Introduction

• Between the ages of 2 1/2 and 5 years, children experience a dramatically expanding world. One sees how children in this age group:
1. Begin to develop true peer relationships.
2. Exhibit an increase in self-reliance, self-control, and self-regulation.
3. Begin to explore adult roles.
4. Begin to show more organization and coherence in their behavior.
5. Display a greater capacity to be connected to peers.

• The Child's Expanding World
  Through day-care, nursery school, and kindergarten experiences, children come into contact with peers. Peer relationships formed in these settings play an important role in children's social and emotional development. Sibling relationships become increasingly important during this period. All of these new developments influence each other.
  
• Moving toward Greater Self-Reliance
1. Preschool-aged children develop increased initiative (Erikson) and self-efficacy (Bandura). Greater self-reliance is supported by several capacities of young children:
• Motor skills allow for greater ability to do for the self.
• Language and other cognitive abilities enable them to think, plan, and solve problems in new ways.
• A growing ability to tolerate delays and frustrations.
• An emerging capacity for imagination and fantasy play allows for a sense of power/control and movement toward independence.
2. Some children have difficulty with the move toward greater independence. A history of secure attachment makes it easier for children to move in this direction. A distinction must be made between instrumental dependency (need for help from adults when trying to solve complex problems or perform difficult tasks) and emotional dependency (an abnormal need for continual reassurance and attention from adults).
• Self-Control and Self-Regulation
  By the end of the preschool years, as discussed by Maccoby, children are beginning to show signs of self-control and self-management that involve the ability to reflect on one's own actions and to inhibit actions as well as adjust behavior to situational demands. These signs, which continue to differentiate and develop into middle childhood, include the ability to:
  
• Weigh future consequences when deciding how to act.
• Stop and think of possible ways around an obstacle that is blocking a goal.
• Control emotions when goal-directed activities are blocked.
• Concentrate and focus on what is needed to reach a desired objective.
• Perform more than one action at a time.

• Cognitive advances have a profound effect on the development of a child's sense of self.
• Changes in Self-Understanding
1. By age 3 or 4, children are no longer limited to experiencing the self through direct action. Instead, they can observe and direct the self in action and can alternate between observation and action. Thus, they can pretend and at the same time observe themselves pretending.
2. There are still some limitations in areas such as simultaneously understanding different aspects of the self, understanding the selves of others, and self-reflection.
• Self-Constancy and Self-Esteem
1. Self-constancy (a sense that the self endures) develops during the preschool years as a result of experiences with parents and their rules. Children start to think of themselves as having dispositions that are consistent across time.
2. Preschoolers also begin to develop a level of self-esteem (positive thoughts and feelings about the self) based on their own unique experiences. Most think of themselves as good, likeable, kind, and competent.
• Gender and the Self
1. Gender is a key aspect of the preschooler's emerging self-concept. It is a central organizing theme in development. Development of a gender-based self-concept involves:
• The gradual adoption of sex-typed behavior - actions that conform to cultural expectations about what is appropriate for boys and for girls.
• The acquisition of a gender-role concept - a beginning knowledge of the cultural stereotypes regarding males and females.
• An emotional commitment to one's gender, reinforced by the process of identification with parents.
2. Changes in Sex-Typed Behavior
• Sex-typed behavior develops gradually. By age 2, children show gender-related preferences in toys. By age 3 to 4, sex-typed behavior greatly increases, and children know a great deal about which objects and activities are "masculine" and "feminine" (categorical thinking).
• Parents and peers generally support gender-appropriate play and show disapproval of gender-inappropriate play during this time. Mothers are often more accepting of "cross-gender" play.
3. Developing a Gender-Role Concept
• By age 4 to 5, children are acquiring a gender-role concept, consisting mainly of concrete aspects of gender roles, such as occupations and activities. The male role is more instrumental and the female role is more expressive. As sex-typed behavior and knowledge of gender roles increase, so does gender segregation in the preschool classroom and among friends.
• Sex-reassignment after toddlerhood tends to be quite difficult, implying that there is a sensitive period for the formation of gender-role concepts.
4. Understanding Gender Constancy
• An understanding of gender constancy emerges during the preschool years, though the exact age at which it appears is subject to debate. An understanding of gender constancy is related to the concepts of conservation and appearance-reality problems discussed in Chapter 9; the child grasps that gender remains the same despite superficial transformations (e.g., changes in hairstyle and dress).
• The earliest age at which children show an understanding of gender constancy depends on how it is assessed.
5. Explaining Sex-Typed Behavior and Gender-Role Development
• Social learning theorists explain these developments partly in terms of the reward and punishments that children experience for appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
• Cognitive theorists see gender-role learning as one example of children's emerging understanding of categories, scripts, and schemas.
• Gender schema theory combines elements of cognitive and social learning theory.
• Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes developmental changes in relationships with parents. Chodorow's theory emphasizes the notion that boys separate from their mothers in terms of identification which highlights the differences between them (separateness), and girls stress how they and the mother are similar (connectedness).

