Social Development Theories

Vygotsky:

Vygotsky says that through play, a child will develop an abstract meaning that is separate from objects in the world. He says that this is a critical feature in the development of higher mental functions. One of his most famous examples is a child wanting to ride a horse, but they can’t. If the child is younger than three years old, they will most likely throw a tantrum. But, if the child is three years old or older, they will most likely pick up a stick and ride it around, pretending that it is a horse. Vygotsky also says that the rules of behavior that go unnoticed in daily life are consciously acquired through play. The child will ignore what their impulse is trying to tell them because of the rules of whatever they are playing.

Piaget:
Piaget believes that play is almost pure assimilation without any attempt to adapt to outer reality. His famous example is a child playing with a block. When a child is playing “airplane” with a block, he/she is unconcerned about what the airplane needs to look like to defy gravity or overcome air pressure. The child is just playing with the blocks, imitating what he/she has seen. However, if a house burned down in the area where a preschool was, then if the child was playing with the blocks, their house might “catch fire.” They would pretend to be firemen, saving the people in the house. Piaget says that as they do this, they are making a serious attempt to accommodate the reality of what they have seen or heard.

Erikson:

Erikson believed that play is very important in the early stages of a child’s development. He says it offers a safe place for a child to go when there are conflicts in the child’s life. He also says that play is a safe world where the consequences are not strong at all and the limits are not rigid. The child can be the authoritarian – the one stopping things, not the one being stopped. The last thing he said was that play affords the exploration and manipulation of ideas and relationships without too much shame, guilt, and doubt.

       

I think Erikson’s theory is most correct. When a little kid is playing by themselves, they don’t really know what is going on in the world around them. They are in their own world, and they feel protected for what is going on in their life. These three theories do not really contradict each other. They have their differences, but they also have their similarities. These theories can work together to help people understand social development in children more thoroughly, but only parts of social development. These theories only cover the play part of social development, not every other aspect of it.

Play

To play means to engage in some sort of physical activity for enjoyment instead of for a serious purpose. There are seven different stages of play. The first stage of play lasts from when a child is born to when they are six months old. They look at adults closely, put things into their mouth, touch things with their hands, and play alone with toys. The second stage lasts from when the child is six months old to when they are one year old. The child explores things through the mouth and hands by touching objects. The look at and imitate adults. They copy adults, like simple games, and explore toys alone. The third stage lasts from when the child is one to when they are one and a half. The child will learn through trial and error and repeat actions that they have liked. They will start to play with grown-ups and start to notice other children. They will play alone. The fourth stage lasts from when the child is one and a half to two years old. They will still explore things with their mouth and learn through trial and error. They will copy adults and other children, and they will look at other children, but they will not play with them. They like playing with adults, as well as themselves, and they like repetitive actions. The fifth stage of play lasts from when a child is three to when a child is four. They will recognize shapes, letter, and colors, and they will solve jigsaw puzzles through a mixture of thinking and trial and error. They will play and take turns with other children, and will play imaginatively. They show more reasoning skills and ask more questions. The sixth stage of play lasts from four to six years old. The child will begin to use and understand symbols for writing and reading, begin to understand simple rules in games. They enjoy table top games, and uses reason. The seventh stage of play lasts from six to eight years of age. The child will like playing in groups and making up their own games with their own rules. They do not like to lose, and they like playing with kids of their own gender. To help children through the different stages, teachers can plan games that involve children playing in groups and cooperating. They can also plan games where the child has to complete something on their own. There are many different games that children can take part in to demonstrate play, many of which they do without knowing it. 

Being Gifted

To be gifted means different things to different people. It does not have a specific definition. To some people, it means being very intelligent and having a high score on an intelligence test. To others, it means being very good at a specific sport or activity. Research says that many people think of gifted children as children that have the potential to achieve beyond what is expected of their same-age peers.

A child that is gifted may not have very good social development. For the first few years of their life, they will be able to socialize with their peers. If the child is intellectually gifted, they may skip grades (in school) and be in higher grades that their same-age peers. Because of this, they may not have great social development because they will not have many friends that are their own age.

Some parents think that their children are special needs children because they are gifted. They think that their children need to be isolated from the rest of the world because they are unlike everyone else, and that they cannot be bothered while they are studying. Other parents don’t think anything of their gifted children. They treat them like a normal child of their age, just a child that is a bit smarter than their peers.

Gifted children tend to be perceived as very smart children by their teachers, though their teachers may treat them unlike the rest of the children in their class because they are younger than the rest of the class. Teachers may give them a workload a little less than the rest of the class, because they do not think that they can handle how much work is being given to the rest of the students.

To help their child integrate socially out of school, parents can take their children to camps of other places where their children can meet new people. This may help their child acquire new friends and help their social development. Parents can take their children to places that their same-age peers would go to, so they might be able to see some of their old friends and maybe reconnect with them.

To help social development, teachers can encourage gifted children to join clubs at school or play sports for a sport team for the school. Joining a club would help the children find out what activities they like and connect with older children from the school.

When in pre-school, children don’t notice who is gifted and who is not. They just see everyone as their friend and that they are all in the same class. They know that every child is different, but they only notice small differences. However, children in high school notice these differences, and some kids are mean to the gifted children because they are not like everyone else.

There is nothing wrong with being gifted, and children should embrace it.