Summarize how self concept including gender identity develops during early childhood

Concept Development and Gender Identity in Early Childhood

Children tend to ascribe living qualities to inanimate objects- dolls and stuffed animals , for example . Adults may encourage this by pointing out similarities between animate and inanimate objects , such as a cloud formation that resembles a dog or a horse

Young children also tend to associate death with anything that goes away , but they are usually unable to comprehend the finality of death

Young children , as a group , have very inaccurate concepts of bodily functions and of birth . This is true even when they

enter school though in time , these faulty concepts are corrected through teachings in hygiene and sex education classes

Meanwhile , four-year olds can judge short distances accurately but the ability to judge long distances does not develop until late childhood By the use of cues they understand , they learn to judge right and left accurately . When it comes to weight , before children learn that different materials have different weights-which does not occur much before the school age-they estimate weight almost exclusively in terms of size

However , children who attend nursery school or kindergarten usually understand numbers up to 5 , but have only vague concepts about numbers higher that that . Furthermore , they have no idea of the duration of time-how long an hour is , for example-nor can they estimate time in terms of their own activities . Most four or five -year olds know the day of the week , and by the age of six they know the month , season , and year

By the time they are three , most young children know their sex , there full names , and the names of the different parts of their bodies . When they start to play with other children , their self-concepts begin to include facts about their abilities and their race but not about their socioeconomic levels . Clear concepts of appropriate sex roles are developed by the time boys are five years old but , for girls , these concepts are less clear because the appropriate sex roles for the girls is not as clearly defined as for boys

Before early childhood ends , most children are able to form definite opinions about others- whether a person is nice ' or mean smart ' or dumb , for example

While some of the foundations of sex-role typing are laid as babyhood draws to a close , the major part of these foundations is laid during early childhood . That is why early childhood is often referred to as a critical age in sex-role typing

During this stage in the developmental pattern , two important aspects of sex-role typing are expected to be mastered : learning how to play the appropriate sex role and accepting the fact that they must adopt and conform the approved sex-role stereotype if they want to win favorable social judgments and , in turn , social acceptance . Failure to do so will handicap children in their adjustment to the peer gangs that play such an important role in the social life of the older child...