PARENTING AND GRANDPARENTING FOR THOSE WHO DON'T WANT SPOILED DUMMIES

PARENTING FOR RESILIENCE

CONFESSION

As my loving son and daughter will no doubt wryly agree, I am no expert on parenting. But looking at them now I acknowledge that, next to their extraordinary mother, I must have done something right along the way. Since waking up to myself, I have gone hell for leather to get better at it with my grandchildren. I offer this posting as an attempt on my part to collate and crystallise something of what I've learned since first taking the exam and barely passing then with a C-minus. I kid myself I now have something to offer under the sub-title “Parenting for Those Who Don't Want to Produce Spoiled Dummies.” I am supremely grateful to the ABC (Australia) series “Life At...” for both inspiration and moments of recognition. And I am deeply in debt to my children who taught me how to be a parent, and their mother who held it all together while I did my best to grow up.

Barrie Barkla. July 2014

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The No.#1 secret to succeeding in life lies in a complex process that begins in the womb and, ideally, continues until our dying day. I'm referring to our ability to develop, integrate and practice two characteristics that are essential to the growth and survival of any species -- 

• Resilience and 
• Flexibility.

In the second row right behind Resilience and Flexibility come three related fundamental skills for us to work on: 

• the ability to Communicate effectively;
• the innate ambition to Experience and Learn, coupled with an acquired willingness to try new ways of seeing;
• and harnessing the innate need to socialise and Fit In with others by balancing the social requirements to accommodate others with our primitive urges to stand up for ourselves and whatever we consider to be "ours"

As I said before, this chain of development begins in the womb, with the formation of Temperament.

TEMPERAMENT

Temperament is a key ingredient of resilience and flexibility. It is the foundation stone of what we develop later into a Personality, and largely influences, right from the word "go", how we respond to the world (and how the world responds to us). We are born with Temperament, and we have no personal say about the make-up of that.  

Think of Temperament as the bundle of bio-genetically based, and pre-natal-experience-modified characteristics that we are eventually born with. Temperament is how we are characteristically ‘pre-wired’ prior to delivery. Right from the start, this temperament influences the preferences we have, our gut reaction what happens (including the experience of being born), the way in which we interact with the world once we're out, and the way the world interacts with us.

These pre-wired characteristics are never off-the-shelf standard. Even in its primitive at-birth state, a child’s temperament is highly individual because it comes partly from its inherited mix of mother and father genes, and partly from the prenatal environment that the child has experienced. It is then modified by the birth experience itself, and then by post-natal environment. 

While a child’s temperament remains relatively stable over time, research shows how effective parenting and intervention can be in merging certain temperaments with the developing personality. Aware parents and teachers can structure a child’s environment to support their temperament. Observing the baby's temperament and realising “This is not what I expected” is not going to work for either of you. The responsibility falls firstly upon us as parents and grandparents to get to know the unique temperament that shows up in the delivery room and stamps its mark on thehousehold, and do all that we can to adapt ourselves and our strategies in order to optimise that child's chances.

Types of Temperament 

Let's get one thing on the table  – there is no such thing as a good or a bad temperament: it takes all types of temperaments to make the world go round.

Any temperament characteristic can be easy or difficult to deal with, for the child and for the family. Every temperament has a positive and a negative side - it depends on the context. So, while a highly persistent child might do very well in the classroom, that very same characteristic, showing up as inflexibility, might cause problems in social situations - they might be highly perfectionist, a bully, or have difficulties moving on when they should. Every temperament trait has its flipsides. A persistent child might find that, in many circumstances, flexibility may be more useful than dogged determination.





The craft of making our way in the world is mostly dependent on how we respond to and deal with our perceptions of what the world expects of us. These perceptions are focused firstly on the figures we give authority to (initially our parents, then family, then around age 7 onwards -- our peers, friends and enemies enter the picture in a big way.) Our temperament is a huge factor in how we answer the ballooning challenges of engaging with other people's expectations.

