Parental Behaviors & Child Development

When people consider the development of children during their toddler through middle childhood years, they tend to think of the large physical milestones like toilet training or smaller physical accomplishments like a child's learning to dress herself and tie her own shoes.

But the years between two and six are as important for cognitive and emotional development as they are for physical development. In fact, of course, physical, cognitive, and emotional development are all linked to each other in iterative ways. They do not occur in isolation from each other but rather a child's growing social skills affect her emotional needs, which in turn affect her cognitive ability, and all of these are affected by physical development and well-being (Caplan & Caplan, 1984, p. 19).

Not only do different aspects of a young child's development affect each other, but the child is affected by those people who are an important part of her daily life. This includes primarily parents, siblings, any other relatives who live with the child and primary caregivers such as babysitters and childcare workers. What is perhaps less obvious but just as important a dynamic in determining how a child develops emotionally during this period is how the child affects the adults around her. Children are, while relatively powerless, certainly not passive. They do not simply mirror the world around them but act upon it. Thus it is obvious that the attitudes, values, and behaviors of parents toward their child

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heightened emotional sensitivity cannot be divorced from other development issues. There are, for example, important links between cognitive development and emotional development. A child who has not yet acquired an understand of causality, for example, cannot understand the connections between a broken toy and tears - anymore than she can understand the connection between a broken toy and a long drop to a hard surface. The connection between one event and another, that understanding of causality, is an essential part of emotional development (Berk, 1999, p. 371). Understanding emotional causality is an especially complex and difficult concept between the connections between cause and effect are so multifaceted. A full cup of milk that is tipped over will obey the laws of gravity every single time. But sometimes such an action will provoke anger in a watching adult, sometimes merely aggravation, and sometimes a laugh. Even as children are learning to expect consistent responses from the physical world around them, they are learning to expect inconsistent emotional responses (Wilson, 1994, p. 171). Part of what a parent needs to do during these years of a child's life is to help provide a pathway through the complexities of emoti

Category: Psychology - P