• Competence with Peers
1. During the preschool period children begin to interact in a sustained, coordinated way. Successful entry into a peer group and competence with peers are complex matters.
2. The child who possesses social competence engages and responds to peers with positive feelings, is of interest to peers, is highly regarded by peers, can take the lead as well as follow, is able to sustain the give-and-take of peer interaction.
• Early Friendships
1. By about age 4, children have the capacity to maintain friendships through their own efforts.
2. Children who are friends behave differently with each other than they do with non-friends as they have more frequent positive exchanges, they are more cooperative in problem-solving tasks, they disagree with one another more often, their conflicts are less heated, result in fairer solutions, and do not lead to separation.
• The Importance of Peer Relationships
1. The peer group is an important setting because it helps children learn about concepts of fairness, reciprocity, and cooperation; it helps children learn to manage interpersonal aggression; it helps children learn about cultural norms and values, such as gender roles; and experiences with peers can greatly affect a child's self-concept and future interactions.
2. Increased, successful peer interactions can sometimes help children overcome developmental problems by enhancing social skills and by building confidence.

• Young Children's Understanding of Emotion
1. Their understanding and use of emotional words expands rapidly, and preschoolers can understand complex emotional concepts (e.g., jealousy).
2. By the age of 4, children know that emotions are influenced not only by what happens, but also by what people expect to happen or think happened. Children of this age have difficulty, however, distinguishing between real and apparent emotion. Between the ages of 5 to 8 years they become able to integrate situational cues and visible expressions of emotion to infer how someone feels.
• The Growth of Emotional Regulation
1. During the preschool years, emotional regulation shows significant improvements. It is the capacity to control and direct emotional expression, to maintain organized behavior in the face of strong emotions, and to be guided by emotional experiences
2. Tolerating Frustration
• The ability to tolerate frustration, to avoid becoming so upset that emotions get out of control, begins to appear around age 2 and improves through the preschool years. This improvement is probably due to increased ability to suppress feelings and expanded strategies for dealing with frustrating situations. It affects relationships with parents.
• Another form of tolerance for frustration is delay of gratification, the ability to forgo an immediate reward in order to have a better reward later.
3. Showing Flexibility in Emotional Expression
   Ego resiliency emerges during early childhood and is marked by the ability to adapt to the emotional demands of different situations--using self-restraint in some, being impulsive and expressive in others.
   
4. Internalizing Standards
   Preschoolers become aware of standards for behavior and the use of those standards as guides for words and actions. Internalization of these standards into the self is the bridge from control of the child by others to the child's self-regulation. Parents help encourage this change in preschool children by changing their socialization techniques as the preschool period progresses. It involves reasoning and persuasion.
   
• The Self-Evaluative Emotions
  Internalization of standards affects the emotional experiences of a preschooler. The child can now feel genuine guilt and pride, two emotions that involve evaluating the self against internalized standards.
  
• Emotional Development, Aggression, and Prosocial Behavior
1. As the capacities for self-management and emotional regulation unfold in children, there are changes in both aggression (forceful, negative acts directed against others or their possessions) and prosocial behavior (positive feelings and acts directed toward others to benefit them).
2. Developmental Changes in Aggression
• Children are not capable of true aggression until they are cognitively advanced enough to understand the consequences of their actions. Negative behavior toward peers, often object-centered, appears during toddlerhood. Interpersonal aggression, including aggression with the sole intent of causing distress, becomes common during the preschool years.
• During the late preschool and early elementary school years, children's overall level of aggression declines because of a drop in instrumental aggression (use of aggression as a means to get something).
• Hostile aggression (aggression aimed solely at hurting someone else) continues but changes its form during the elementary school years, becoming more verbal and less physical.
3. The Development of Empathy and Altruism
• The development of empathy (experiencing the emotions of another person) and altruism (acting unselfishly to aid someone else) parallels that of aggression because the same cognitive abilities underlie all three behaviors.
• During infancy, children show a primitive capacity for empathy. In toddlerhood, they become able to engage in purposeful helping behaviors. In early childhood, they become able to take the perspective of others and therefore to respond appropriately to others' needs.
• Preschool children's prosocial behavior is greatly influenced by their parents' style of caregiving. Parents must clearly state the consequences for the victim, explain to the child principles and expectations regarding kindness, and convey the entire message with intensity of feeling about the issues involved.

• Play is an important capacity for preschoolers because it is a setting in which skills can be tried out and roles and feelings can be explored. Children have an intrinsic motivation to play; play does not need to be taught or reinforced.
• Play allows children to be active explorers of their environments, active creators of new experiences, and active participants in their own development. It is a social workshop-a place to try out new roles alone and with other children, which expands the sense of self. It is also an arena for emotional expression.
• Play and Mastery of Conflict
1. Play is the preschool child's foremost tool for dealing with conflict and mastering what is frightening or painful.
2. Play is also an arena for working through ongoing developmental issues, such as the power differential between the child and parents.
3. Pretend solutions provide a way for preschoolers to confront a problem actively and are often precursors of more mature problem-solving strategies.
4. A history of parental support and nurturance can help children to find healthy solutions to issues and conflicts through play.
• Role Playing
1. Play also provides preschoolers with a chance to try out various social roles. Skill at social fantasy play in the preschool years is generally an indicator of a preschooler's overall quality of adjustment and social competence.
2. Cultural factors influence the quantity, form, and themes of young children's social fantasy play.