There are no hard and fast types of temperament. Rather, each child’s temperamental style is a mix of varying levels of the following dimensions:

• Reactivity
• Sociability
• Persistence
• Self-Regulation

1. Reactivity: Refers to how intensely we naturally respond to experiences both at the positive end and the negative end of the spectrum. How intensely do we feel pleasure and express that pleasure, and how intensely do we respond to pain, frustration and the difficult things in life?
 2. Sociability: Humans are, by nature, social animals, but our capacity and liking for socialising behaviour is as variable as our liking for broccoli or Brussels sprouts. How comfortable are you with new situations and with new people? A sociable child tends to approach novel situations and people, while an inhibited child tends to withdraw and be wary. A highly sociable or an inhibited temperament can evolve over time into what we call extroversion or introversion, on the opposing ends of the personality scale. 
3. Persistence is about attention control - how well we can stay focused on task and see tasks, even boring chores, through to satisfactory completion. Persistence is an invaluable trait in the classroom. Research has shown that the ability to stay on task, to be highly persistent, is probably at least as important as intelligence in determining how well a child will progress through school. But what about after school? Too much persistence, for example, may be a disadvantage in some scenarios (eg. A toxic situation in which some people hang in for longer than is good for them). 
4. Self-regulation is how we manage to mix and balance reactivity, sociability and persistence. Self-regulation is our ability to manage our behaviour, how we process our ideas and beliefs, and our feelings, and develop values and principles. Self-regulation encompasses attention, control, an ability to see things from more than one perspective, curiosity, persistence and non-distractibility.

Self-regulation is one of the most critical developmental tasks for children around the age of seven. At this landmark age they are still learning how to manage their feelings and behaviour and are starting to use language and self-talk to help control their immediate reactions into more considered responses to the world.


The ability to self-regulate differs for children with different temperaments. A highly volatile and reactive child has more need to regulate than a calmer, more easygoing child. A seven-year-old who is unable to regulate their own behaviour and feelings will find it harder to form friendships and fit in with school expectations, and may develop emotional and behavioural problems as a result.

Self-regulation and school
A child who has problems with self-regulation can have a difficult time at school, socially and academically.

As youngsters, our ability to self-regulate healthily is subject to:-

• An unexpected stressful life event in the recent past. That may be the death of a relative or close friend, or the serious illness, injury or assault of a close relative, or the parents splitting up.
• Hostile parenting in families. Especially those going through a crisis situation. More hostile, harsh parenting means there is more anger and rejection toward the child and more of the child experiencing disruption, isolation, disapproval, withdrawal or rejection.
• Parenting style. The lack of a warm, positive relationship with parents; insecure attachment; harsh, inflexible, rigid or inconsistent discipline practices; and inadequate supervision of and involvement with children all increase the risk that children will develop major behavioural and emotional problems, including conduct problems, substance abuse, irresponsible or antisocial behavior, and participation in delinquent activities.
• The impact of Family Breakdown. A Family is a complex set of interweaving relationships -- parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts & uncles, and cousins. Children, born into a family, don't think about it; they accept family - as much of a given as the air that they breathe. Until. The highest risk candidates for self-control issues are the children whose parents have split up. The child's world, previously assumed to be solid and secure, suddenly fractures in a single moment of realisation -- Mummy and Daddy are divided. I am divided. The effects on the child, directly or indirectly, are economic, social and emotional. Without warning, the world has shifted on its axis. The perceived set of rules and "the way things are" that were wrapped around the child have been stripped away, and nothing will ever be same again. Predictably, arrangements for the child's care have a huge varying effect – risks being higher for those with no set pattern of contact, those living further away from the non-custodial parent, and those whose non-custodial parent is paying a lower proportion of their agreed child support. There is evidence of boys being more vulnerable than girls to negative learning and behavioural outcomes, even in infancy, but more clearly in childhood.

Fitting Temperament with the Family Environment.

The “fit” between a child’s temperament style and their environment is crucial. A highly active child living in a small apartment, or a highly outgoing child who has minimal contact with other children, will find their environments difficult and frustrating. Likewise, certain parenting styles suit some temperaments over others. 

When teaching a child right from wrong, firm parental discipline is shown to work better with a more volatile, intense, outgoing child; whereas if the child is shy, quiet, and withdrawn, a much more gentle style of discipline and talking things through tends to work better.

