From Neurons to Neighborhoods The Science of Early Childhood Development (2000) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 164-182
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From page 164... ...
Rejected children are overrepresented among adults with psychiatric problems (Cowen et al., 1973) , among children who do poorly at school (Cole et al.,
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From page 165... ...
Efforts to improve the quality of peer relations have focused largely on school-age children, with few exceptions (Webster-Stratton, 1990~. Yet problematic patterns of social interaction can be discerned well before school entry.
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From page 166... ...
, can be an important source of child care (see Chapter 11) , and, in general, are an important influence on children's emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development (Dunn, T., 1993; Dunn and Kendrick, 1982~.
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From page 167... ...
Cognitive development also facilitates the growth of early peer skills. Interactional skill depends.
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From page 168... ...
168 FR OM NE UR ONS TO NEIGHB ORHO ODS tions of withdrawn, submissive children show that peers rebuff them more than they do socially outgoing children (Rubin, 1985~. Both cognitive and social theories of peer relations argue that conflict (at least a certain amount of it)
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From page 169... ...
The clue to these contradictory findings seems to lie in the quality of care that is provided and, in particular, in the sensitivity of the relationships that caregivers establish with their young charges. Higher-quality child care is generally related to more competent peer relationships during early childhood and into the school years (Holloway and Reichart-Erickson, 1989; Howes, 1990; NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, submitted; Phillips et al., 1987a)
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From page 170... ...
Beyond attachment security, parents do many other things that support or impede their children's relations with other children. Parents of socially competent toddlers and preschoolers believe that helping their children learn to play well is part of their role as parents (Goodnow et al., 1985~.
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From page 171... ...
The intriguing possibility that training parents in these peer monitoring and coaching skills could be an effective intervention for young children who appear to be getting off to a poor start in peer relations is suggested by Webster-Stratton's work. In a small-scale intervention that was subjected to a randomized trial, she effectively trained parents of preschoolers who were displaying serious conduct problems to modify their children's behavior (Webster-Stratton, 1990; Webster-Stratton et al., 1989~.
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From page 172... ...
72 FR OM NE UR ONS TO NEIGHB ORHO ODS children discussed earlier in relation to regulatory capacities who do find it a real struggle to fee! comfortable with other children (Fox et al., in press; Kagan et al., 1987~.
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From page 173... ...
We discussed this dimension of self-regulation, which is often called "inhibitory" or "effortful control," earlier in the context of how temperament affects the young child's emerging capacity for emotion regulation (see Chapter 5~. At least within the range that is typically seen among children, this dimension of temperament supports children in their attempts to play nicely and make friends (Fabes et al., 1999~.
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From page 174... ...
Children born with very low birthweight also have difficulties with social skills and are disproportionately rated as exhibiting both internalizing (depressive-anxious) and externalizing (hyperactive-aggressive)
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From page 175... ...
Finding settings in which children play competently with others, monitoring play to avert disasters, coaching children in what works, attributing their failures to situations and not to flaws in the children themselves, and searching for creative solutions that build on what they can do well seem to build social competence for most children. Good child care and preschool programs do these things, effectively providing universal interventions for all children who attend them.
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From page 176... ...
But we don't know whether or when the factors that get very young children in trouble with their peers begin to constrain the pathways they walk on the way to adulthood. What is fairly clear is that beginning in the preschool years, the social reasoning of rejected children, the skill or lack of it they display in social interaction, their ability to control their behaviors and emotional outbursts, and the nature of their interactions and relationships with adults (in particular parents)
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From page 177... ...
This is a complex story that illustrates the extent to which individual differences among children interact with their early environments in and out of the home to produce adaptive or maladaptive behavior patterns. It is quite clear that young children who have failed to master the early regulatory tasks of learning to manage interpersonal conflict and modulate aggressive and disruptive impulses are more likely than their self-regulated peers to display early conduct problems.
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From page 178... ...
178 FR OM NE UR ONS TO NEIGHB ORHO ODS ity, and substance abuse, suggesting a genetic component (Rutter et al., in press; Webster-Stratton, 1990~. These children also appear to process information from social encounters in ways that are less common among children without behavior problems.
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From page 179... ...
, which is generally focused on parenting but is increasingly moving into child care environments, is also emerging (see Box 7-1) and should be a high priority for future intervention research.
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From page 180... ...
For example, shy children, compared with those who are rambunctious and highly active, tend to have different patterns of relationships with other children. As American culture becomes ever more diverse, a higher priority needs to be granted to research on cultural issues in peer acceptance, rejection, and friendship and their effects on the social development of young children who are increasingly experiencing culturally diverse groups of peers in their child care and early education settings.
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From page 181... ...
MAKING FRIENDS AND GETTING ALONG WITH PEERS 18 problems and criminality can be traced back to the preschool years provides a tantalizing opportunity for preventive interventions. On the other hand, many children who display early warning signs of high levels of peer aggression and hostility, persistent noncompliance, and callousness to other's distress, for example, become perfectly normal school-age children who go on to productive adult lives.
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From page 182... ...
This spectrum of possibilities is well captured by coinciding evidence of both the remarkably rapid brain development that characterizes the early childhood period and the brain's lifelong capacity for growth and change. The balance between the enduring significance of early brain development and its impressive continuing plasticity lies at the heart of the current controversy about the effects on the brain of early experience.
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