Emotions of Early Childhood

Emotions of Early Childhood

Anger

The most common causes of anger in young children are conflicts over playthings, the thwarting of wishes, and vigorous attacks from another child. Children express anger through temper tantrums, characterized by crying, screaming, stamping, kicking, jumping up and down, or striking.

Fear

Conditioning, imitation and memories of unpleasant experiences play important roles in arousing fears, as do stories, pictures, radio and television programs and movies with frightening elements.

At first, a child's response to fear is panic; later, responses become more specific and include running away and hiding, crying, and avoiding frightening situations.

Jealousy

Young children become jealous when they think parental interest and attention are shifting towards someone else in the family, usually a new sibling. Young children may openly express their jealousy or they may show it by reverting to infantile behavior generally trying to be naughty. All such behavior is a bid for attention.

Curiosity

Children are curious about anything new that they see and also about their own bodies and the bodies of others. Their first responses to curiosity take the form of sensory motor exploration; later, as a result of social pressures and punishment, they respond by asking questions.

Envy

Young children often become envious of the abilities or material possessions of another child. They express their envy in different ways. The most common of which is complaining about what they themselves have, by verbalizing wishes to have what the other has or by appropriating the objects they envy.

Joy

Young children derive joy from such things as a sense of physical well-being, incongruous situations, sudden or unexpected noises, slight calamities, playing pranks on others, and accomplishing what seem to them to be difficult tasks. They express their joy by smiling and laughing, clapping their hands, jumping up and down, or hugging the object or person that has made them happy.

Grief

Young children are saddened by the loss of anything they love or that is important to them, whether it be a person, a pet, or an inanimate object, such as a toy. Typically, they express their grief by crying and by losing interest in their normal activities, including eating.

Affection

Young children learn to love the things - people, pets, or objects - that give them pleasure. They express their affection verbally as they grow older but, while they are still young, they express it physically by hugging, patting, and kissing the object of their affection.

Pattern of Early Socialization

Between the ages of two and three years, children show interest in watching other children play and they make social contacts, this is known as parallel play. Following this comes associative play, in which children engage in similar or identical activities with other children. As social contacts increase, they engage in cooperative play. Some of the social patterns followed are imitation, rivalry, cooperation, sympathy, empathy, social approval, sharing and attachment behavior.

They also have some unsocial patterns like negativism, aggressiveness, selfishness, destructiveness, etc.

Play in Early Childhood - Early childhood is often called the toy stage because most play, makes use of toy in one form or another. Children become aware of the fact that certain kinds of play and toys are considered more appropriate for one use than for the others. The amount of play equipment, space provided for this and the interest and involvement is directly related to the socio-economic status of the family.

Sex-Role Typing in Early Childhood - In early childhood, parents and family members are the main agencies of sex-role typing and when they go to pre school or day care centres, the teachers take over. Another important agency for sex role typing comes from the mass media. The stories read to children, TV shows, comics, commercials etc. By the time early childhood draws to a close most children are well typed, especially the boys.

Personality Development- The child self-concept is 'formed within the womb of family relationship', because parents, siblings and other relatives constitute the social world first. Later young children have more and more contacts with peers in neighborhood or preschool. This will have an effect in their self concept and may have negative or positive influences. Some of the factors that affect self concept are parental attitudes, child training methods, parents expectations, ordinal position, environment and appropriate sex-role identification.