It’s important for us as parents or grandparents to recognise and honour differences in temperament - to respond sensitively to the child who is more reactive or who takes longer to get used to new situations, and to recognise the value of each temperament as well. I really didn't get the temperament differences between my son and daughter, and I'm sorry for it. Had I been that aware, my daughter's journey may have been less fraught. Understanding their temperaments can be the key to unlocking a child’s full potential.

Conflict.

Kids can actually be helped by observing conflict between parents and grandparents, as long as they also observe that conflict moving into a constructive and loving resolution. Kids learn conflict-resolution from their role models. Are your skills worthy of being copied? If not, get some work done -- fast.

The Role of Culture on Temperament.

Different cultures value different sorts of temperamental characteristics. In some cultures and tribal families the more withdrawn, quieter child is viewed very positively: they are seen as better adapted, more socially competent, and score higher on peer leadership than their more outspoken counterparts. Conversely, other cultures and tribes are much more rewarding of the outgoing style of behaviour: the highly sociable, active “force of nature” child is viewed more positively, and is seen as the better-adjusted child.

Culture will also lay quite heavy ground-rules about what acceptable and non-acceptable ways of handling Resentment. What's acceptable in parts of Europe, for example, will not go down well in south-east Asia. In most countries, non-standard ways of expressing resentment may be regarded as “criminal behaviour”.

While temperament may be biologically based, social and cultural norms will determine which temperaments are judged as “good” or “bad”. Conflicts between a child's temperament and his family and tribal culture are going to be problematic for everyone.

Managing Disappointment

Both you and I know intimately the feelings around the experience we call “disappointment”. Being able to “suck it up” is another acquired skill about managing our responses; knowing when to “speak your mind”, when to “vent your feelings”, or whether to mask your disappointment behind politically palatable masks, perhaps voicing the formula white lies and insincere rationalisations that we tell to be polite and that help us to fit in socially (“Well I didn't really want it anyway” or the hopefully more enlightened-sounding (“It just wasn't meant to be.”). We may attempt to deflect anyone probing into an open psychic wound, or choose to cop it sweet, take the initiative on board, drop the story, and experience the multiple mix of feelings we blanket-label “disappointment”. 

 

Being adaptable to sudden change and making the best out of negative outcomes are key attributes of resilience, and I think it is good preparation parenting to design, within the safety of the family structure, gradual challenges for our children that will give them practice in developing a growing range of resilience skills, before they are suddenly tested for real out in the rapidly widening world. The best time for this conscious training is before they start school.

Here's how important training in bending with the wind gets == the ability to adapt to sudden unexpected shock may well save your child from fatal diseases (like cancer, MS, diabetes, AIDS, alzheimers) – but that's another story for another time. (In the meantime, look up “German New Medicine” and prepare for a shock).

In the meantime, it's my contention that shielding your children from disappointment, or depriving them of time and resources to work out for themselves how to manage this kind of setback may be “bad” care. You may be putting your own inadequacy with feelings of discomfort ahead of the opportunity for your kids to learn how to handle theirs. Create them as able. Kids are more resourceful than we often give them credit for.

Delaying Gratification

Which child (or even adult) can resist temptation now for the sake of something bigger in the future? The resilient, adaptable ones, that's who. But imagine what a different world we would be living in now if all children were taught how to comfortably delay gratifying their urges until they can be considered in a more effective and useful context.

There's a well-known experiment that was first conducted in the late 1960s at Stanford University, designed to assesses the levels of self-control in young children. The children were given one marshmallow and a deliberate choice: if they wanted, they could eat it straight away - but if they managed to hold off for, say ten minutes, they would be rewarded with three marshmallows in its place. They were filmed in that waiting period to capture their responses to the challenge: it makes for highly entertaining and insightful viewing.

Self-control is an important cognitive development in young children and requires a number of skills - strategic thought, finding ways of controlling yourself and resisting your impulses. The ability to manage behaviour, emotions and attention is an important skill set for school readiness and also promotes resilience within a child.

But being left alone with a marshmallow for ten whole minutes is no easy task for a 5 year old........ to ask a child to delay gratification indefinitely is, in my childhood experience, torture bordering on abuse. I'm all for playing deliberate games with relatively low-importance items like marshmallows in order for the child to discover healthy strategies for managing the urge for immediate gratification, rather than keeping them in cotton-wool until they leave home and suddenly have to deal, unprepared, with credit cards. I speak from personal experience, so I'm biased – OK?

