Introduction
This paper analyzes the skills, or personal capabilities, that contribute to positive social development in children, addressing the school and the family environment qualities that encourage or inhibit this development. These personal capabilities are communication, creativity, and a positive self-image. Here are their detailed characteristics and main features.
Body
A positive self-image helps the children avoid doubt in their abilities. For example, at school, a child with a positive self-image easily makes friends without feeling inferiority towards others or their hostility towards him/her. Communication skills help the children interact with each other and build future relationships. These skills are important to the child to communicate with other personalities. Creativity develops imagination and originality and helps a child distinguish him/herself from others and develop unusual methods of problem-solving. Thus, if a child has created, he or she can find solutions to problems that can not be solved by traditional methods, for example, creativity in respect of avoiding conflicts with others (Wagner,1).
The qualities of the family environment that develop the aforementioned capabilities are encouragement and involvement. Children who feel encouragement in their activities will develop their positive self-image and creativity which will help in developing confidence in their skills. The involvement implicates that the parents will both participate in the process of educating the child and outline the important relationships of identity, generativity, and intimacy: “…in identity, important relationships include one’s peers; in intimacy, one’s relationships include those with significant others; in generativity, it is one’s sharing love and work in the care of the next generation” (Christiansen,133).
The family environment inhibiting the growth of personal capabilities is where a conflict takes place. “In Erikson’s view, these conflicts are centered on either developing a psychological quality or failing to develop that quality. During these times, the potential for personal growth is high, but so is the potential for failure.” (Wagner,1) Thus, if there is a conflict inside the child’s family, his/her social skills may develop both positively, if a child wants to compensate for the lack of communication, or negatively if the child has fear of communication.
The self-image of this child in this situation will also be negative as certain children think they are reasons for which their parents quarrel. Consequently, creativity is either absent as there are no encouragement and involvement or developed in a negative direction allowing the child to reveal anger and negative emotions got from the family conflict.
Conclusion
The qualities of the classroom environment should give an “opportunity to experience classroom life as subjects, rather than objects.” (Parsons, 57) Thus, children should have the freedom to decide rather than be decided for by teachers and chance to share opinions. Such experience helps children not to feel inferior to other children or to teachers and develop their skills, namely communication, self-image, and creativity, for further social life. The quality of the classroom environment that inhibits the development of the skills and personal capabilities could be the one that uses the imbalanced and one-sided authority role of the teacher.
This environment could be described as “The teacher teaches and the students are taught; The teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; The teacher thinks and the students are thought about; The teacher talks and the students listen meekly; The teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined; The teacher chooses and enforces his [her] choices and students comply” (Parsons, 57) Implementing such environment will inhibit the growth of the skills that contribute to the social development of children.
Works cited
Christiansen, S. L., & Palkovitz, R. (1998). Exploring Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory of Development: Generativity and Its Relationship to Paternal Identity, Intimacy, and Involvement in Childcare. 133.
Parsons, E. C. (2003). A Teacher’s Use of the Environment to Facilitate the Social Development of Children. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 18(1), 57+.
Van Wagner, K. (2008). Stages of Psychosocial Development. Web.