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Understanding 6-7-Year-Olds

Understanding 6-7-Year-Olds

Corinne Aves
Foreword by Jonathan Bradley

Part of the The Tavistock Clinic - Understanding Your Child series

Paperback: £8.99 / $15.95

2006, 234mm x 156mm / 9.25in x 6in, 80pp
ISBN: 978-1-84310-467-4, BIC 2: VFX JMAF

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Introduction

“Knock, knock!”
“Who's there?”
“Shirley…”
“Shirley who?”
“Shirley you know who I am by now!”

There's nothing like a knock, knock joke for capturing six- and seven-­year-olds' sense of fun. The joke lies in the incongruity which makes the familiar seem unfamiliar. In this particular joke the person on the other side of the door doesn't know a “Shirley”, but it's not Shirley at all…it's someone who has been known for ages but with quite a different name.

At this age, the world seems to be full of new possibilities, and children are at a sort of threshold. They are becoming more established at school and many new skills are beginning to come together. Children are able to manage greater independence in many areas of their lives but they still need plenty of support from home in dealing with the ordinary stresses of life. Perhaps the greatest challenge for them now is to find ways to put aside babyish ways in order to explore the exciting challenges that middle childhood has to offer.

More formal work at school is supplemented and fed by a child's natural spirit of enquiry and by imagination. The ordinary experiences of daily life are full of richness and meaning, and are being shaped according to the child's emerging personality. It can be a challenge for parents to stay in touch and appropriately in control while allowing sufficient leeway for new relationships to develop in their child's life. If parents allow themselves to get to know their child afresh by pausing to look again, as if from a slight emotional distance, at their child's development, it is possible to imagine what the world is like from a child's point of view. All parents have been children themselves, and so their own memories of being six and seven can be a very valuable resource for understanding. On the other hand, children are inevitably different from their parents. Their personalities are not only unique to themselves but also influenced by the technologies and media of the twenty-first century which bring the world right into their living rooms in ways which seemed unimaginable a generation ago.

As children develop and grow up there can be mixed feelings for parents and children alike about the emotional adjustments that need to be made. This is a major theme explored in this book. From a parent's point of view there is an enormous sense of satisfaction to be gained in helping children to develop new skills and abilities such as reading and number work. Children are beginning to think in more sophisticated ways and orient themselves better in relation to time and space. Physical skills and coordination are growing apace and they can do more in the way of looking after themselves, taking greater responsibility for such tasks as washing and dressing. New relationships and friendships are forming and taking on great importance, and this can help parents to feel freer to pursue interests of their own. Parents usually feel proud when their children are thriving in these ways, but they may feel sadness, also, at needing to say goodbye to the intimacy of the earlier, more dependent years. From a child's point of view, there is a need, now, to put aside some of the more passionate feelings associated with family relationships. Children are faced with the challenge of packing away their earlier experience, rather like a metaphorical packed lunch, to provide inner sustenance to keep them going as they face the challenges of learning in school, making friendships and coping with the wider world.

Taking stock of the incredible pace of a child's development, it can be hard to believe that this is the same child as the one who so recently just started school. “Six going on sixteen!” is how one mother described her daughter, adding that already she could imagine her as an adult-to-be, a miniature adolescent. So it can be helpful to remind oneself that in fact a six-year-old is still only a third of the way through the long human journey towards adulthood. Another of the themes explored in this book is the tension created for the child when he or she no longer feels small but is not yet very big: “smalley-big”, as one six-year-old so succinctly put it. It is sometimes quite salutary to remember that a six-year-old's apparent competence is, at times, only paper thin and can be easily punctured by the ordinary stresses and strains of life.

Between their sixth and eighth birthdays children gradually give up more magical kinds of thinking in favour of more rational, logical ways of seeing the world. They begin to realize that success cannot be gained by charm alone; on the contrary, hard work is expected, and this can be enjoyed, but can bring with it stress and a fear of failure. Children's attraction to reality and achievement is tempered by imagination and an increased ability to symbolize and represent experience through language, play and pretending. When teachers are in tune with children of this age they can really mobilize their more mature side to collaborate with their more childish selves through creative class projects. Many primary trained teachers find the six- to seven-year-old age group particularly rewarding to teach because their imaginative selves are so accessible alongside their enthusiasm to learn skills and facts.

The key aim of this book is to bring to life some of the many facets of the experience of being six or seven. Some typical dilemmas of this age group are explored along with some thoughts about related issues for parents. There will, of course, be areas of overlap with children who are five or even eight or so, as every child is an individual and matures at his or her own pace. Essentially we are thinking here about the phase of development at the beginning of middle childhood which is sometimes referred to as the “latency” period. If children are reasonably well supported in their home lives this tends to be a period of steady growth, learning and consolidation.

For the sake of clarity, a teacher or parent is sometimes referred to as “she” but what is said is meant to apply to fathers, carers and teachers of both genders as well as mothers.