Looking After A Young Childs Self-Concept - Research Paper Example

?Looking After A Young Child’s Self-Concept Everyone has an inherent need for self-knowledge. One can be curious about his identity and that includesbasic facts about him, his family and cultural background and how these have shaped him into the person he is, his personality and how he deals with people and circumstances. This totality of self-knowledge is known as Self-concept. More than knowing what one’s name is, where he lives, how old he is, etc., the basic information very young children learn by rote, self-concept actually covers the sum of all the experiences of a person across his life span, and these are what affect his opinions, behaviors, social interactions, perspectives and how he evaluates situations. Part of self-concept is self-esteem which is the positive or negative attitude one holds about the self. This is how a person likes himself and the level of satisfaction he has about what he can do or what he has achieved so far as well as how he thinks others see him as compared to his peers. Self-concept begins to form weeks after birth as infants begin to be aware that they are separate from their environment. At 18 months, infants begin to recognize themselves in the mirror and by 22 months can correctly label their image in pictures or videos. By the 18th to 24th month, toddlers have a sufficiently developed self-concept to provide a basis for the organization of their memories about their personal experiences. It gets better when they develop enough language skills to further inquire from others to increase their self-knowledge and create an autobiographical memory. This way, they get to appreciate themselves as distinct from others. A child’s cognitive self emerges when he is two years old, and it has been found that the earliest memories that people can remember is at that age. From that age onwards, memories are accumulated and linked to the child’s growth and development and his improvement in maintaining information in his memory storage. The preschool child is at a very tender stage when self-concept is being formed. For many children, it is the time when they join another social environment outside their family circle, which is usually a children’s center like a day care or preschool. Here, they learn more about their self-concept as they interact with other children. Children as young as two classify themselves and other people as belonging to one of two genders. They learn how their gender differentiates them and what society expects of them as a boy or girl. This is because boys and girls are treated in different ways. From the time they are born, baby girls are considered fragile and they are handled very gently. Boys, on the other hand, are handled less gently as they are tossed in the air and held upright from a younger age to demonstrate their power and strength. By age three, girls develop skills at talking earlier than boys and these talking skills are utilized to explore relationships with others. They are more likely than boys to deploy language strategies that demonstrate attentiveness, responsiveness, and support. Boys at the same age are not as verbal. They use more strategies that demand attention, give orders, and establish dominance. No matter what gender they belong to, young children must be allowed to express themselves and acknowledged for their ideas. This facilitates the healthy development of their self-esteem as they realize that their voices can be heard and their ideas are valued. At this age, the basic task is to gain competence and initiative. The child has a boundless supply of energy which permits him to learn all kinds of activities and ideas quickly and avidly. In discovering that he is capable of doing many things, he gets to attempt a lot of tasks that he may not be ready for. In the event that he fails in such tasks, he may become overwhelmed by resignation, guilt and anxiety. However, if he succeeds, his confidence is strengthened and this results in a healthy self-esteem. In any case, his self-concept is made richer by the knowledge of the tasks he can or cannot do at the moment, his emotions when he has failed/ succeeded in the tasks, the way he worked on the tasks and with others. The preschool age is characterized by enthusiasm at proving one’s competencies by initiating or volunteering for tasks. The child is out to pursue evidences that he or she is already a “big” boy or girl and no longer a helpless baby. However, the reality that his youth brings many limitations to his abilities that need more time and practice to be honed, usually sets in and may cause him frustration and guilt at failing. If he is not able to deal with the frustration properly, then he may defer from taking initiative and let others decide things for him. Worse, he may question his capabilities and affect his self-esteem. Many researchers have attempted to study self-concept and self-esteem by providing measures for it. With younger children, it is quite difficult to measure because assessment and evaluation of something that is abstract entails verbal and written skills. For preschool children these skills are not yet strengthened and are yet to be mastered. As these preschoolers grow, they may be subjected to greater pressures from school. Studies have investigated the changes in children’s self-concept from the kindergarten to primary school. Self-concept was found to be relatively stable during Kindergarten but declined in strength as they go through primary school. One explanation for this is that for younger children in preschool or Kindergarten, they are made to learn about themselves through the theme of “Me, Myself & I” and enjoy more nurturance from their teachers as compared to primary students who are subjected to academic pressure. Adults tend to be more caring to younger children on the assumption that they still cannot take care of themselves as opposed to older