PERSONALITY

Temperament is not the same thing as Personality, which goes on forming beyond age seven. Think of Temperament as inherent biological building blocks, which influence our perspectives, and go on to underlie and work in combination with our life experiences and choices to develop our Personality. 

 

Temperament and Personality together affect how we humans respond to our world. Temperament and Personality also affect how others respond to us. The truth is that a shy child approaches life in a different way to an extrovert; and we respond to and treat a shy and withdrawing child differently to one who is confident and outgoing. As adults, by our demeanour we teach others how to regard and treat us. That's just the way it is.

Have you never thought “Why does this kind of thing keep happening to me?” Now you know. So if you don't like the way people treat you, you know where to look for remedies. It's just nonsense to expect all of us to go into therapy just so that you can be happy.

Putting kids in cotton wool is bad care. Inherent Resilience and Flexibility develop as we practice coping with adversity. Without creative engagement with trouble, there may be accumulation of sorts, but not much integrating or maturing.

Growing up is an interplay of Nature and Nurture. Part of this process includes learning how to deal with fear and anxiety, when to surrender to what-is and when to stand up for yourself, how to embrace measured challenges and how to rebound from adversity. For that, we need to draw from our immediate family resources of structure, frameworks, boundaries, consistency, reassurance that we have the skills to cope, and emotional support. These resources are just as important as nourishing food and sleep.

Raising children means balancing an interaction of inputs, including diet (physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual), nurturing and physical contact. Touching, cuddling, physical play, jousting, wrestling, dance and sports all play an enormous part in lowering stress and raising resilience. Couch-time is OK as downtime, but not at the expense of getting out of the burrow and "roughing it". If a child's parents or foster carers don't have and provide those resources, the child may be headed for trouble.

Early childhood is the time when we most effectively learn how to manage our feelings and behaviour, and roll with setbacks. It's up to us to encourage them to find their own ways to engage and enjoy daunting physical, reasoning and emotional challenges. Surround them with resources they can explore at will. Children who are deprived of these opportunities suffer greatly in their later lives, some of them never attaining any real measure of adulthood other than whiskers, white hair and sclerosis of everything from arteries to attitudes. In some sense or another, the Pause button is pressed on their maturing and, without insightful intervention, they forever act childishly.

By far the greater part of our resilience was developed before we reached the age of 7. By seven a child’s temperament tends to stabilise – so a very shy, inhibited child at seven is likely to stay that way, and a very sociable, outgoing child is likely to stay that way too. It’s rare to see extreme shifts later in life. A child’s temperament is the foundation of their emerging personality, and, combined with their life experiences, forms an operating system for their present and future.

Personality, whether inherent in temperament, or learned from later experiences is crucial in coping with any adversity that comes with a life of adventure off the beaten track. What I work towards with my children and grandchildren is to develop habits that promote a calm and easygoing approach to anything unknown. It wasn't always so for me – I had to start learning for myself a decade behind the handicap line, and that's still a work in progress.

With all their shortcomings, my parents thankfully expected a lot of me and made it crystal clear what those standards were. From that point of view I noticed that children tend to live up to realistic expectations of them, whereas “spoiled” children tend to grow up feeling somehow lost without boundaries or well-defined expectations, and compensate their lostness with attitudes -- unrealistically privileged and entitled. In a word, brats.

Taking and exercising personal responsibility was prime amid the challenges I put in the way of my children, alongside defined freedoms to experiment. I regarded it as axiomatic that exercising personal responsibility builds self-esteem and self-reliance. And I lavished praise and encouraged celebration whenever responsibility was taken, regardless of the outcome. It's my view that failure is never an outcome when we are encouraged to experiment “to see how it turns out”, and the experimenter goes responsible for the outcomes. Failure is the sole province of irresponsible victims, and you really don't want your kids to be one of those, do you?

As my children grew older, I required increasing evidence of self-discipline from them, because self-discipline needs strategic thinking, problem-solving and a measure of persistence, all qualities I dearly desired for them. They certainly got plenty of practice in delaying gratification, but I made sure that they did get the things they waited and worked for. And they got, for free, unique experiences that others of their age could not access.

