PERSONAL, SOCIAL & EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Cultural Contexts and Young Children's Personal and Social Development

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Cultural Contexts and Young Children's Personal and Social Development

Introduction

Every child has to go through personal and social development process. An attachment bond is rapidly formed by a young child with primary caretaker, mother in most of the cases. Taking a child away from this attachment may disturb the process of personal and social development and cause serious lifelong social and emotional problems.

Emotion development can be defined as the growing ability of a child to feel and express, and to develop an increasing variety of emotions aptly. The growth of an ability of a child to recognize or relate to other persons and grow to be interdependent is referred to social development. The personal development of a child includes physical, intellectual/ cognitive, language and sensory development.

The behavioral control and social initiatives symbolize two core aspect of children's personal and social development. Cultural values and norms in these contexts possibly affect the meaning; exhibition; and development of particular social behaviors; for instance, shyness, cooperation-compliance, social relationship functioning and quality, sociability and aggressive-defiance. The culturally guided processes of social interaction include the evaluations and responses as a significant cultural influence mediator on the personal and social development of a child and control the child's relationships, social behavior and patterns of development.

Discussion

The social and personal development of a child starts from the early stage. During 3 months, a child sleeps most of the time; respond to caretaker(s); basic response to faces, sound, voices and smells; and start smiling to friendly individuals. By the age of 6 months, physical development - a child start rolling, start sitting, moves his arms purposely, grab things and explore objects by putting them in mouth; social development - offer toys to others; cautious to strangers, show distress when away from caretaker, and become aware of other people feelings; sensory development- to see objects adjust position, react to voice, and comfortable when moved; and intellectual and language development- understanding the meaning of words like mama, understand meaning of an object and be familiar with expected behavior, and understand gestures.

By 12 months a child further develop abilities; physical abilities like stand for few minutes, try to walk alone, pick small objects and drop and throw objects; sensory development - visual memory become good, react quickly to familiar names, and shows judgment to good taste and preference towards flavor; cognitive/ intellectual development - uses trial and error to learn, point out objects when asked about, and responses become more coordinated; language development - understand simple instructions, speak 2-7 words, and babbling develops into more speech like form with increased intonation; and emotional and social development- like socializing while eating, understand gesture, emotionally liable, comfortable in the presence of caretaker or comfort objects such as teddy, and still shy (Gathercole, 2006, pp. 513-543).

At the age of 2 years, a child developed more personally and socially. Physical development includes run safely, able to push ...