As children learn to negotiate and compromise, they accept that they can’t always get exactly what they want. This is a valuable life les- son: children who can look at a revised agenda or new situation in a positive light will be considered flexible to others and are easy to be around. Flexibility allows children to adjust to new places, new ideas, and new circumstances. Flexible children work well in groups and change the agenda of their play to accommodate others, which makes them fun to be with.
Not every child understands the benefits of flexibility. Many young children need to be taught that change is inevitable, and when it does happen, flexibility pays off. Young children need to see the ramifications of conflict: that even when they disagree with their parents, teachers, siblings, or peers, they can resolve their differences by reaching a compromise. Most important, they need to know that people who disagree can remain friends.
Flexibility is essential for the successful socialization of preschoolers. We know that children learn most of their negotiating skills by listening to others, even when the conflict isn’t resolved. They imitate what is going on in their social environment, from their parents’ dealings with their siblings and each other, as well as their teachers’ ways of handling disparate personalities in the classroom. They practice the art of compromise in the powerful engagement of play with their friends. At the same time, parents and teachers must learn mediation strategies and then help children become more active compromisers. The first step is to recognize the socialization developmental milestones of a three year old, a four year old, and a five year old so that you can set realistic expectations for your own child’s ability to be flexible.
Flexibility and Brain Development
The new behaviors that a child learns register in the frontal lobe, or cerebral cortex, of the brain. The cerebral cortex is also involved in expressive language and assigns meaning to the words we choose. In addition, it monitors what we are doing within our environment, including how we initiate activity in response to the environment and the judgments we make about what occurs in our daily lives, including our emotional responses.
As children learn new behaviors and become more flexible, new neuronal connections are made, increasing overall brain capacity. In this way, the brain map is reorganized, or redrawn, validating the idea of plasticity. Previously scientists were concerned with whether learning was based on nature or nurture, that is, whether biology or our environment defined behaviors and beliefs. Today we know that these two are not opposite theories but instead are intricately linked.
How Flexibility Develops in Play
Three year olds begin to show socialization with peers as they acquire the learned behavior of flexibility and when they can relate to others during play. Before this occurs, they can engage only in parallel play and pretend play. Once they begin to play with other children, they often enjoy role-playing and creating stories that relate to their life at home.
Three year olds are not experts at planning a story, but they do know how to let their objects and figures move into themes as they talk to each other about what they’re doing. They provide dialogue for their characters, including the use of representational objects such as sticks or leaves that become, respectively, a pretend blanket or pretend wand. A flexible and successful three year old knows how to take the lead when she is acting out a story, as well as follow another child’s leadership. The flexibility of children, both those who are shy and those who are assertive, is determined by their willingness to play with others and let others take some control.
By the age of four, preschoolers are learning to sequence their ideas and beginning to understand how to listen and follow another who leads the play. Many four year olds want other children to join their play, but they don’t know how to include them in their story. They still need help in allowing others to join them, especially with constructing a story theme that includes more than two people.
By the time children are four and a half years old, they identify a shared interest with friends. Yet although they are more physically independent, they still require a general guided plan of what to do with a friend. They need an adult to suggest a plan and help them sequence their play, including establishing changes to their themes. Children need adults to be sensitive and make suggestions during play so they can express their own ideas and emotions.
By the end of the preschool years, a child should have developed several friends and may even have a best friend. A five year old can bargain and may show that he wants to compromise by giving others toys, agreeing to follow other leaders, and giving in when a friend wants him to do something that he doesn’t really want to do. He feels safe in these friendships and will do anything to keep this relationship.
At the same time, five year olds want to be in charge, and they want an adult to be subtle and discrete with suggestions. The adult must become a member of the play, almost a friend, and take a role as one of the peers. As the play evolves, the adult can weave in the social skills and the language the child may need to interact. The five year old is beginning to learn how to see another child’s perspective, and the adult can identify this for the child. This learning is critical to the child’s later social and emotional development.
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From Your Successful Preschooler: Ten Skills Children Need to Become Confident and Socially Engaged. Copyright © 2011 by Harvard University. All rights reserved.
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