Social Concepts of Children Six to Twelve Years of Age

The child's ability to identify facial expressions representing certain emotional states improves with age, as has been noted already. Actual objects may be identified as to use by the age of from two and a half to three and a half years. Simple words such as ball, hat, and stove can be defined by the age of five. The understanding of abstract words is a later development. Only at age twelve can the average child define two of four words such as constant, courage, charity, and defend.

Such concepts as playing fairly, being kind, helping others, and the like have their beginnings in the early pre-school years. Normally they are well developed before the advent of puberty. We must not conclude, however, that having an accurate knowledge of certain social concepts insures their operation in the daily lives of children. Often a notable discrepancy is found between knowledge and overt behavior.

Social Contacts and Adjustment of Later Childhood

Entrance upon school, provides stimuli to many social reactions. The first reactions of children to school are not necessarily complete indications of their social development. Thus, a one-year study of forty seven-year-old boys just entering school showed that thirteen were confident, sixteen indifferent, and eleven were shy. The early over-submissiveness to the teacher's authority tended to disappear during the first six weeks. Considerable disobedience was found, even though the authority of the teacher was clearly recognized and not disputed. Often difficulties arose because the boys did not know exactly what was expected of them, or because they misunderstood the meaning of a given command.

Various schemes for classifying children's social contacts have been devised. One type of classification divides social contacts into, five principal classes. (1) Protective contacts are those in which the shy and submissive or uncertain child attaches himself to the selfassertive. If anything happens to break up the association, the timid child seeks someone else to whom he may attach himself. (2) Social contacts may reveal a certain kind of devotion in which a beloved or popular child is the center of a group, not because of any marked leadership, but because of his gentle, friendly, attractive ways which make so many children like him. (3) Social contacts also may be those of the "leader." (4) Sometimes they show the "despot." (5) A fifth type is that of the child who is socially unsuccessful. Social contacts, characterized as a despotism, tend to diminish by the time children finish kindergarten or enter first grade. Force as a controlling element becomes socially unacceptable and many children give it up. The socially unsuccessful child often is the one who has some physical defect or who has been badly neglected, having torn, dirty, or ill-fitting clothing. Often such children become trouble-makers in school. By the beginning of the school years the range of the child's social reactions is vast indeed. By the age of twelve years, nearly every type of social response has appeared, although the range and complexity of the situations evoking them are far from the scope shown in later adolescence or adulthood.