Manifestations
Negativism
- this is a refusal of everything that the parent asks the child to do. This sign should be distinguished from ordinary disobedience, characteristic of all children. In the case of negativism, the baby almost always refuses. It is not recommended to punish a child at such moments. Even a heart-to-heart conversation or a demand for an explanation will not help in this case. But if, at the moment of refusal, the child is engaged in something that completely captivates him, then disobedience in this case is natural.
Stubbornness
- when a child demands something from his parents. It could be a toy, candy or any other thing. But the child doesn't need it. The main thing that a child wants is self-affirmation, and not possession of a thing.
Obstinacy
- the child tries in every possible way to violate discipline, the daily routine that they are trying to impose on him. This may be a reluctance to get up early in the morning, go to school, eat, or do homework.
Self-will
- the child wants to be independent, so he tries to do everything on his own, overcome difficulties, without asking permission or advice from his parents. The wishes and instructions of adults are not important to him. The needs of the child himself come first.
Protest
- when a baby adapts to a new way of life and the conditions of society, he accumulates internal denial, protest, which he splashes out on almost every person. Quarrels in the family and at school are becoming commonplace. This occurs because the child experiences an internal conflict in adapting to society.
Depreciation
- the child develops new ideals. What he previously considered interesting now has no meaning to him. The child breaks his favorite toys, says bad words that are prohibited in society. He is a hooligan and does all sorts of mischief to all the children around him, sometimes treating them with cruelty.
In families where children are under strong guardianship, despotism
: the child changes the family’s lifestyle to suit his needs.
How to change your relationship with your child?
Is it difficult for parents to change their attitude towards their child as he grows up? There are different parents. It's not very difficult for most parents. But if for the mother (usually it is they who have this problem) it is very important to be everything for the baby, to be his earthly God, then the emancipation of the child becomes a difficult test for her. She herself is not psychologically ready to let him go, to give him more independence. She wants to continue to take care of him, she likes him to be completely dependent on her. In this case, the mother, and therefore her child, faces a difficult problem.
If a mother does not have such a complex, she should simply realize what tasks her baby and herself face. You need to learn how to build business relationships with a new student, a future student. A 6-year-old child is gradually getting used to new demands on himself. At the same time, maintaining the confidence that his mother loves him not for his educational success, but for the fact that he is her child, loves him in himself.
But dad can show the baby that his attitude is determined precisely by his successes. A father's love is not unconditional, like a mother's. It is determined precisely by the successes of a growing person. If he does everything he should and there is a result, dad shows that he is happy with him. And vice versa. This stimulates growth and development, since every child wants his dad to be happy with him.
If previously a child was just a crumb, a small funny creature, an object of love and care, now he becomes a co-worker and friend. You can already discuss some problems with him, share something. This is how mother-child communication changes. She is no longer only a mother, but also a senior colleague and friend.
This is interesting and exciting, because human relationships are a very interesting, creative area of human life. Everyone can get a lot of positive emotions by changing their relationship with their child and watching how they themselves change.
Tags:Parenting
We also recommend reading on this topic:
- What to do with tantrums in a 5 year old child
- If conflicts arise between children in kindergarten
- Why didn't the child start talking?
- Problems of spiritual and moral education of preschool children
Self-diagnosis
Symptoms of the crisis:
- often rude;
- does his homework poorly;
- refuses to go to school or kindergarten;
- he stands on his point of view until the last moment; clowning, antics, and posing begin;
- I'm not happy with everything in the family.
Also the child becomes:
- irritable and hot-tempered;
- get tired easily;
- absent-minded;
- withdrawn and timid.
If at least two points coincide and are observed in a child, he is experiencing a 7-year-old crisis. But don't worry too much. In the near future, parents need to adjust their behavior so as not to hurt their child’s feelings. Because inaction and ignoring manifestations, both active and passive, will affect the child’s behavior in the future.
It is also possible that the 7-year-old crisis has not yet begun, and all of the above behavior patterns found in the child are the result of improper upbringing. Then, mom and dad need to pay attention to this moment and adjust their parenting methods.
