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Social development is
intimately related to emotional development from the very first. From
the early intense emotional relations with the parents and later with
brothers and sisters are born the first social relations—social
development proceeds from the close family circle outwards. During the
first five months the infant smiles rather seldom and rather
indiscriminately. His behavior can hardly be called sociable. After
five months, with the growth of perceptual development, the baby shows
more discrimination. The mother or nurse is singled out for attention,
and unfamiliar adults do not receive the smile of favor. By six months
some interest is shown in other babies and in slightly older children.
Babies have been observed touching others, pushing and pulling at them,
and even showing some anger towards them about this age. Normally, by
eight months adult strangers are welcomed, by nine months the baby
makes strenuous efforts to communicate not only by smiles, but also by
babbling and cooing and chuckling, and by twelve months he will imitate
grown-up actions, and inhibit actions when told.
Clearly the baby's first real social experience is within the family
circle. His relationship to his parents in the first two years is
all-important, and will inevitably color his relationship to other
people later. It is essential that he experience real affection from
them, and that he feel secure in their presence. If he has been handled
in a rough and ready way, if his parents are excitable, irritable
people, if marital relations are not harmonious, or if his mother has
been over-anxious, for instance, in feeding him, the best foundations
for satisfactory social-emotional development have not been laid. In
exceptional cases the baby may be best cared for by a placid nanny if
the young mother feels really too unsure of herself, but usually with a
little advice and care feeding her own baby will do much to steady her,
and will build up a happy relationship between the baby and herself.
The bond which grows up between the mother and the baby is the
strongest and the most significant of any other bond which the child
may forge later on. Loving and being loved are the earliest experiences
of the normal well-cared for baby, and incidentally are the foundation
of good mental health and of moral development. The well-loved
individual responds by loving everyone around him, and the reverse
holds good as every Children's Officer and Probation Officer knows to
his cost. Normally a child learns to tolerate and gradually to control
his negative feelings of hate and jealousy and anger because his
positive loving feelings have been reinforced by the quality and the
care he has received from his parents, more especially from his mother,
from the beginning. Quite early his extreme egoism is tempered by his
need to consider the feelings and the wishes of the well-loved adult
who cares for him. He learns to accept a modicum of denial and
frustration ; he learns to accept weaning and toilet training, both
involving a certain amount of denial of his pleasure and restraint to
his wishes.
Active social interest in other children is not very much in evidence
until the second year, and even then the toddler prefers to watch other
children and to play beside them rather than with them. He is usually
happy to pursue his own occupations regardless of the other children
around him.
So by his first birthday, if all has gone well, the baby has become a
very busy little person indeed, intent on achieving great feats of
balancing and of muscular control, and making great efforts to walk. At
the same time, though his real vocabulary is very limited, her has
plenty to say in his own babyish experimental language, and he enjoys
playing with words as much as trying to communicate with people. But
although he is striving towards independence and expression, his
self-confidence can very easily be shaken, and he depends very closely
on the adults in his world. He can very quickly feel lost, helpless,
and insecure. For his future satisfactory development, he needs right
through the second year a steady, dependable kind of background, and
close contact with mother or nurse. He needs support on the one hand,
and encouragement to go forward and grapple with the world on the other
hand. Only in this way can he grow to be really self- reliant. In
recent years a great deal of publicity has been given to the effects,
on his emotional development, of separation of the young child from his
mother.
A comprehensive survey of research findings has been made and there is
ample evidence to show that children between twelve months and three
years may be considerably disturbed by being separated from their
mothers for prolonged periods, i.e. from three months or more. This
viewpoint may cause considerable anxiety both to parents and to nurses
in cases where hospitalization or some other unavoidable emergency
means that mother and child must be parted for a considerable period,
and it is important to modify it. There are important points to bear in
mind. First if the child's relationship with his parents is a secure
and affectionate one, although he will show clear distress at being
parted from them, he is more able to bear it, because he feels secure
in their love and in ultimate re-union. Secondly, although at first he
may be rather unresponsive and unapproachable he will gradually look to
some kindly adult to stand in and take the place of his mother at least
temporarily. The older he is, the more mature, the more able is he to
make some substitute relationship which will carry him over the crisis.
Careful preparation for a period away from home will ease the situation
and the older the child the more possible it is to do this. Contacts
maintained with his home by letters and parcels, by visits from
relatives, and some treasured toy, which should accompany him and serve
as a link with home, will help to minimize his distress. Furthermore in
some cases where strain and tension are very much in evidence at home,
a period away from this may be therapeutic to both mother and child,
provided it is possible for him to receive individual and affectionate
care from some other adult during the time.
Although this is by no means an exhaustive account of general
development during the first year, it has perhaps been sufficient to
draw attention to the high-lights of development. It will serve as a
general outline.
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