Child Development

1. As developmental psychologists believe, fostering positive self-esteem in children is crucial to successful development. Self-esteem is one’s feeling of worth and the extent to which an individual senses his or her attributes and actions as good, desired, and valued. As a parent trying to promote the emergence of healthy self-esteem in my child, there are certain research findings that I would draw on.

For example, in 1892, William James theorized that self-esteem depends on the success a person feels in areas in which they want to succeed. Other theories emphasize that self-esteem originates in how a person thinks others see them as in the combined perceived evaluations of those that are influential in their life. This includes parents, peers, and teachers, all of whom help to determine sense of worth in a person. According to Susan Carter, children with low self-esteem seemed to have trouble disregarding the significance of domains in which they were not skilled. On the contrary, children with high self-esteem minimized the value of those fields in which they were not especially competent. They also gained satisfaction from areas in which they were relatively successful.

Robins and Trzesniewski believe that the self esteem of children is generally high in early elementary school. However, as they enter adolescence, studies show that their self-esteem dips substantially. Parents should help their kids boost their self-esteem back up during these years. When parents unconditionally accept their kids, they will be much less likely to seek acceptance from a peer group and they will develop a healthier self-esteem. It is also important that parents give children a vote in decisions, listen to what they say and support them in their activities. Also, kids mature and develop a healthy self-esteem by experiencing life first hand, even if it means that sometimes they make mistakes. An overprotective parent will need to fight the urge to do for their kids what they can do for themselves, which can stifle their sense of confidence.

High self-esteem is crucial because it continues to be associated with positive development out comes for adolescents. It is linked with low levels of emotional and behavioral problems in the teenage years along with social relationships, success in school, happiness, and some aspects of mental and physical disorders. A high self-esteem also helps to promote positive outcomes and success in adulthood. Therefore, as a parent, it is extremely important to promote self-esteem throughout childhood by showing them a sense of belonging, competence, and most importantly, love.

2. Lawrence Kohlberg was interested in moral reasoning, or why people think the way they do about what’s right and wrong. Influenced by Piaget, who believed that the way people think about morality depends on where they are in terms of cognitive development, Kohlberg proposed that the development of moral reasoning is characterized by a sequence of six stages grouped into three general levels of morality: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. In the the preconventional level, mortality is motivated by the avoidance of punishment and attainment of rewards and children ascribe great importance to the authority of adults. In the conventional level, children conform to the norms of the majority and want to be a part of society, and therefore, follow rules in order to get approval. Finally, in the postconventional level, laws are seen as the result of a social contract and individual principles of conscience arise.

There are many criticisms of Kohlberg’s perspective. For example, according to psychologist Carol Gilligan, because Kohlberg’s theory was based on an all-male sample, the stages reflect a male definition of morality. Men’s morality is based on abstract principles of law and justice, while women’s is based on principles of compassion and care. Another example of a major criticism of Kohlberg’s perspective is that the dilemmas in it are hypothetical. In a real situation the course of action that a person takes will have real consequences and sometimes very unpleasant ones for themselves. Any one person may or may not reason in the same way if they were placed in a real situation. As a result, this brings question to the validity of the results obtained through this research. People may respond very differently to real life situations that they find themselves in than they do to an artificial dilemma presented to them in a research environment.

Finally, one last criticism with Kohlberg’s perspective is the question of whether or not moral reasoning is related to moral behavior. Kohlberg never claimed that there would be a one to one correspondence between thinking and acting, but he does suggest that the two are linked. However, Nucci as well as other psychologists believe that knowing what is right or wrong will not necessarily motivate a person to do what is right. Therefore, it is important to understand how children make judgments about what is good and what is not and to know more about how the motivations to act on those judgments come about.

3. There are many things that parents can do to promote non-stereotypical ideas and behaviors in their child and raise them in a non-sexist manner. Raising a child to be free of gender roles and gender stereotypes can protect children because it sets up a very accepting and supportive environment for the child. As a result, they find their preferences without any external influence, so that they can fully be themselves. In addition, genderless children know exactly what they like at a young and they feel comfortable because they made those decisions. To raise a non-stereotypical child, parents should buy and expose their child to gender neutral toys or toys of all kinds as much as possible. They should try not to be rigid on what they allow their child to play with. To stretch their understanding of what boys should play with and what girls should play with, parents should explain to their children that they aren’t limited to playing to with certain kinds of toys. At the toy store, it is important to take the boy down the aisle of “girl” toys and see if there is anything he might be interested in playing with and to do the opposite for a girl.

Parents that want to raise non-sexist children should also practice this at home in the daily routine. This can be monitored in quality time with the child. Watching sports and playing house with both boys and girls are examples of how parents can implement the absence of specific gender roles within the home. Also, they should make sure that both boys and girls perform the same types of chores such as cooking, cleaning, taking out the garbage, and mowing the lawn.

As children grow into adolescents, they will continue