Middle Childhood

The elementary school that I went to for 6 years

Body Growth

Gains in body size during middle childhood extend the pattern of slow, regular growth established during the preschool years. Bones continue to lengthen and broaden, and all twenty primary teeth are replaced by permanent ones. By age nine, girls overtake boys in physical size.

During middle childhood, children from economically advantaged homes are at their healthiest, as a result of good nutrition and rapid development of the immune system. But a variety of health problems do occur, many of which are more prevalent among low-SES children.

The most common vision problem in middle childhood is myopia, or nearsightedness. It is influenced by heredity, early biological trauma, and time spent reading and doing other close work. Myopia is one of the few health conditions that increase with SES.

Overweight and obesity are growing problems in Western nations. Although heredity contributes to obesity, parental feeding practices, maladaptive eating habits, and lack of exercise also play important roles. Obese children are disliked by peers and adults and have serious adjustment problems. They are also at risk for serious health difficulties, including early-onset diabetes. Family-based interventions to change parents’ and children’s eating patterns and lifestyles, including time spent watching TV, are the most effective treatment approaches.

Motor Development and Play

Games with rules become common during the school years. Children, especially boys, also engage in rough-and-tumble play, friendly play-fighting that helps establish a dominance hierarchy among group members. Children’s spontaneous games support cognitive and social development.

Many school-age children are not physically fir. More frequent physical education classes emphasizing individual exercise rather than competition could help ensure that all children have access to the benefits of regular exercise and play.

Piaget’s Theory: The Concrete Operational Stage

Children in the concrete operational stage can reason logically about concrete, tangible information. Mastery of conservation demonstrates reversibility in thinking. School-age youngsters are also better at hierarchical classification and seriation, including transitive inference. Their spatial reasoning improves, as seen in their ability to give directions and to create cognitive maps representing familiar large-scale spaces.

School-age children master logical ideas gradually.

Concrete operational thought is limited in that children do not come up with general logical principles.

Specific cultural practices, especially those associated with schooling, affect children’s mastery of piagetian tasks.

Some researchers believe that the gradual development of operational thought can best be understood within an information-processing framework. According to Case’s neo-piagetian theory, with practice, cognitive schemes demand less attention, freeing up space in working memory for combining old schemes and generating new ones. Eventually, children consolidate schemes into highly efficient, central conceptual structures. On a wide variety of tasks, children move from a focus on only one dimension to coordinating two dimensions to integrating multiple dimensions.

Language Development

During middle childhood, vocabulary continues to grow rapidly, and children have a more precise and flexible understanding of word meanings. They also use complex grammatical constructions and conversational strategies, and their narratives increase in organization, detail, and expressiveness. Language awareness contributes to school-age children’s language progress.

Mastery of a second language must begin in childhood for full development to occur. Bilingualism has positive consequences for cognitive development and certain aspects of language awareness. In Canada, language immersion programs are highly successful n making children proficient in both English and French. In the Unites States, bilingual education that combines instruction in the native tongue and in English supports ethnic minority children’s academic learning.

Individual Differences in Mental Development

Most intelligence tests yield an overall score as well as scores for separate intellectual factors. During the school years, IQ becomes more stable, and it correlates well with academic achievement. The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IV) are widely used individually administered intelligence tests.

Aspects of information processing that are related to IQ include speed of thinking and effective strategy use. Sternberg’s triarchic theory of successful intelligence views intelligence as an interaction of information-processing skills, specific experiences, and contextual (or cultural) influences.

Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences--which identifies at least eight mental abilities, each with a unique biological basis and distinct course of development--has been especially helpful in understanding and nurturing children’s talents. It has also stimulated efforts to define, measure, and foster emotional intelligence.

Heritability estimates and adoption research indicate that intelligence is a product of both heredity and environment. Studies of black children adopted into well-to-do homes indicate that the black-white IQ gap is substantially influenced by environment.

Erickson’s Theory: Industry versus Inferiority

According to Erickson, children who successfully resolve the psychological conflict of industry versus inferiority develop a sense of competence at skills and tasks, a positive but realistic self-concept pride in accomplishment, moral responsibility, and the ability to work cooperatively with age mates.

My experience of middle childhood

I started to go to the elementary school when i was eight(In South Korea, parents usually send their kids to elementary school when they are eight.)

It was a new different experience that I ever had at that time. I met a lot of people, I got to make some friends. And started learning how to live with others and not just for me but for everyone. I started playing sports with friends. And I really thank you to my dad for playing many sports with me which made me a cool guy among my friends. But the only bad thing was the school was also a little bit far from where i lived, so when I came back home, I either played video games, or had to play sports by myself.