3.2 Getting along with others
Just as it is important for adults to understand children’s feelings and behaviour, children must learn to understand other people’s thoughts and feelings. Social cognition is the ability to understand the social world and includes skills in getting along with other people and seeing things from another person’s point of view. The next reading, from the Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development, explains how to support children’s social cognition by helping them learn to take another person’s perspective.
In the next video, Dr. Jean Clinton, from McMaster University, explains that children need a “predictable other” in order to develop their abilities to get along with other people. Children benefit when adults label and acknowledge children’s feelings and model how to handle challenges.
The next three videos highlight children learning to take turns and get along with one another. In the first, watch as two-year-old Greta tries to manage her frustration while learning how to share with her brother. In the second clip, watch as school-aged children in Pakistan happily take turns playing on swings. In the third video, watch as children play with cars and ramps and receive guidance from an adult.
In each of the videos, the children were learning to share and take turns with others without resorting to the use of aggression.
What do you think may have happened if Greta’s mother hadn’t helped her to overcome her emotions while trying to share? Did you notice them mother using any of the techniques that Clinton describes?
The young children in Pakistan are playing on their own at recess, with no adult involvement. How are they organizing themselves? Cooperating? Adjusting to each other’s behaviour?
Think about how playing with others might help children develop self-regulation. What did the adult do to help the children share? What did the children do on their own?
Making friends
Powerful emotions and aggressive impulses are a normal part of early child development. Learning to regulate emotions and behaviours is essential to making friends and getting along with others.
Understanding other people’s feeling is also essential to getting along with others. Children can be aggressive and have conflicts when they cannot understand why others behave as they do. We can help children learn by asking them to talk about other people’s feelings, thoughts, likes, and dislikes in the stories they listen to or in everyday conversations. The ability to take another person’s perspective also develops with age. Once children are about six and up, they become much more interested in playing games with rules. This is related to their increased ability to understand someone else’s point of view.
In the next clip, Dr. Joan Durrant suggests strategies that help children learn to regulate intense emotions like anger so they can manage conflict with others.
Something to try… think about a child you know with challenging behaviour. List all the possibilities you can think of for what might be motivating that child’s behaviour. Entering play with one other child, or a group of children can be natural and easy for some, or very difficult and somewhat stressful for others. We can help guide children who are having a hard time entering play – at the park, in early childhood centres or at gatherings of family or friends.
Watch the next video as two young children navigate their way through some minor conflicts. Notice that the adults appear to hang back and see how the children can manage without an adult stepping in. Pay close attention to the subtle ways the children show their growing awareness of each other.
Entering play with one other child, or a group of children can be natural and easy for some, or very difficult and somewhat stressful for others. We can help guide children who are having a hard time entering play – at the park, in early childhood centres or at gatherings of family or friends.
Dr. Lillian Katz, professor emerita of Early Childhood Education at the University of Illinois, discusses how we can engage with “shy” children.
Responding to bullying is a challenging task for caregivers. Listen as Clinton explains bullying in young children, and ways that the “adult-culture” influences the context of bullying in child care.
Abilio has recommendations for educators and for parents to help children make and keep friends.
On the next page, you will delve into the topic of play. Play is what children do – adults don’t have to teach children how to play but we can use it as a vehicle for encouraging them to be able to cope with challenges and develop social competencies. You will also look at the importance of active play and how it relates to overall development and specifically brain development.