Fortunately, I'm a very touch-feely person, so both my son and daughter got heaps of hugs, tosses in the air, raspberry blowing on the skin, and “spifflication”, involving a generous dose of tickling. Only in later years did I learn that close physical relationship is a key contributor to resilience, particularly in moments of adversity and extreme disappointment. Happily I did it anyway. I say “happily”, because my son and daughter are two of the most resilient people it has ever been my honour to know.

A work ethic is important, too: the idea of contributing to the wellbeing of all according to the level of your competence. Chores necessitate Participation – doing your bit. A strong work expectation had been drilled into me by my parents, both by word, by discipline and by example. Full-time work, coupled with a strong sense of self control and the responsibilities of autonomy, feeds directly into the pool of adapt-ability, self-esteem and resilience. I honestly don't know how we can expect the children of parents on welfare to do anything else but grow up starved of esteem, ungrounded and resentful. Which bodes ill for the children they create because the propensity for resilience (or lack of it) is also transmitted in your genes. I was lucky – both the Barklas and the Friees are resilient bunch, so I got a good start. If you didn't, then you've got a job to do on your own genes before you start procreating.

FINDING YOUR NICHE...

Skills we need for developing good peer relationships 

To form good peer relationships, children need to feel the capacity, freedom and responsibility to manage their behaviour in social situations, knowing how to conduct themselves appropriately to whatever the majority decides is acceptable.

Children need a healthy dose of self confidence – believing in themselves enough so they can hurdle the risk of initiating contact with new people, overcoming any fear of rejection, and being willing to have a go and experiment with different ways of asserting their own ideas in a group.

They also need emotional intelligence, which means being able to understand their own feelings as well as reading and responding compassionately to other people's feelings. This involves the ability to read other people’s facial expressions and body language, read their behaviour, read unspoken dialogue, identify indications of anxiety or sadness or aggression. Once they've recognised the emotion, they then need to know how best to respond to it, which might be reaching out to the child who's looking anxious or fearful, or withdrawing from the child who looks like they're about to explode.

In a similar vein, the ability to feel and express Empathy is also a crucial part of building friendships. Empathy is an acquired skill that is socially sourced and applied. Empathy is the ability to sense the mood of another and use emotional memories from their own experience to respond on behalf of that other person's predicament. At the age of seven most children can demonstrate some level of empathy, a skill that may further develop as they get older, depending on the kind of parenting they get.

A child’s moral development is also an important part of doing well in social groups – having the cognitive skills to think through fairly complex concepts like honesty, fairness and justice. Moral discernment is also a product of socialisation: how parents are bringing up their children, how much they're emphasising the importance of awareness for others and following the rules, ethics and expectations of society. Fairness and Justice are very important concepts for seven year olds, and acutely hurt cries of “It's not fair” are quite common around this age.

Peers

At the age of seven, peers have become an increasingly important part of a child’s social world. Now that their world is expanding outside the home, they are spending a third of their lives with their peers rather than siblings, and they begin to define themselves in relation to other children of similar age and similar grouping.

Peer interactions loom large in the school setting. Children across their lives spend 4,000 hours at school, almost exclusively in the context with their peers and extensive interactions around them. The school experience is a rich environment for a child to develop their social skills, to learn about their temperament and themselves, and to bring those experiences to their onward development. Parents and tutors of children living and schooling in remote areas have a lot of making-up to do in the form of providing peer experiences that adequately substitute for daily school socialising. Not easy.

Within their peer group, a child learns about social norms - the rules and regulations about behaving in social groups, with bias towards the “rules” of the group they've attached to. More generally they're also learning how to cooperate, how to take turns, how to follow the rules of a game, how to make friends. They need to learn how to listen to others within the group, but also to assert their own ideas, and getting that balance right.

Gender

Gender is not just about biology, it’s also about cultural expectations and opportunities and how they play out across the life course for boys and girls, men and women.

From before the time a child is born, the process of gender socialisation begins. The first question anybody asks is "Is it a boy or is it a girl?"

