Middle Childhood

• Middle Childhood


  6 years old - puberty (10/12)
• Educational settings in middle childhood

  • Time for learning and refining skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic
  • Focus on testing themselves
• Growth rate is slower but steady during middle childhood
• Only time during life span when girls are, on average, taller than boys
• Bones grow longer as the body lengthens and broadens during middle childhood
• At age 6-7, children lose their primary teeth
• After 6 months of age, fat deposits decrease until age 6-8
• Muscles increase in length, breadth, and width during middle childhood
• Between 6-8, the forebrain undergoes a temporary growth spurt; 90% of its adult size
• Gross Motor Skills in middle childhood

  • Important advances, including muscle coordination
  • Gender differences likely the result of societal messages / expectations
• At age 5, locomotion skills such as running, jumping, and hopping are well in place
• School age children become better at performing controlled, purposeful movements
• Children develop improved stability and alignment
• Children develop the ability to walk, bend, and reach objects without stopping other activities
• Children develop the ability to throw ball well at long distances and catch ball with accuracy
• Fine Motor Skills in middle childhood

  • Development is partly caused by increase in amount of myelin around the nerve cells
  • Children develop skills rapidly (drawing, painting, cutting)
  • Most of the FMS required for writing develops at ages 6 and 7; handwriting improves in speed and accuracy
• Children develop dramatic increase in the ability to calibrate movements to the demands of the task
• Children develop good dexterity, precision and motor planning (drawing, puzzles)
• By 7 years old, children master manuscript writing
• By 9-10 years old, children learn and master cursive writing
• Health, Fitness, and Accidents in middle childhood

  • Middle childhood can be one of the healthiest periods of life
  • Minor illnesses are prevalent (ear infection, colds, upset stomachs); plays a positive role in children's psychosocial development; coping with stress
  • Children develop a realistic understanding of sick role and learn to empathize
• Obesity is a common problem during middle childhood
• Nearly 70% of children who are obese at ages 10-13 will continue to be seriously overweight as adults
• Accidents cause more child deaths than major causes of death combined
• Accidents are the leading cause of physical disability in childhood
• Concrete Operational Stage


  Classification, seriation, relationships (e.g. time and speed), decentering, reversibility, conservation (e.g. mass / number, logic used over appearance)
• Children's thinking becomes flexible, reversible, not limited to here and now, multidimensional, capable of logical inferences, and capable of cause and effect relationships
• Children explore the environment, ask themselves questions and answer them, and are active learners who construct "theories"
• Training is most effective for children during middle childhood as their state of readiness is high
• Children's short-term memory capacity improves significantly during middle childhood
• Planning, making decisions, and metacognition begins at age 7-10
• Elementary School Readiness


  • Greater independence and skills
  • Independence in bathroom and cafeteria
  • Reading, writing, spelling, and mathematics skills
  • Adequate perceptual, cognitive, and motor skills
• School Goals


  • Mastery of basic skills
  • Positive relationship with peers and adults
  • Mature way in dealing with emotions
  • Explore and pursue interest in the arts and sciences
  • Develop into a physically fit and healthy individual
  • Promote the moral and civic values of the community
• Maturation of visual perceptual skills (visual discrimination, visual closure, visual memory, visual sequential memory, visual spatial relations, figure and ground) and other perceptual skills (form constancy, depth perception, kinesthesia) occurs during middle childhood
• Speech and Language Development


  • Young children focus on producing and speaking a language
  • Older children learn to read and write
  • Vocabulary continues to increase; mastery of grammar
  • Understanding of syntax grows during childhood
  • Certain phonemes remain troublesome (j, v, h, zh)
  • Difficulty decoding when meaning depends on intonation/tone
  • More competent in the usage of pragmatics
  • Increase in METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS – understanding of one's own use of language
• Stages of Reading


  • Stage 0 - birth to start of first grade; prerequisite for reading (identification of letters, writing names, reading a few words)
  • Stage 1 - first and second grade; phonological decoding skills; sounding out and blending letters
  • Stage 2 - second and third grade; reading aloud with fluency
  • Stage 3 - fourth grade to eighth grade; reading becomes a means to an end; enjoyable way to learn
  • Stage 4 - reflecting multiple points of view
• Industry versus Inferiority


  • Interested in how things are made and how they work
  • Learning of new skills to survive in their culture
  • Efforts to attain competence by meeting the challenges presented by parents, peers, school, and other complexities of the modern world
  • High levels of childhood industry associated with adult success
• Socio-Emotional Development


  • Struggling to understand who they are, "Who am I?"
  • View themselves more in terms of psychological traits
  • They also think of themselves as being good or bad
  • Self-concept becomes divided into personal and academic spheres
  • Children use SOCIAL COMPARISON
  • Children look to others who are similar to themselves
• Preconventional Reasoning


  Obeys rules in order to avoid punishment; obtain rewards
• Conventional Reasoning


  Conform to avoid disapproval; avoid censure by legitimate authorities with resulting guilt