Archive for the ‘Social’ Category
What is the hope for the future? Must we play out our assigned parts to the closing act? Although we tend to fall back on the habitual ways of talking, repeating old refrains and familiar lines, habits can be broken. Women and men both can gain understanding the other gender’s style, and by learning to use it on occasion.
Women who find themselves unwillingly cast as the listener should practice propelling themselves out of that position rather than waiting patiently for the lecture to end. Perhaps they need to give up the belief that they must wait for the floor to be handed to them. If they have something to say on a subject, they must push themselves to volunteer it. If they are bored with a subject, they can exercise some influence on the conversation and change the topic to something they would rather discuss.
In the middle and late childhood, children are on different plane, belonging to a generation and feeling all their own. it is the wisdom of the human life span that at no time are children more ready to learn than during the period of expansive imagination at the end of early childhood.
Children develop a sense of wanting to make things – not just to make them, but to make them well and even perfectly. Their thirst is to know and to understand. They are remarkable for their intelligence and for their curiosity. Their parents continue to be important influences in their lives, but their growth also is shaped by successive choirs of friends. They do not think much about the future or about the past, but they enjoy the present moment.
Children are interested in specific peers – not just any peers. They want to share concerns, interests, information and secrets with them. Children’s friendships is important because they serve six functions into one’s life:
- Companionship. Friendship provides children with a familiar partner and playmate, someone who is willing to spend time with them and join in collaborative activities.
- Stimulation. Friendship provides children with interesting information, excitement and amusement.
- Physical support. Friendship provides time, resources, and assistance.
- Ego support. Friendship provides the expectation of support, encouragement, and feedback, which helps children maintain an impression of themselves as competent, attractive and worthwhile individuals.
- Social comparison. Friendship provides information about where the child stands a vis-a-vis others and whether the child is doing okay.
- Intimacy and affection. Friendship provides children with a warm, close, trusting relationship with another individual in which self-disclosure takes place.