Interview With The Parent Of An Adolescent About Social Development

Parents have an important influene on middle childhood values, attuitudes,and behaviors.

I interviewed a parent about her 10 year old boy.  I asked her what types of values and behaviors she teaches her son.   She said "I just want him to do his best in school and put on his best behavior."  She told me that she rewards him when he is good and punishes him when he is bad. She also said that he knows when he is doing something wrong so she usually doesnt have to get on him often.

Social Development Interview With An Adolescent

I interviewed a 6th grade girl that is 12 years old.  I asked her about her best friends at school and who all she talked with.  She told me "Skyler is my best friend." "But I have many other friends like Mason, Hannah, McKenzie."  I asked her what they liked to do at school and she said "We love to talk at lunch time because thats when we can talk the most!" "And we just had prom at the middle school and we got to dress up and I even got to wear heels!" She was very excited.  I asked her if that was something all her friends went to and she said "Yeah we all got dressed up and took lots of pictures."  She showed me some of the pictures.

YouTube Videos That Relate To Social Development

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrsb1idgceY
This video really shows how girls are in "Cliques" as well as, how mean girls can really be at the pre-teen and teenage years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx3Ubl7y8JM
This video explains how a young boy does not know how to control his emotions yet so he acts out and starts using bad behavior.

A Few Websites About Social Development

http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=2083&cn=28
This website explains how students make transitions during their years of school and how these major events can cause stress and what to go about it.

http://www.classroominterpreting.org/Interpreters/children/Cognitive/midhigh.asp
This is a great website that talks about friendships, cliques, cultures, idenitity, etc. in middle childhood.

Examples of Social Development from Observations

I observed a group of 6th grade girls that were what you would call a "clique" or a small group of friends.  I watched them as they walked down the hallway talking about what they were going to do for the coming up weekend and which house they were going to stay at.  I continued to watch the girls in the classroom pass notes to one another while class was going on.  I know when I was about their age, I did the exact same thing and I even still have some of the notes I kept over the years.  When I look back and read my notes, I cannot believe I acted in such a way.  But thats how the middle age brain works!

What is Social Development?

Social development icludes acquiring social skills, increasing interpersonal understanding, refining concepts of friendship, and using moral reasoning to guide social interactions with family and peers.  School-age children's social and moral development allows relationships built during middle childhood to pave the way for adolescent dating experiences and social identity.

Interview With A Parent Of An Adolescent About Emotion & Temerament ( Affective Development)

In middle childhood, emotional competence involves the ability of school-age children to understand their own emotional states, to correctly interpret their affective experiences with others, and to control their emotions.

I asked the parent of a 12 year old girl to tell me about her emotions and if she was able to control them in certain situations.  The parent told me that she could not control her emotions yet, in fact, she cries about everything. The parent said she is extremely sensitive and worries about what everyone else is doing.  The parent said one day the girl left her backpack at home before school.  They turned around to go get her backpack and she burst into tears because she knew she was going to be late for school and get a tardy slip.  The parent told her to calm down the world was not going to come to an end.  Therefore, I can see that the 12 year old girl still has to learn how to deal with her emotions.

Interview With An Adolescent Girl About Her Self-Esteem

I looked up questions I could ask an adolescent about self-esteem and I found different way other than just questions and answers. 

Self-Esteem Project

Self esteem starts to become an issue at around age 10. During this time, children's self esteem begins to decline as a result of influences like friends and the media. Bring a stack of magazines to school and hand them out to the group along with scissors and glue. Ask the students to cut out words or images that stand out to them as telling them how or what they should be or look like and glue them onto a poster board. When you have finished, go around the room and discuss what those images mean, why they were put there and why they are false or misleading. Discuss ways to increase self esteem like joining a club or engaging in a hobby that the student may excel at or learning positive self talk.

I let a 12 year old girl cut out pictures from a few magazines I brought.  She ended up cutting out some flowers specifically daisies, some miss me jeans, an justice shirt, a purse, a girl with long hair with a lot of makeup on, a dog, and the words: OMG, cool, and love. 

 I asked her why she chose those images and what they meant to her.  She told me she liked all the clothes because she wears stuff like that.  She said the flowers were pretty and she loves dogs.  She also said that she text OMG all the time and the word love is important to her because she "loves" her boyfriend.

Observations in the Classroom about Affective Development

  Self-efficacy is the belief in your own ability to solve a problem or accomplish a task.

While observing in a 6th grade classroom, I was able to see a variety of personalities from the students.  One of the students was asked by her teacher to answer a question on the marker board in front of the class.She was very timid and did not want to be put on the spot in front of her peers.  The teacher knew she could do it and had all the correct answers.  The teacher then gave her a few words of encouragement  and told her "You can do it, I have seen your work before."  After those few words of encouragment the  girl went to the board and worked out her problems correctly.  The girl needed verbal encouragement  to become motivated to solve problems in front of her peers. 

YouTube Video About Self-Esteem-Affective Development

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmdOB5k_ar0
This video explains how to boost your self-esteem.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in Affective Development

According to Maslow the Hierarchy of Needs are a sense of self-esteem, competence, and belonging are basic human needs.