ones who are expected to be more self-reliant. Consistent with their cognitive development level, preschool children construct concrete cognitive representations of themselves as part of their self-concept. However, these only consist of observable, surface level attributes. This can be seen in how they draw their self-portraits, emphasizing features that they see in themselves. At this stage, they have difficulty differentiating between actual and desired attributes and incorporating social comparison information when they evaluate themselves, so most of the time, their self-evaluations are positive. For some children who encounter negative experiences such as the divorce of parents or being afflicted with illness, they may tend to blame themselves for such unfortunate events and see themselves as undesirable. For these children, they develop negative self-concepts. It is not until middle childhood when they develop a more balanced and realistic evaluation of themselves as they learn to incorporate objective evaluations from others. This implies that children’s self-concepts grow to be more accurate with age and more developed cognitive functioning. Socialization is another factor that shapes one’s self-esteem. When preschoolers interact with their peers, they learn about how others deal with different situations such as play, work, doing chores and other activities. When they observe the behavior of others and see its consequences on other people, things and the environment, they learn vicariously and get to evaluate themselves if they would behave the same or differently. For example, if a playmate refuses to share a toy with another friend, and that friend cries, a child observes the situation and assesses if he will share the toy himself or not. This is when he learns empathy. The learning that he will derive from this event becomes part of his self-concept. The same is true in his learning from varied situations. It will come from his observations of how people behave and his own reactive behavior. As a child grows, his knowledge of his own strengths and weaknesses becomes more firm and fortified as he grows older. He becomes more confident of the things he can do and cannot do. If he is recognized for his strengths, the more he will hone his skills, but with his weaknesses, if he will be supported and motivated to turn it into another strength, then he will have less weaknesses and gain more confidence and improve his self-esteem. However, if he is criticized for such weaknesses and not encouraged constructively to improve himself, then such weakness may even turn into an insecurity adversely affecting his self-esteem. With the continued support of the child’s family and teachers, a child’s will develop a more positive and stable self-concept. On the other hand, if a child is neglected in any way, the self-concept that he forms will be negative in that he may believe that people around him do not care enough for him because he is not worthy. He may come to believe that he is the one at fault and blame himself for driving people away. If this belief continues as he grows and is not corrected with other people’s validation of his self-worth, then he may develop a negative paradigm that will dictate how he would think and behave. It will affect his own views and attitudes on things. In conclusion, a young child’s self-concept, being at the stage of being formed, needs to be nurtured in such a way that the child gains positive self-knowledge. Not only should he know basic information about himself such as his name, birthday, family, friends, etc. but more abstract knowledge such as the emotions that go through him in different situations, his tendencies to behave in certain ways according to circumstances, his strengths and weaknesses. This is where the child’s family and school come in to support his growth and development and steer him in the right direction with appropriate guidance and influence. The child should have positive experiences that would be stored as good and happy memories as well as springboard to other life experiences he is yet to encounter. Although there are certain negative experiences that are inevitable, these should be processed properly to the child so he understands the reasons why it had to happen. It should also be balanced with positive messages of how such negative experience can be turned into a valuable learning experience. For example, with the death of a parent as an inevitable negative life experience, the child should be able to understand why (i.e. the parent was ill; there was an accident, etc.) it happened. It should also be explained to the child that the experience can bring much pain to him and his family, but eventually, the pain will be lessened and they have to move on and survive without that parent. The child should also recognize the fact that because only one parent lives, he should learn more skills to be more self-reliant. If handled well, this negative experience of death can serve to be a valuable lesson to improve the child’s self-concept. Since young children are very impressionable, adults should take every opportunity to help them develop healthy self-concepts that will in turn develop healthy self-esteem. This will give them more chances to be successful in their lives. In essence, much of the development of children’s self-concept depends on their experiences and how adults around them will support them in their journey through life. References Chuahan, G., & Shastri, J. (2005). Gender learning: The what, why, who and how of gender as a learning process. Social Science International, 21(2), 15-22. Davis-Kean, P. E., & Sandler, H. M. (2001). A meta-analysis of measures of self-esteem for young children: A framework for future measures. Child Development , 72(3), 887- 906. Marsh, H.W., Ellis, L.A. and Craven, R.G. (2002) How Do Preschool Children Feel About Themselves? 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