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Looking back as a child we often laugh at all the silly things we did as a child. Middle childhood is a developing stage for childhood and helps shape the person we are today. In the film “The Sandlot” a young boy and his friends demonstrate the characteristic of middle childhood in their social-emotional, physical, and cognitive development.
Firstly, social-emotional is a stage these young boys are becoming known too. In the film Smalls gets befriended by a boy named Benny, Benny is talented at baseball and Smalls has not yet figured it out. Benny helps Smalls which gives him the confidence and acceptances. These boys are all showing high and low self esteem, children in middle childhood look to others who they are similar to themselves.
Every single person on earth has gone through the stage of middle childhood in their lives; it is inevitable. This stage is an important time in an individual’s life as it provides them the opportunity to experience new challenges and to make new friends and relationships. Middle childhood is a time of slow yet steady growth of a person in the aspects of physical, mental, and emotional development. In the movie The Sandlot, the young boys show visible signs of school-age development which include the concept of self-esteem, showing interests in the opposite sex, and overcoming challenges. While there are many other things that imply development in school-age children, these three topics are the most prominent in the film.
In Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, Annette Lareau discussed the extensive amount of research she conducted employing observational and interview techniques. She collected data on the middle class, working class, and poor families. She was trying to understand the impact of a child’s early parental guidance on the child’s life. She was able to conduct this research with 12 families, all of whom had fourth graders. She gathered enough information to conclude the major differences in the parenting styles of each type of family, which was directly correlated to socioeconomic status. Annette Lareau opens her book with two chapters to give the reader an idea on what the examples she gives will detail.
The Sandlot is a classic sports film that shows how the role of friendship plays in children’s development. The story takes place in a small suburb outside of Los Angeles in the summer of 1962. The main character “Smalls”, just moved to the town with his mom and step dad. He doesn’t really know how to make friends but started watching a group of boys that walked to the ‘sandlot’. Smalls has always stuck to science projects, so baseball is a new subject to him. The step dad has a love of baseball so when Smalls goes into his office he has trophies and a baseball signed by Babe Ruth. Smalls wants to be able to connect with his step dad, so he tries to learn how to play baseball with the guys.
All these boys hiding who or what they are caused major problems towards the end when they could have just had small problems in the beginning. People who are ashamed or afraid to be themselves end up acting like someone they are not. Struggling students in school who have problems making friends could have these problems and have worse problems or turn out different. Showing students this movie could show them to be themselves and to help them make friends on their own. Like a quote from Oscar Wilde “Be yourself because everyone else is taken.” This means everyone is unique and have their own way of acting or being. With this essay, teachers could help their students with their day to day life with friends and be
Berger, K. S. (2012). The developing person: through childhood and adolescence. (9th ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
Most everyone has experienced a time when they did not have to worry about financial problems, jobs, or even lives. That time for most individuals is a time of immaturity and learning. Childhood is an important part of everyone’s life. Who a person will become is the result of this period in one’s life. Although the majority had an enjoyable and carefree childhood, there are still many that do not have the chance to enjoy it. Just as a coin has two faces, Annie Dillard’s “An American Childhood” and Luis Rodriguez’s “Always Running” have shown the readers that not everyone had a fun and exciting childhood.
Increasing your knowledge in many cultural backgrounds can be beneficial to you and to understand how life is for other people with different cultural upbringing than you. Three stories I found that would be really interesting to not only the students but also to the other teachers that I could be working with are “From Shadows of a Childhood” by Elisabeth Gille, “From Catfish and Mandala: A Two-wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam; Last Gamble” by Andrew X. Pham and “Shadows on the Wall” by Charles Mungoshi. I have chosen some articles that will provide more information on the topics and to help understand and explain that learning about other cultures will help the children become more educated with other cultures that
... growth where a child is forced to start looking for solutions for everything that is wrong instead of simply being a child. This analysis prove that children have their own way of seeing things and interpreting them. Their defense mechanisms allow them to live through hard and difficult times by creating jokes and games out of the real situation. This enables then to escape the difficulties of the real world.
Also in China girls are made to bind there feet up at an early age so
The story provides many sources for the boy's animosity. Beginning with his home and overall environment, and reaching all the way to the adults that surround him. However, it is clear that all of these causes of the boy's isolation have something in common, he has control over none of these factors. While many of these circumstances no one can expect to have control over, it is the culmination of all these elements that lead to the boy’s undeniable feeling of lack of control.
This source is useful because it provides strong examples of why the novel is based on the human nature of boys.This is an reliable source because he is quoting Dr. Stephanie Van Goozen and
While all societies acknowledge that children are different from adults, how they are different, changes, both generationally and across cultures. “The essence of childhood studies is that childhood is a social and cultural phenomenon” (James, 1998). Evident that there are in fact multiple childhoods, a unifying theme of childhood studies is that childhood is a social construction and aims to explore the major implications on future outcomes and adulthood. Recognizing childhood as a social construction guides exploration through themes to a better understanding of multiple childhoods, particularly differences influencing individual perception and experience of childhood. Childhood is socially constructed according to parenting style by parents’ ability to create a secure parent-child relationship, embrace love in attitudes towards the child through acceptance in a prepared environment, fostering healthy development which results in evidence based, major impacts on the experience of childhood as well as for the child’s resiliency and ability to overcome any adversity in the environment to reach positive future outcomes and succeed.
He explains that boys hide their feelings they may seem normal on the outside but on the inside they are hiding something. When they are asked if anything is wrong they say no everything is just fine. This is because ever since the boy was a child he has been taught not to express his emotions. Little boys are made to feel ashamed of their feelings. Also society places an emphasis on boys separating from their mother at an unnecessarily young age. Often the result of all this is that the boys decide to be silent. They learn to suffer quietly and retreat behind the mask. This is why the boys do not express their feelings, because they are told not to. What tells them not to is the boy code. It says the men should be stoic, stable, and independent. Boys are not to share their pain or grief openly. Also this code says the boys should be daring and do risky behaviors. The most traumatizing code is the fact that boys should not express feelings which might be mistakenly as “feminine” –dependence, warmth, and empathy. This causes boys to never act this way and hide these feelings. These are the reasons the “mask” is formed over the boy.
Middle childhood is the time where children start to fully develop their skills. They develop their comprehension skills, communication skills, and many more. In order to get a better look into the life of children during this stage, I decided to observe my niece’s friend, Ryan, who is almost at the end of her middle childhood stage. Ryan is an eleven year old girl who attends Bassett Elementary. I choose to observe Ryan because, she is a very unique girl who does not always fit into what the average girl her age is like.
In electing to observe a kindergarten class, I was hoping to see ‘real world’ examples of the social development, personality types and cognitive variation found within the beginning stages of “Middle Childhood” as discussed within our text.