Ability to communicate with the next person freely especially for children is priceless to be able to describe their feelings and thoughts to others is like building a bridge to the next person. Social competence in children is built through confidence when they are around someone who they can form a trust bond to share their little story or play. Social behavior of children can modify for different reasons where their social-emotional development can be challenged to be able to associate socially with other children and adults.
In this essay, will focus on the positive and negative sides of family culture and temperament factors of children that will describe the development of social competence. Culture plays a huge role in each child’s social life, such as building their communication skills, confidence, faith, and respect for self and others. Social competence and culture blend in together as companions. It offers the well-being thoughts to belong and to feel recognized in a community or a culture that relates to the child’s understanding of living and communicating with others without fear.
A delightful feeling for a child is to belong to a particular group this is where the parents of the child play the role of making the child feel recognized in its culture. This feeling of being included and belonged continues till there are adults. Children will always want to feel valued in their family, their culture and even in the center. As it focuses a sense of belonging for children to have an identity and recognition in their surrounding, it does empower children to have confidence in social interaction.
Children observe and learn a lot from their surrounding they pick on things that may benefit which can be positively or even negatively. (Silicon Valley YMCA 2013) To Focus on different family cultures that can bring an individual type of learning experience and social competence of a child in their surroundings. In every family, a child is raised with different cultural contexts where their approach will be different to others. Therefore, any child would want to have a supporting, loving, and a caring environment to be heard and recognized as an individual.
In some family culture, the children are closer to their parents. Children have the freedom to discuss their problems without fear. The children are given a choice to make their decisions. Some families who go on vacations or trips together it builds a stronger relationship with each other. This type of culture promotes a healthy and effective set of approach that creates a positive environment. Parenting style has been found to predict child well-being in the domains of social competence, academic performance, psychosocial development, and problem behavior (Darling 1999).
Depending on each families cultural context which can impact on a child’s social competence. In some family, they may have a different expect of living. Children may have limits to their demands that sustain few things. The voice of the child is not taken seriously. It can affect their confidence to interact openly with the teachers or children. In contrast, children and adolescents whose parents were indifferent perform most poorly in all domains (Baumrind 1991, Miller, Cowan, Cowan and Hetherington 1993, Weiss and Schwarz 1996).
Children get detached from their environment and face challenges to build a relationship with other children in the center. The relationships in the child’s life are not stable enough for them to feel belonged and understood as an individual. According to Vygotsky’s Theory of cultural values are necessary for children’s learning and development but other sociocultural plays a huge part in children’s learning and understanding their surrounding and also taking part along the other children. Learning-theoriescom, 2017) To be able to understand a child’s lifestyle which can be clearly observed by the way the child interacts and gives a response. The educator can be supportive to the child’s situation and provide equally learning opportunity for the children who detach themselves from the group or play. The teacher can build a relationship with the child as they develop confidence within themselves to respond positively to the educator.
The bridge of trust is built during this progress while the educator can slowly guide the child to play with other children. As Te Whariki focuses maintaining a strong foundation for children to have a sense of well-being, belonging, exploration, contribution, and communication that children will learn and develop to be a social and self-confident learner. (Ministry of Education, 1996) Temperament in children is influenced that come from a genetic trait which evolves from their parents.
Personalities of children are mold from different temperaments which impact on their learning and interaction in the surroundings. Depending on Parenting style their children’s temperament growth is influenced on their emotional, spiritual and physical on how they interact with others as an individual. Temperament is obtained from birth which has its positive and negative factors. Temperament has its meltdown in building a child’s selfconfidence of themselves it does have its negative sides as well.
As (Rothbart & Bates, 1998; Kagan, 1992) evidence states that few children are simply shyer or more inhibited than others, and it may be counterproductive to push such children into social relations that make them uncomfortable (Katz & McClellan, 1997). Therefore, it may affect their ability to be competent socially and emotionally on the amount of time being in a group or playing other children. Depending on the child’s family living style social competence development can be influenced either in a positive or negative approach.
Each child will have different temperaments depending on parenting styles or their cultural context that a child is brought up in a particular family. The social behavior and interaction of the child will be either confident or detached with/from other children in the center. Attachment can affect a child the parents it can limit the child’s social competence this can be observed by the child’s performance the activities, in their emotional wellbeing and social interaction.
Where the child does not want to leave the parent because the child does not feel belonged or scared in a new environment. (Nihgov, 2017) The child’s performance to interact positively with other children will limit their chances of building a relationship and may have challenging behavior. The temperament of a child does make a difference in their choice of activity and behavior patterns. A child who has shy and unsociable nature will avoid being involved in a group or activity, while a child with a friendly nature will communicate with others without hesitation.
It is certain when children attend any center they will meet someone who has a different or similar type of personality that will make them feel comfortable to communicate and play with. As Thomas chess has stated three type of child with a different type of temperaments which are “easy” has a positive response to new object, environment or person. “Slow to warm up” will take the time to get used to their surroundings, people, and activities. If a child who has behavior challenges the teachers can plan strategies to help the child improve his/her ability to built a social approach with other children and teachers.
The teachers can work along with the parents to learn more about the child’s interaction at home and interests to focus on maintaining the negative approach into positive. It can be seen that positives and negatives of social competence in the two factors of family culture and temperament have a different impact on the children learning and development. The research shows how family culture can be a huge influence on social interaction that can lifestyle in a wider range in a child’s ife that teaches them how to build relationships and able to share their thoughts.
The family cultural context encourages children in their social and interaction development that teaches children how to respect and function in a society. Temperament offers children to explore their inner self and discovering the difference between being recognized in a group and a self-confident learner. It also shows how teachers plan and execute their curriculum depending on each children’s interests and increasing their confidence to interact with other children and adults.
