You shouldn’t nag a school-age child; you should trust them

According to a theory of developmental psychology, every age group faces its own challenges; meeting these challenges contributes to the development of a healthy personality, whilst failing to do so hinders it. The crisis of school-age is performance, and the child’s desire is for recognition of that performance. However, experiencing this depends not only on current circumstances but also on having successfully met the challenges of the past.

According to a psychosocial theory – which Erik Erikson This theory is attributed to a renowned developmental psychologist – it posits that a person progresses through specific developmental stages throughout their life. At different age intervals, individuals encounter challenges that influence their personality; successfully overcoming these challenges rewards them with intrinsic motivation and self-confidence, whilst failure to do so can steer the subsequent course of their development in a negative direction.

Erikson identifies eight such stages in the course of human life, from infancy right through to old age. The theory sets out what the central need (challenge) is at each stage, and how failure to meet this need can lead to the prevalence of negative feelings and, consequently, a shift in the direction of development.

By the time children reach school age, the desire to achieve takes centre stage, although the extent of this is also determined by how well the needs of earlier stages were met. To understand our own child’s age-appropriate behaviour and to provide appropriate support for their academic performance, it is worth being aware of the current main source of their intrinsic motivation. To do this, we need to understand not only their current needs, but also the circumstances in which previous challenges were met.

Before starting school

The first such challenge in a person’s life is to build trust with their parent, and through them, with the whole world. For an infant, the primary task is to be able to attract the attentive care of their carer and, as a result of the adult’s responsiveness, to develop a sense of predictability, physical and emotional security, and trust. If this does not happen, a baby becomes insecure and distrustful, not only towards the adult caring for them, but also towards the world around them and towards themselves. When trust is established, however, they are ready for the next challenge: becoming independent.

The two-year-old child is increasingly seeing themselves as a separate individual, and so wants to explore their own boundaries – this is what manifests itself in Dackorszak. If we give them the opportunity to do so by placing our trust in them, they will become increasingly proactive, which is the next step in their development. Without this, however, they will develop inner doubts, which will lead them less towards future initiative and more towards frequent feelings of guilt. According to Erikson’s theory, the various stages of development are fundamentally interlinked; at the same time, development cannot proceed without overcoming the challenges of each stage. If these core needs are not met, development simply takes a less healthy turn and remains, so to speak, unfinished; in other words, these issues will resurface from time to time during later stages as well. These reminders serve as a signal to us of what is worth paying attention to, and to devote energy to resolving them retrospectively (and probably with greater difficulty).

School years: achievement or inferiority

The success of the initiative fosters enthusiasm and momentum for further attempts; in other words, it inspires a desire to achieve and the sense of competence that comes from achievement. Children enter this stage of development during their school years (aged 5–12), and ideally, the school environment should provide sufficient opportunities for them to prove themselves and thereby gain recognition from teachers, parents and peers.

At this stage, children are preoccupied with the existential question of whether they are sufficiently valuable members of the world. They are driven by a desire to learn, to take action, to improve themselves and to expand their skills. They are becoming increasingly self-aware, increasingly capable of working together with others, and increasingly able to recognise and appreciate individual differences. Their attention and intellectual development are progressing at a rapid pace; however, a fundamental prerequisite for this progress is successfully meeting the challenges of earlier stages and a balanced school environment.

The fact that past needs have not been met instils a sense of mistrust, doubt and guilt in children, which makes it harder for them to strive to achieve (as they fear failure in advance), and thus easily leads to a sense of inferiority. The child comes to believe that they are not good enough, not clever enough, and do not deserve success, so why even try? By excelling in certain areas, they may try to compensate for this sense of inadequacy, but these defence mechanisms never provide a satisfactory solution in the long term, as the individual’s fundamental need remains unfulfilled, and, moreover, they are rarely even recognised.

According to Erikson, personality develops through a process of maturation shaped by the challenges of each age group; rather than shielding our children from these challenges, we should provide them with a supportive and patient environment in which they can grapple with them. As parents, by understanding this theory, we can make much better sense of our children’s behaviour and help strike a balance between the psychological pressure caused by the challenges that are important to them and the level of feedback that motivates them. The school It is not certain that they are capable of this, so to a certain extent we need to assess exactly how many expectations our children are facing, and at the same time how much recognition they receive for their efforts.

They need to make their own efforts, as these lead to the development of new skills and abilities, which in turn reward them with a sense of competence, thereby providing sufficient motivation for another „test”. School-age children want to succeed, even without being urged on. But to do so, they need the outside world – and their parents, in particular – to believe in them even when they get stuck. Parents should not just nag, but also trust in their child’s inner motivation, their own strength, and – perhaps most difficult of all – in time. For it is these factors, taken together, that will ultimately bring about the desired success.

Originally published on: divany.hu, 17 August 2021.