wishing them so. This can lead to turbulent feelings in the learner.
Gemma had been watching her eight-year-old brother riding his bike with his friends and was convinced that it would be easy. Her mother had taken her to the park for a lesson without stabilizers, but Gemma did not want her mother to hold on to the back of the bike to help her as she got up speed. Understandably, Gemma found it difficult to coordinate pedalling, steering and balancing at first. She was very wobbly and fell several times, but she seemed to feel that the difficulty in getting her balance was her motherâs fault for not helping in the right way. What her mother knew was that she was holding on to the back of the bike to help her daughter, but Gemma was convinced that she was actually holding her back. Gemmaâs fury with her mother seemed to be fuelled by the pain of her sore knees and elbows. She would not let herself be comforted, choosing instead to push the hurt feelings into her mother, who could see that Gemma was suffering but had to tolerate being seen as unhelpful.
It took a great deal of negotiation, perseverance and several trips to the park before Gemma could really manage by herself. Like many children she needed a week or two to cool off from the humiliating experience of not being able to learn instantly. Once she had mastered the art of riding, Gemmaâs manner became much more confident. She loved the sense of freedom and the exhilaration of speed which bike riding brought. Gemmaâs anger with her mother soon subsided and led to a subtly changed relationship, based on getting alongside her. Family cycling trips became an enjoyable weekend activity that included all four family members. Conflict was not entirely out of the picture, however, with Gemma being very determined to be the one in the lead and, particularly, to win all the races against her older brother.
Right and wrong
In the main, children know, by now, when they are pretending and when they are not, and along with this comes a better developed sense of reality. They are more able to say what the truth is and how it is different from a lie. Whereas one five-year-old asserted that a lie was a ânaughty storyâ, his older brother knew that a lie was ânot telling the truthâ. This is an important distinction, which shows that the more mature child sees lying as a sort of choice. Implicit, also, is the idea that it is possible to find out the truth by looking at the evidence, including the evidence of feelings.
It is important that children come to make a clear distinction between right and wrong at this age. They are usually working out aspects of this theme in the games they play with others, by themselves with their toy figures, and in the stories and films they like. Having some clarity on questions of morality is the basis of social cooperation and children of this age tend to want to fit in and to be accepted. But this process is complicated by the mixed feelings of love and hate which are common to all of us. Everyone has angry, hurtful and unkind impulses at times; it simply cannot be helped. As adults, we are generally aware that such feelings do not, in themselves, cause actual harm to others. Children, on the other hand, can tend to blame themselves when things go wrong. The logic may go something like this: I had a nasty feeling so I am bad and I made a bad thing happen. If, for example, parents separate, or a sister or brother becomes ill, a six- or seven-year-old may wonder whose fault it is, and may be inclined to blame him- or herself.
Sorting out reality and fantasy
Childrenâs sense of identity is still rather fluid at th...