Page 92 - Understanding Psychology

Parenting Styles and Social Development
s Main Idea
Children face various social decisions as they grow and progress through the stages of life.
s Vocabulary
• authoritarian family
• democratic/authoritative family
• permissive/laissez-faire family
• socialization
• identification
• sublimation
• role taking
s Objectives
• Describe theories of social
development.
• Outline Kohlberg’s stages of moral
reasoning.
Reader’s Guide
Exploring Psychology
A Day in the Life of a Preschool Teacher
“Hey you two—just pretend to eat, remember? If you put those spoons in your mouth, you’ll pick up germs. Just pretend to use them.”
That afternoon, the same two boys engaged in a mock karate battle on the playground. Hitting and kicking is forbid- den in my class, regardless of whether it hurts anyone or not. To listen to them protesting the time-out, you’d think they’d never heard the rule.
“We weren’t fighting!”
“You were kicking,” I said sternly. “We don’t kick here.”
“But we weren’t kicking!” they pro- tested. “We were pretend-kicking, just like pretend-eating.”
—from “Little People’s Logic” by Sarah Starr
78 Chapter 3 / Infancy and Childhood
The story above comes from a preschool teacher. She concluded that children do not necessarily draw the conclusions you intend them to. The children involved in the “pretend-eating” and “pretend-kicking” did not follow the teacher’s logic. The teacher explained the difference between acceptable “pretend-eating” and “pretend-fighting” by stating, “Sometimes people get hurt even when you pretend to fight.” Children learn the rules for behavior in society through experiences such as this one.