Lifespan Development. Tara L. Kuther

112 words

      At 24 months: 118 words

       b. Graph 2

      Data for one child are shown. Values are approximations.

      At age 18.5 months: 62 words

      At age 19 months: 63 words

      At age 19.5 months: 75 words

      At age 20 months: 110 words

      At age 20.25 months: 180 words

      6 Socioemotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

      Tara L. Kuther

      BSIP/UIG via Getty Images

      As a newborn, Terrence expressed distress by spreading his arms, kicking his legs, and crying. When he did this, his mother or father would scoop him up and hold him, trying to comfort him. Terrence quickly began to prefer interacting with attentive adults who cared for him. Soon Baby Terrence began to smile and gurgle when held. In turn, Terrence’s parents played with him and were delighted to see his animated, excited responses. As a toddler, his emerging language skills enabled Terrence to express his needs in words. He quickly learned that words are powerful tools that can convey emotions (“I love you, Mommy”). Without realizing it, Terrence used words to help him manage strong emotions and difficult situations. For example, he distracted himself from stressful stimuli, like the neighbor’s scary dog, by singing to himself. Terrence could express his ideas and feelings to everyone around him, making for new and more complex relationships with his parents and siblings.

      As Terrence illustrates, in the first 2 years of life, babies learn new ways of expressing their emotions. They become capable of new and more complex emotions and develop a greater sense of self-understanding, social awareness, and self-management. These abilities influence their interactions with others and their emerging social relationships. These processes collectively are referred to as socioemotional development. In this chapter, we examine the processes of socioemotional development in infancy and toddlerhood.

      Learning Objectives

       6.1 Summarize the psychosocial tasks of infancy and toddlerhood.

       6.2 Describe emotional development in infancy and identify contextual and cultural influences on emotional development in infants and toddlers.

       6.3 Identify the styles and stability of temperament, including the role of goodness of fit in infant development.

       6.4 Describe how attachment develops in infancy and toddlerhood.

       6.5 Differentiate the roles of self-concept, self-recognition, and self-control in infant development.

      Psychosocial Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

      According to Erik Erikson (1950), as we travel through the lifespan, we proceed through a series of psychosocial crises, or developmental tasks. As discussed in Chapter 1, how well each crisis is resolved influences psychological development and how the individual approaches the next crisis or developmental task. Erikson believed that infants and toddlers progress through two psychosocial stages that influence their personality development: trust versus mistrust and autonomy versus shame and doubt.

      Trust Versus Mistrust

      From the day she was born, each time Erin cried, her mother or father would come to her bassinet and hold her, check her diaper, and feed her if necessary. Soon, Erin developed the basic expectation that her parents would meet her needs. According to Erikson (1950), developing a sense of trust versus mistrust is the first developmental task of life. Infants must develop a view of the world as a safe place where their basic needs will be met. Throughout the first year of life, infants depend on their caregivers for food, warmth, and affection. If parents and caregivers attend to the infant’s physical and emotional needs and consistently fulfill them, the infant will develop a basic sense of trust in her caregivers and, by extension, in the world in general.

      However, if caregivers are neglectful or inconsistent in meeting the infant’s needs, he will develop a sense of mistrust, feeling that he cannot count on others for love, affection, or the fulfillment of other basic human needs. The sense of trust or mistrust developed in infancy influences how people approach the subsequent stages of development. Specifically, when interaction with adults around them inspires trust and security, babies are more likely to feel comfortable exploring the world, which enhances their learning, social development, and emotional development.

      Toddlers take pride in completing this task—tooth brushing—all by himself, developing a sense of autonomy.

      iStock/dszc

      Autonomy Versus Shame and Doubt

      Two-and-a-half-year-old Sarah is an active child who vigorously explores her environment, tests new toys, and attempts to learn about the world on her own. At dinnertime, she wants to feed herself and gets angry when her parents try to feed her. Each morning, she takes pleasure in attempting to dress herself and expresses frustration when her mother helps. Erin is progressing through the second stage in Erikson’s scheme of psychosocial development—autonomy versus shame and doubt—which is concerned with establishing a sense of autonomy, or the feeling that one can make choices and direct oneself.

      Cultural Influences on Development

      Father–Infant Interactions

      Fathers tend to have different interaction styles than mothers. Father–infant interaction tends to be play-oriented. This is true of fathers in Western contexts as well as those in non-Western contexts, such as the Kadazan of Malaysia and Aka and Bofi of Central Africa

      Gerard Fritz/Science Source

      We know a great deal about the influence of mother–infant relationships on infant attachment and adjustment, but infants also develop attachments to their fathers (Lickenbrock & Braungart-Rieker, 2015). At birth, fathers interact with their newborns much like mothers do. They provide similar levels of care by cradling the newborn and performing tasks like diaper changing, bathing, and feeding the newborn (Combs-Orme & Renkert, 2009). This is true of fathers in Western contexts as well as those in non-Western contexts, such as the Kadazan of Malaysia and Aka and Bofi of Central Africa (Hewlett & MacFarlan, 2010; Tamis-LeMonda, Kahana-Kalman, & Yoshikawa, 2009; Ziarat Hossain, Roopnarine, Ismail, Hashmi, & Sombuling, 2007).

      Early in an infant’s life, however, fathers and mothers develop different play and communicative styles. Fathers tend to be more stimulating while mothers are more soothing (Feldman, 2003; Grossmann et al., 2002). Father–infant play is more physical and play oriented compared with the social exchanges centered on mutual gaze and vocalization that is characteristic of mother–infant play (Feldman, 2003). Fathers tend to engage in more unpredictable rough-and-tumble play that is often met with more positive reactions and arousal from infants; when young children have a choice of an adult play partner, they tend to choose their fathers (Feldman, 2003; Lamb & Lewis, 2016).

      Differences in mothers’ and fathers’ interaction styles appear in many cultures, including France, Switzerland, Italy, and India, as well as among White non-Hispanic, African American, and Hispanic American families