When I Think of Child Development

"Safety and security don't just happen, they are the result of collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the most vulnerable citizens in our society, a life free of violence and fear." Nelson Mandela

Thanks everyone for your knowledge and support through this semester. I wish everyone much success :-)

Pro-Social Skills Assesments

Childhood aggression is the best-known behavioral predictor of future social adjustment difficulties. Children with early onset aggression are likely to engage in aggressive behavior throughout the life course . Early aggressive behavior is also strongly associated with later criminal behavior and deviant peer relations, poor school achievement, school dropout, and unemployment. Recently, researchers have focused on determining the positive behaviors that could potentially stop aggressive situations from progressing. These helping behaviors are defined broadly as prosocial skills. Prosocial skills help children make friends and maintain healthy relationships. The ability to behave in prosocial ways is also referred to as social intelligence.

When children interact in a way that is safe, pleasant and inviting to others, they are using prosocial skills and social intelligence or in layman’s terms, “people skills”. Children who are able to get along with others most likely have learned a variety of prosocial skills and have a high level of social intelligence.

Although the typical brain of a child develops more perspective taking ability after the second year of life, children won’t automatically acquire the ability to get along with others. Learning social interaction skills takes practice. The lack of hands-on practice is one of several reasons why it’s hard for two-year-olds to share toys.

If childcare providers and parents want to help children develop social skills such as sharing and taking turns, they must first help children develop empathy and perspective taking skills. When adults read books to children, they can ask children how the characters in the book feel. Playing with puppets is another way to help young children learn about different points of view. Children also learn from watching adults so parents and childcare providers can teach social skills through modeling perspective taking, empathy, self calming skills, etc.

Children need prosocial skills in order to form healthy friendships and other types of relationships. Learning to get along with others and developing social intelligence begins in the first three years of life. The social skills acquired in childhood lay a foundation for adult relationships with coworkers, managers, friends, spouses and children.