Parent Interview about Cognitive Development

The parent that I talked to has a fourth grader and like before this interview was informal and more like a conversation. First off I asked the parent if she has ever perfomed activities with the child such as the play-doh activity that I had performed with her son and she said no so I explained to her some different things she could do with him such as activites with weight or volume. Then I asked her if she felt that culture had a role on the development of chidrens cognition she said yes she did think that culture has a impact on this she felt that a childs background and a childs everyday activities could either help a child or hinder them in thier development. I also asked her if she felt that it was important to show her child how to perform a task such as a board game and then over time back away from showing them what to do and she agreed that this was important so the child could learn on thier own and through expeirence. This instruction just described is called scaffolding.

Parent Interview about Physical Development

I talked to a parent whose child was in the fifth grade about the changes that she saw in her daughter. It was a informal interview more like a conversation. Some changes that she saw in her daughter were a growth spurt in height, more self-esteem from what she felt came from playing sports, she also felt that her daughter was getting more of a preteen body shape where as the year before she described her daughter as having more of a boy body shape, a major change she has saw was the way her daughter acted as far as when it comes to boys (she no longer finds the gross) and her sassiness when she talked.

Observation of Cognitive Development

I was assigned in class to conduct cognitive activities with a child. One activity that I performed was with a eight year old. I had two equal balls of play-doh and I asked the child if the two ball of play-doh was equal in the amount that was there and he agreed that they were. Then I smashed one of the balls of play-doh and asked the child if the two things of play-doh was still equal in the amount that was there and the child answered yes again. Since the child answered yes to both my questions he is thinking on a concrete level according to Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory.

Physical Development Observation

I had the chance to observe a wonderful fourth grade classroom and I was taking note of the differences in the boys and girls physical development. What I saw was small girls compared to the boys. On the playground the boys engaged in rough and tumble play where the girls wanted to play on the swings or sit around and talk. Research shows however that girls tend to be bigger than boys in weight and height but not in my classroom. I found it entertaining how the boys wanted to chase each other and jump on and off of things and the girls would sit around watching the boys ans sometimes they would join in but they would stay far behind to where they wouldn't get hurt. Its amazing what you see when you take the time to sit back and watch.

Interview with Girl Adolescent about Cognitive Development

Question: Are the two pieces of rope the same length? (I had two pieces of rope but they were positioned different, Conservation)
Answer: Yes

Question: If I give you these different colored objects can you categorize them? (seriation)
Answer: Yes, and she performed the task

Question: When you have a problem do you try and solve it in different ways? (decentering)
Answer: Sometimes

Question: If I show you this picture of different animals and you group together all the mammals? (classification)
Answer: Yes, and she performs the task

Here are some websites that will help explain more about affective development.

This website talks about motivational techniques such as songs, books, articles, stories, etc.
http://www.motivational-well-being.com/motivational-songs.html

This website has many different articles related to emotional development.
http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/bm.tags/emotional-development/

Interview with Boy Adolescent about Physical Development

Question: Are you one of the tallest people in your class?
Answer: No

Question: Is there more boys taller than girls in your class?
Answer: No, there are some really tall girls in there.

Question: Have you noticed that you can run faster this year?
Answer: Yes, I can run a lot more faster than I could last year?

Question: Can you jumper higher this year?
Answer: Yes, I can jump way high when playing basketball.

Question: Do you sweat while playing sports?
Answer: Yes, I do a lot. My armpits will stink.

YouTube Video Cognitive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn4FKv8XXC0

Cognitive Websites

Here are a few websites that can better inform you about cognitive development.


http://www.psych.ku.edu/dennisk/CP333/Cognitive%20Middle.pdf

This top website talks about Piaget's Theory

http://www.learningseed.com/p-165-middle-childhood-cognitive-language-development.aspx

This website provides a video that talks about educators insights and observations relating to cognitive development.

What is Affective Development?

Affective development in middle childhood includes personality, emotional development, motivation, and self-esteem.  School-age children acquire personal comptencies through participation in academic, athletic, or artistic activities; emotional self-regulation; and a deepening sense of who they are and what they can achieve through serious effort and commitment.

What is cognitive development?

Whenever I hear the word cognitive I immediately think of Jean Piaget. Piaget created a theory that explains how children come to understand the world and create internal cognitive concepts about the world through direct interactions with the environment. Cognition refers to thinking, reasoning abilities, memory skills, decision making, problem solving, and other aspects of intellectual functioning. In middle childhood a child will increase their ability in logical thought, and improvement in memory and learning strategies, and the ability to learn through dialogue with others.

What is physical development?

During middle childhood physical transformations occur in height, weight, facial structure, body proportion, bone growth, and fat and muscle tissue distribution. Basically the childlike body becomes mature. A child in middle childhood can gain 2 to 3 inches in height and 4 to 6 pounds per year. At about age 10 girls become taller and become heavier than boys.

Twitter!

We are two college students that are working on becoming teachers. We are setting up this blog to inform teachers and parents about issues concerning middle aged children. We are currently working on linking our twitter page  teach_tweet_2 (very creative I know) to our blog page. We have videos and web page links to information pertaining to the physical development of middle aged children on there now. Its a working and learning progress so please stay with us. Thanks AC