Interventions to Boost Self-esteem, Social Competence, and Social Skills

Changes in Self-Concept at Different Ages

Very young children (three to five years of age) think in all-or-nothing terms. Therefore, a young child's self-concept often fluctuates between extremes such as happy and sad or good and bad. The child often over-generalizes and reasons, If I'm good at coloring, then I'm good at everything. If I'm bad because I spilled the milk, then I'm bad, period!

By the time a child enters the first grade (approximately six years of age), reasoning allows the child to sequence emotions and behaviors. At this stage of development, the child begins to develop a greater understanding that a person can be happy and then sad, thereby allowing some flexibility and continuity in the emotional repertoire. However, it is not until approximately the third grade (eight years of age) that children can begin to accept and understand the concept of experiencing two coexisting emotions such as being both happy and sad. However, at this stage, a child can only attach the two emotions to two separate people. A child might reason, Johnny and Stuart may have two separate feelings about me. Johnny may describe me as good, but Stuart may say I'm bad. The child is not yet capable of understanding how both feelings could come from the same person. At this stage, children are also capable of understanding that they can be good in one area (math), but poor in another (art).

It is not until approximately ten years of age that a child begins to understand the concept of ambivalent feelings (one person having conflicting emotions). At this point, children are capable of understanding how someone can continue to love them despite being very angry with their behavior. It is also at this stage that the self-concept becomes further influenced by how children evaluate themselves and their achievements compared with their peers. Self-descriptions and comparisons also shift from the more absolute terms used earlier (for example, good or bad, nice or mean) toward descriptors that emphasize the social or more interactive aspects of this developmental period (for example, shy or friendly).

Young adolescents often maintain an idealistic and naïve view of what should be that has not yet been tempered by experience. Adolescents' awareness that others are capable of thinking about other people results from the self-conscious fear that others are often thinking about and evaluating them. It is through the process of comparisons with peers and peer acceptance that an adolescent's fears are alleviated and he or she begins once again to grow in self-confidence.