Gender socialisation continues on through life, but at age seven it’s quite distinct, and dominant gender differences in roles, in attitudes, expectations and performances of children can be clearly seen. At seven years of age, there's a tendency for groups to be forming and the playground becomes split along gender lines, with cross-gendered friendships being less frequent. In most primary schools I attended, the girls and boys had their own playground territory, with unmarked but universally recognised boundaries. Actually, sticking with your gender is the easiest way of becoming a member of a group. Later they'll find sub-groups within each gender. What blows that all apart is when the child “falls in love” with one of the opposite sex; that's when there's a bit of loitering at the edges, much to the amusement of the other, unafflicted children.

Gender differences come to the fore in how boys and girls play, with boys typically going for the rough and tumble games with a competitive edge, emphasising their advantage in spatial skills, while girls tend to opt for smaller groups, engaging in more co-operative, communicative play which emphasises their edge in language and literacy. Chris Lillie nailed these differences in his slyly acid comedies “Summer Heights High” “J'aime” and “Jonah From Tonga” -- comedies that encourage you not to laugh at the highly recognisable characters.

No matter how virulently well-meaning new-age parents resist it, gender stereotyping is all around a child’s life - from the clothes they wear, to the toys they play with, to the activities they engage in - but if a child adheres too rigidly to their gender stereotype, it might mean missing out on experiences they might really enjoy. Breaking gender stereotypes often requires a lot of self-confidence, but can be very rewarding. But it's best done by encouragement rather than coercion.

There are limits, though. I can remember getting ready for my first school social and wanting to wear lipstick like I saw one of the girls doing. My undoubtedly shocked mother gave me a soft but firm “No, it's not what boys do.” I thank God I hadn't asked my father!

Social roles

Speaking of socials – human beings are social animals. We live, work and play in social groups, so it's really important that we learn how to get along with other people. It doesn't mean we all need to be the same, but it also doesn't mean that a boy can turn up wearing lipstick, either. Within certain limits, social groups work because we all play different roles in them – there are the leaders and the followers, the team players and those who work better on their own, those who are creative and those who are by the book, those who nourish, those who care, those who provide, those who organise, those who defend, those who test the boundaries......

Children's temperamental differences in how sociable and outgoing they are play a big impact on their peer relationships and how they fit into social groups, with extroversion and introversion being the two ends of the scale.

The hallmarks of an extrovert are often seen to be assertiveness and talkativeness. Extroverts are highly motivated and stimulated by the outer world. An introvert on the other hand is much more internally driven, and is stimulated by the inner world of ideas, concepts and thoughts.

Western society tends to valorise extroversion and create an ideal around it. Extroverts are goal-driven externally, often gaining recognition and accolades because their contribution is so visible. An introvert’s approach tends to be more contemplative, more thoughtful, and can take a longer time to resolve and reach a conclusion. While that level of thoughtfulness may not be as visible as what the extrovert is bringing to the table, it is just as valuable. I'm reliably told there are roughly equal numbers of extroverts and introverts in the world; certainly both are essential in modulating and moderating how we make progress in society. Similarly it's equally important to get to know our own extro- and intro-versions, and find a comfortable way to balance them, moment to moment.

A child whose internal balance is more introverted and more socially withdrawn may choose to have fewer friends, they may be happier in their own company rather than in groups, but it's certainly possible for them to make good quality friendships. 

 

Introversion -v- Shyness

Introverts are often misinterpreted as being shy, but most of the time that’s not the case. Introversion is something that an individual is comfortable with: it's part of their natural wiring. Shyness on the other hand tends to be driven more by an anxiety or a fear of social disapproval. Shyness can be inherently painful and something that a person doesn't want to be. As a shy young lad, I can vouch for that!

Understanding the balance of extroversion and introversion and negotiating the personality spectrum is the mark of good parenting and leadership. A good leader can set aside their temperamental preferences and get everyone’s views out on the table as well as their own. They are sensitive to other people’s needs and can find a role for everyone within the social group, and have the ability to motivate them to the cause.

Leadership skills are an important part of life in the playground. I'd rather see a leader than a bully any day. And I suspect that I'm not alone there....

