Middle Childhood Reflection Paper

After taking the course CFS/PSY 252, also known as Development in Middle Childhood, I have gained so much knowledge on topics from physical development to peer relationships. I have also conducted extensive research on theorists like John Bowlby, and led group discussions on topics such as bilingual children. More importantly, I learned how much of an impact beliefs, values, socioeconomic status, and the environment has on a child. This course has helped prepare me for the future and realize what a complex time middle childhood can be. Because I do not plan to be working with kids, I think this course will help me if I ever decide to have my own kids. Moreover, it will help me guide my parents and my younger siblings who are either in middle

With the information I have gained from this course, I plan to use it to the best of my ability.

Contrary to popular belief, middle childhood, which ranges from six to eleven, is a very complex time period. As you can see on the graph on page __, there are three domains of development during this time period: physical, cognitive and social. It is important to know that these domains can overlap at any time. For example, a child could be going through changes in appearance at the same time that they are developing interpersonal skills, hence why this stage is so important. During middle childhood children start to form concrete operations, or in other words, the child begins to use logical thought. Because the child is learning things like social ques, studying habits, eating habits, and how to cope with stress, the skills a child learns while in this stage can make or break them in the future. However, with a good support system children typically can overcome certain issues and improve on those setbacks, that is why it is essential to have a least one person in a child’s life, whether it

As the theorist Urie Bronfenbrenner states, family, sibling and peer relationships are the basis of a child’s identity, without these people a child wouldn’t know where to take their cues form. These people belong to what Bronfenbrenner called the microsystem. The microsystem is part of a much larger system, as you can see on page ___. Bronfenbrenner calls this the ecological systems theory, this system explains how development is influenced by various forces: the microsystem, mesosystem, exsosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. As stated previously, the microsystem is the most important because it holds the people that have the most influence on the earliest years of a child’s life. The second most important system would be the mesosystem, which you can see consists of people like extended family, the school board, and mass media. Essentially, the mesosystem is an enlarged microsystem, however the mesosystem does not have as much of a direct impact on the child as the microsystem would. The third system is the