Socialization in the development of the emotional sphere of the child

Socialization in the development of the emotional sphere of the child operates in at least several different directions, and not in all respects the results of this socialization can be assessed positively.

On the one hand, children and adolescents get used to experiencing and playing with emotions. For them, the experience becomes one of the entertainment, just like watching TV and chatting with friends. Children and teenagers like to experience. Even being upset and offended is more interesting, livelier and more fun than not experiencing anything. Children and teenagers have a lot of energy, it is as natural for them to worry as it is to run, not to sit.

“I’m not very upset anyway … What should I not worry at all?” — Behind the question one hears a desire to leave the experience to oneself.

My daughters, aged somewhere from 4 to 12, played an average of four hours a day in relationships and quarrels: they made scenes among themselves, ran into each other, were offended and put up. If we, as parents, stopped them in this, tried to calm them down, they looked at us strangely, “Why are you interfering? It suits us, it’s our game.» They complained to us about each other, but that was also part of the game. This is their air, this is their field of development. They learned to quarrel, they amused themselves by quarrels, and this was part of their life and their moment of joy.

How to treat it? On the one hand, positively, in such games, children and adolescents master the variety of social emotions, hone their skills in using them. Watch a video from the old Soviet film “The Princess and the Pea” and try to keep track of how many emotions the young princess manages to demonstrate in seconds: it is clear that behind this skill are years of training and rehearsals. Eyes, texts, and turning the head, and looking down — all these details are of the highest professionalism.

You can directly ask teenage girls to show how they can build eyes and faces — they usually show with pleasure. They do not hide that they are learning and rehearsing. It should be noted that boys in this area are less prepared.

One way or another, experiences and the game of experiences become a habit and part of a way of life, natural and mandatory. However, what will happen in a few years, when the youthful excess of energy will pass, but the habit of worrying will remain? Longing, resentment and frustration in the soul will remain, but they will cease to please …

On the other hand, the child, with the help of the adults around him and the influence of culture as a whole, masters the feelings accepted in this society, in particular, joins the feelings of friendship, love, gratitude, patriotism and other high feelings. It is thanks to socialization that children develop composure and will, boys master the role of a man and lay the foundation for the future role of a father, girls master female roles, interiorize the values ​​of being a wife and mother, and master the skills necessary for this.

At the same time, in order to successfully establish social contacts in the immediate children’s environment, the child learns the norms of emotional response, which often turn out to be lower than the level that he owned before joining the children’s team. In this case, socialization paradoxically turns into degradation of the child’s cultural development. Indeed, by the end of school, the child has already mastered the main wealth of the emotional palette, the foundations of emotional culture: he already knows how to make friends, hope, grieve and yearn, admire and fall into despair, love and suffer. On the other hand, the result of the emotional development of the child is paradoxical: having mastered the highest skill in mastering emotions, starting from school age, children undergo consistent degradation, rejection of mastery, and the accumulation of patterns.

Step by step, there is a renunciation of freedom of choice of emotions, of awareness of one’s emotions, of responsibility for one’s emotions, there is a renunciation of arbitrariness in the management of emotions. Children throw out the keys of emotions, make emotions involuntary. At least in the field of emotions, children return to a childish position in life, wean themselves from being a person and an Author, they learn to be only an organism and a Victim: a victim of external circumstances, a victim of their own emotions.

If this happens to us, our emotions become what is written in encyclopedias and psychological dictionaries: “Emotions are subjective reactions to the impact of internal and external stimuli↑”. That’s right — as a result of many years of work, we have learned to be emotional automata, our emotions are now caused not by us, but by circumstances.

How much creativity does each child need to turn their living emotions into such formulaic and clumsy reactions?