Causes
The causes of the 7-year crisis arise from a sudden change in everyday life. When a child moves from kindergarten to school, he faces many problems. This includes a change of environment, communication with students of different ages and levels of mental development. Chad wants to join society and become a full member of the system. Therefore, in order to be ready for the school stage, the crisis of 7 years is the first thing that he will have to go through.
It is at this age that the child is aimed at searching for an authoritative person. Therefore, during a crisis, a child may have friends older than him in age who are considered school hooligans and bullies. A child can snitch on his peers and ingratiate himself with his elders. The baby begins to look at himself from the outside: he constantly compares with someone, and there is a tendency to underestimate his personality.
Negative consequences of the 7-year crisis and their causes
Usually the beginning of school life leads to the end of the 7-year crisis. The child moves on to school and acquires a new social status and position. There is an opportunity to demonstrate your independence to a sufficient extent. Behavioral difficulties that cause concern among parents also gradually fade away.
However, there are also some negative consequences of the 7-year crisis. These include:
- low performance at school, lack of desire to learn;
- problems in relationships with peers;
- inadequate self-esteem, high anxiety, which can lead to the development of neurosis.
As a rule, problems arise when parents try to maintain previous forms of interaction with the child, which are no longer effective. The reluctance to understand and accept the fact that the child is growing up, the limitation of his independence and initiative, as well as the attempt to break and adjust the child to himself, leads to an exacerbation of the symptoms of the crisis.
During this age period, the child tries to understand his behavior. Difficulties in mastering new forms of behavior can arise in the case of unjustified self-restraints and self-control. These phenomena arise if the child’s manifestations of independence and self-reliance often end in failure, or when he is punished too severely for some offenses. In such cases, the child withdraws from independence, loses initiative, so as not to be punished again or not to experience a situation of failure.
Therefore, the behavior of parents during critical periods of a child’s life is one of the most important moments in the education of the individual and the successful overcoming of this difficult stage in development.
What difficulties await parents?
The child begins to irritate adults. In addition, the parents themselves do not fully understand what they can do with the baby so that he becomes controllable again. Even those mothers and fathers who used to speak calmly with the child begin to scream, quarrels arise, and the situation reaches a dead end.
The baby becomes naughty. His performance at school is deteriorating. He compares himself with others, his responsibilities in the family with what mom, dad, and brother do. For example, he may have a conflict due to the fact that his older brother is allowed not to wear a hat, but he is not allowed to.
The child torments everyone in the family with his stubbornness. A situation may arise when a child needs a toy at all costs. He asks his parents for it again and again, and when they buy the item for their baby, they suddenly lose interest in it.
What should parents do?
There is no need to panic. This is a temporary stage in a child’s life and, like any other age-related crisis, it will pass. You should behave correctly with your child and everything will return to normal over time. The parent needs to give the child more freedom. This is necessary for the child to understand his inner “I”. It is necessary to know the balance between strict restrictions (which parents abuse) and control and direction of the child in the right direction.
It is necessary to take into account that the child is no longer as helpless as he once was. If you give him more freedom, he will become more independent, and then he himself will come to mom and dad for advice.
The child should be given the opportunity to argue with his parents. He needs to express his opinion, and adults need to take this opinion into account. This way, the child will understand that unreasonably demanding something is not the best option.
At the beginning of the crisis of seven years, there is no need to take away the child’s toys and immediately put him in charge of notebooks and textbooks. It is necessary to do this gradually, even playfully, so that the transition from entertainment to study looks like an adventure. For example, a child can play, relax, but at the same time repeat the words and material assigned at home. Parents also need to be involved in the educational process. For example, a mother can do homework on drawing with her child.
There is no need to force your child to follow a daily routine. If he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t need to. Mom should ask how much time the child needs to complete all his tasks. Let him try to keep up with the time allotted to him. This action will make him feel like an adult. You need to communicate with the child as an equal, forget that he is a baby. It is then that the child will make decisions for which he must be held accountable, and not shift all the blame onto the parents.
Parents are required to set examples not of themselves or their friends, but of fairy-tale cartoon characters. Moreover, it is advisable to take into account cartoons with deep meaning. Thus, the fairy-tale character will be the authority for the child, and the child will understand that this must be done not only because the parents demand it. After all, even the hero in his favorite cartoon does this.