Siblings and only children

Siblings are an important part of a child’s social world, and give them lots of opportunity for practising the openness, flexibility and resilience required for all social relationships. For only children, other friends and peer groups become even more important because they don't have their siblings to fall back on.

While there is no evidence to suggest that being an only child is a bad thing, it does present different sorts of challenges. Growing up with siblings automatically encourages adaptability, pressing a child to learn to adapt and negotiate and it allows them to develop certain social skills very easily. An only child has to learn those skills in a different way.
 

Single children have the advantage of having more of their parents' attention, and parents can compensate by making sure there are lots of other children in the child's life. If children are isolated and have little contact with age mates or other children in their early years, learning the social skills necessary to develop good peer relations can be a harder chore.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF 7 

“Give me the child until he is seven, and I’ll give you the man.” The old Jesuit saying is so born out in evidence it is almost axiomatic -- seven is an important milestone. Around age seven, children develop a self-conscious identity, or ‘self-concept’ – they’re becoming aware of who they are, who they want to be, and are already putting together a strong sense of what they value. Those things may change with further experience, but the 7-year-old is aware now of their existence and is working on testing and integrating them into experiences and strategies.

At this stage in middle childhood, a child has mastered the basics of language, grammar, literacy and numeracy. Their thinking processes are developing and, in their ever-expanding world of school, peers, and organised activities, they are starting to deal with more complex and abstract ideas. They’re developing rules and scales of what's ideal, and they're starting to judge themselves more against their own benchmarks and other children - on things like how well they’re doing at school or at sports and in their peer group. They are making comparisons which both reflect and affect their sense of worth and self-esteem.

A WORD ABOUT LYING
From this time onward, there's a real acceleration in a child’s moral awareness. They’re realising how they might be responsible for things in good and bad ways, and they are beginning to understand there might be consequences of deeds and attitudes, including moral transgressions. And guilt, which was introduced to the child well before this, is now really starting to corrode the psyche. So, while an adequately parented five-year-old might understand that lying is wrong, a seven-year-old has some ideas and beliefs about why lying is wrong and feels bad about it. Unfortunately he/she may well be experimenting with ways and means of avoiding the guilt feeling by either getting around the moral sanction or manipulating consequences.

Parents who care are not helped by the fact that learning to tell white lies is a necessary and common social phenomenon that helps us to fit in with our peers. We frequently tell 'prosocial' lies which demonstrate moral judgement and politeness, and this is an important social skill for new school children as they step into the wider world. The problem is learning when to lie, and when to be straight. There's a grey-zone of moral confusion here that even the most sophisticated adults have trouble negotiating. I think the answer lies in learning to predict what the possible consequences of our choices, to ourselves and others, might be before we make the decision whether or not to speak out. That involves issues of what constitutes "good" or "bad" care of the other person in the particular circumstances. That's highly sophisticated stuff that black-and-white moralists conveniently avoid.
 
Looking at it from a positive viewpoint, when children begin to tell lies, it's a sign they have hit a new cognitive milestone. It shows their brains are able to manage the complex processes required to formulate a lie, and for those who can maintain a lie persuasively, that they also have the verbal and acting skills to carry the lie through.

IN CONCLUSION........
The acceleration in moral awareness at around age 7 coincides with an increasing capacity to resist temptation. Children at seven have more ability to manage their impulses, so when they feel the urge to do something wrong, they have a moment to think about it before they act, in a way that younger children do not because they're still wired firmly to a stimulus/response mechanism. 

Now they are learning to consider the consequence of an action before doing it. As they grow older, habit will take over again and that moment of choice will get shorter to a point where we forget that it exists. We revert to to babyhood. Around 7 is the age where children need to be pointed to that Magic Moment of Chosing, and the power and importance of that moment – while they are still aware of its existence. As a counselor, let me tell you that taking so-called adults back to that point of choice can be a long and tedious process.

Please, parents, do your bit to point out to them that they always have that moment to re-consider first impulses – a moment to make a conscious choice and a decision. A moment to respond awarefully, instead of reacting blindly. And in word and deed, do them the favour of driving home the ruthless rule of reality that every choice and decision has consequences. Be that reliable mentor who loves and cares enough to say “No. You can do better.” 

They'll reward you with resilience, adaptability and a life fulfilling.