• Important Aspects of Parenting in the Preschool Period
1. Along with the basic qualities of parenting such as warmth, emotional responsiveness, and a sharing of positive feelings with the child, some new qualities in parents also become important during the preschool years, which help the child with social competence.
2. The parental qualities which become important include: consistency in the parents' approach to discipline; agreement between the parents concerning child-rearing practices; gradually giving the child more responsibility, while still being available to help if needed; displaying clear roles and values in their own actions; and showing the flexible self-control they hope to promote in their child.
3. Some of the characteristics of parents who raise well-adjusted preschoolers are summed up in what Baumrind calls authoritative parenting. These parents are nurturant, responsive, and supportive, yet they also set firm limits for their children. Their children generally are energetic, emotionally responsive to peers, curious, and self-reliant.
4. Other parenting styles that Baumrind has identified are not generally associated with such positive characteristics in children.
• Permissive parenting is when the parents fail to set firm limits or require appropriately mature behavior. Their children are more likely to be impulsive, low in self-control, and lacking in self-reliance.
• Authoritarian parenting is when parents are unresponsive to children's wishes and inflexible and harsh in controlling behavior. This pattern is related to apprehension, frustration, and passive hostility.
5. Cultural context is important when considering parenting outcomes. Other context issues with behavioral impact include amount of stress, intensity and distribution of marital conflict, and divorce.
• Identification with Parents
1. Psychoanalytic theory holds that children strive to be like their parents in actions, thoughts, and feelings. This process is identification. It influences preschoolers' development of self by allowing them to internalize control previously provided by parents, along with parental values and other characteristics.
2. Identification cannot take place until the child has the cognitive ability to understand parents' feelings and attitudes.
3. Security of attachment during infancy and toddlerhood is related to a child's openness to socialization and identification with family norms and values during the preschool years.
4. Committed compliance leads to true internalization. Not aided by coercive measures of compliance.

• The Coherence of the Self
1. By the preschool period, children's behavior reflects a coherent underlying self. Clusters of characteristics--such as self-esteem, self-control, and empathy--tend to go together in a logical, consistent way.
2. Parents' behavior helps explain why certain clusters of characteristics tend to be found together. Parents can initiate and support opportunities for children to play with others; self-esteem and self-reliance tend to accompany social competence.
3. Depending on their developmental history, in particular their attachment pattern in infancy, preschoolers have varying expectations about the social world and varying social abilities.
• The Coherence of Behavior over Time
1. There is also logic and coherence to how the child's behavior develops over time. Preschoolers with a history of secure attachment in infancy tend to have certain positive patterns of behavior.
2. Very different, negative behavioral profiles are associated with preschoolers with a history of anxious/resistant attachment. These children have little capacity for flexible self-management, have a great need for contact with teachers, show less prosocial behaviors and are more likely to be targets of bullies.
3. Those with anxious/avoidant attachment are often hostile and aggressive toward others or emotionally isolated.
• Explaining Developmental Coherence
1. The coherence of young children's behavior over time may be explained by the fact that many influences on the child, such as the amount of support the child receives from the parents, continue exerting themselves in much the same ways that they have in the past.
2. Children are increasingly becoming relatively consistent forces in their own development; they tend to elicit certain reactions from others, and those reactions, in turn, reinforce how the child tends to think and act.
3. Preschool teachers also respond in ways that reinforce the emerging personalities of young children. They are warm and accepting with well-managed, self-reliant, and sociable children. They directly promote the acceptance of these children by peers. Teachers are quite controlling of children who are timid or impulsive and are more likely to make allowances (to coddle), thus reinforcing the original pattern.
• Stability and Change in Individual Behavior
1. Personality is a structure that evolves over the early years. Parents strongly influence their child's personality development, beginning with the attachment relationship in infancy. This helps to form a base for resilience and promotes a beginning sense of self-worth and an abiding self of relatedness to others (Erikson's basic trust).
2. During the preschool years, parents build upon this base by supporting the child's independent initiatives, by promoting self-control, and by maintaining a clear parental presence through emotional support and demands for appropriate behavior. Thus, they develop a control system for exerting control over the child.
3. Although the quality of the control system parents establish predicts the child's behavior in the preschool period, fundamental change in children is always possible. Change becomes increasingly difficult, however, as personality stabilizes; assessments of preschoolers predict later behavior quite well, even up to adolescence and early adulthood.
4. See the box regarding investing in preschoolers. Children living in economically disadvantaged environments who participate in preschool intervention programs exhibit a higher level of self-esteem, more positive attitudes toward education, and a stronger belief in themselves as able learners. Long-term benefits of early childhood intervention depend, however, on the quality of the program and the degree of active parental involvement.