The development of emotions and feelings in childhood

Being born, the baby has in his arsenal only innate emotions, but this already includes a lot. This is, first of all, a complex of revival (a child’s smile, eyes, hands reaching out), surprise and interest, when this is not enough — whimpering, crying and op. (with a demonstration of discontent and aggression or fear and disgust). If the parents are lazy or simply do not know that the child needs to change the diaper, for example, the child tells the parents by crying what they need to do.

Crying and crying does not harm the health of the baby, rather it contributes. This is good gymnastics for the lungs and vocal cords, and the loud, demanding cry of a child indicates that everything is in order with him. It’s also good to know that babies don’t cry in vain: they only cry when it makes sense, when someone reacts to them.

Crying for a child is not a tragedy, but the same form of life activity as laughter or play. Sometimes a child wants to play, sometimes to laugh, sometimes to cry. Starting from the year of life, the child becomes different. If the baby insists with his crying only on what he really needs, then a child from 1 to 3 years old uses his crying for very different purposes. The child masters emotions and feelings both as a conscious request for help and as a way of psychological protection. This is the time when the child masters not just crying, but real tantrums. Usually children start tantrums by watching other children do it, after which they try tantrums on their parents. If the parents, in fact, allow the tantrum and reinforce it with their actions, the child begins to actively use the tantrum.

At the age of 3 to 7 years, a child masters not only thousands of words, mastering his native speech, he masters a whole world of various emotions and feelings, forming the foundations of his character and emotional intelligence.

A lively, alert child loves to move and play, and playing with sounds, face and breath, which adults call emotions and feelings, is one of his favorite games. At this age, the child can easily, effortlessly, simply at the request of an adult, start crying or laughing, alternating laughter, joyful cries and unhappy crying for pleasure. The child soon becomes convinced that his parents are impressed by his fears and resentments, his delights and tantrums. Actually, at first, children don’t even know what fears and resentments are, but when they see what kind of facial expression, text and intonations other children control their parents, and hear that parents call it all with the words “you are offended”, they have a natural interest in doing the same. When they understand that resentment can be influenced, they have a desire to learn resentment.

Interestingly, if you do not control the situation, children learn first of all the negative, they learn negative emotions. Children master such emotions and states as shyness, fears, fatigue, boredom, resentment, confusion, frustration, tantrums, despair, horror … When it is beneficial for them, children learn to get sick. What is the reason for such popularity of negative emotions in the child’s repertoire? The answer is simple: it is these emotions that parents are most easily led to.

By the age of five or seven, most children are masters of emotion. At this time, children’s emotions are intentional, conscious and arbitrary. They know to whom and why they are worried, and they do not worry when there is no one to worry about. At this age, children’s emotions are quite arbitrary, and children select, train and rehearse them quite consciously.

The feeling of fear in young children is almost unfamiliar. Of course, babies have elementary reflexes (fright) to loud noises, protest against pain and a predisposition to fear reactions, some possibly dangerous things in life (heights, spiders), but the main array of fears that we observe in children is the result of learning. By listening to parents, friends and watching cartoons, children learn the accepted vision, learn social interpretations of what is scary and what is not, what is not very scary, and what is a complete nightmare. Not only parents teach fear, children learn to be afraid themselves. Children (mostly girls) themselves learn to be afraid, because being afraid is interesting, accepted and beneficial. Often children themselves invent fears for themselves and are afraid of them with pleasure. When parents reinforce the fears of children with their increased attention, when the child is in the center of attention every time he becomes scared, then soon the child, in the absence of other entertainment, begins to collect, store and protect his fears, as his expensive property. Children become anxious.

Emotions and feelings of children are a product of social learning, and this social learning goes in two directions: while children master those states that most effectively protect them from their parents or allow them to be controlled by their parents, adults teach children those states that are comfortable and interesting for adults. 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.