Emotional and Social Development

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Observational Task

Emotional and Social Development

After permissions were granted and appropriate supervision arranged I attended Grange Farm primary school in Seacroft, Leeds to observe two children. Child A was aged four and child B nine both were male. I studied their emotional and social development.

Child A

Self Identity

To begin I sat down and talked with child A introducing myself to make him feel more secure. We sat in his normal school environment so that he did not feel pressurised into answering questions or giving responses he felt I was looking for. He was a co-operative child and happy to participate in the study. He was conscientious about his work and became impatient if a task was not carried out properly. For example when playing a memory game that requires taking turns he became agitated if another child did not wait for his proper turn. This showed that he liked things to be organised and structured.

The first question in which I asked was “are you a boy or a girl?” He replied with “a boy”. I checked this statement with an investigation. I held up two pictures, one of a boy and one a girl. I asked him “which one are you?” He then pointed to the boy. Thompson (1975) proposed that most children of the age of two could clearly pick out their own gender if shown several pictures of females and several pictures of males. I then placed a different hairstyle on the picture of the boy to see if he would still recognise it as being a male and thus have a gender concept. Bem (1989) suggests that to understand that boys remained boys and girls remained girls throughout life despite different hair length or clothes the child must have an understanding of genital characteristics. Child A clearly shows this understanding as he could still recognise the boy even when female clothes were put on the male picture.

My second question was “will you be a boy when you grow up?” I asked this to check his understanding of gender stability as proposed by Slaby and Frey (1975). They believed that most children of four understand the concept that they will be the same sex throughout life. Child A replied with “ I will be a daddy” which illustrates that he does have concept of always being a boy. He is associating a “daddy” as been male. This also illustrates that he has gender consistency.

The third question, about his self-identity was “Are you a good boy?” He replied with “my mum says I am a good boy”. I then asked, “do you think you are a good boy?” He replied “yes”. This illustrates that he is aware of himself and his behaviour and has reached the stage known as categorical self as defined by Michael Lewis. This is where he is beginning to put himself into categories in this case being a good boy.

I asked him if he was happy, he replied with “sometimes”. I then asked what he meant by “sometimes”. He replied “ sometimes I don’t like school cos I don’t like to play with all the people”. This illustrates that he has made stronger attachments to particular peers. My final self-identity question to child A was “what makes you happy”, he replied with “when I have friends to play with”, which shows that he enjoys been sociable.

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Friendships and relationships with others

Relationships with peers, particularly those who are not siblings become very important between the ages of two to six. I asked some questions of child A about his relationships. Firstly I asked who his friends were. He named three males but no females. This supports La Freniere, Strayer & Gauthier (1984) view that it is common at the age of four for boys to play with boys and girls to play with girls. They showed that 67% of boys interact with just male peers and 65 % of girls mix with just girls.

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