Parents should not treat their child as their own thing or toy. You need to understand that he is a person who does not have to be like mom or dad in everything. After all, the crisis manifests itself primarily because of the behavior of parents. The child’s mother and father need to understand that their child is much more difficult than they are, and they need to support him and guide him in this difficult moment in his life.
What are the causes of the crisis?
By the end of preschool age, children lose spontaneity and situational reactions. Their behavior becomes more independent of various environmental influences, more arbitrary. Mannering and antics are also associated with voluntariness - the child consciously takes on some role, takes some kind of pre-prepared internal position, apparently not always adequate to the situation, and then behaves in accordance with this internal role. Hence the unnatural behavior, instability, inconsistency of emotions, and causeless mood swings. Over time, this will all pass. There will remain the ability to act not only under the dictates of the current situation, but also extra-situational, in accordance with a freely accepted internal position. The inner freedom to choose one position or another, the freedom to construct one’s personal attitude to various life situations, will remain. The inner world of the individual, the world of feelings, the space of internal actions and the work of imagination will remain.
The crisis of seven years is prepared by the entire previous development of the child at a stable age. Thus, the genesis of the transition period turns out to be connected with the central psychological neoplasm of the stable period of development, which, according to L.S. Vygotsky, is responsible for “a completely original, specific for a given age, exclusive, unique and inimitable relationship between the child and the reality around him, primarily social.” It is the new formation that sets for the child the social situation of development, which “determines entirely those forms and the path along which the child acquires new and new personality properties, drawing them from social reality, as from the main source of development, the path along which the social becomes individual." The development of a neoplasm at a stable age represents the starting point for all dynamic changes in the “I”.
According to the periodization of mental development proposed by L.S. Vygotsky, the central psychological new formation of the preschool period of development is imagination.
Many authors rightly point to imagination as the basis of human creativity, connect the development of imagination with the general mental development of the child, and believe that the development of imagination is an indispensable condition for the psychological preparation of children for school.
Thus, the problem of the “seven-year-old crisis”, or, in other words, the problem of psychological readiness for schooling, receives its concretization as the problem of changing the leading types of activity in a given age period. In relation to the age of interest to us, this problem begins to sound like a problem of the transition from role-playing games to educational activities.
What can't you do?
You cannot prohibit your child from further exploring the world and trying something new. After all, it is at this age that the baby transitions from play activities to non-play activities: sewing, drawing, designing. The child has a need to create something new.
You can't criticize a baby. At the age of 5-7 years, children's reaction to criticism intensifies. The child can bring the drawing he has drawn to his parents so that they can appreciate it. If they do not praise him, the child's self-esteem decreases. But it is precisely at this age that it is formed.
You can’t get angry with your child when he puts off fulfilling some obligation that he doesn’t want to do. Parents should take into account that he hears them, this is just a new way of relating to adults that the child is just trying out in his life. The peculiarities of the 7-year-old crisis are that the baby rethinks the previous rules and his life.
When should you see a doctor?
It’s better not to see a doctor at all. This period is temporary and will soon pass. You just need to accept that the child is forming his own new inner life, into which he is still allowing his parents. But they already need to ask him for permission to enter it. Therefore, the natural course of the baby’s mental development should not be treated by a doctor.
Which doctor should I contact?
If parents still decide to consult a doctor, they should contact a child psychologist. The doctor will tell adults in detail about what kind of attack this is, how to overcome the crisis, and teach them how to interact with the child in a new way. And he will explain to the child what his parents don’t like and how to come to a consensus.
If during a crisis of 3 years a child learns to distinguish himself from the world around him, then during the period under review, he learns to communicate with himself and understand himself. This is not easy for the child, parents should understand this. If the child began to behave as described during the crisis at five or six years old, this is not a reason to worry.
It is at this age that the child begins to take responsibility for himself. On the part of parents, especially mothers, they need to stop thinking about the child as “We”. We will pack the backpack for school not “We”, but “He”. Only patience and mutual understanding will help you overcome the 7-year crisis without problems.
Author: Ilya Kovrin, especially for Mama66.ru
Challenge 6 years
It is clear enough that five years is still the age of carelessness. For children, the most important thing is the unconditional love of their mother, the warmth and security of their family world, at home. Although communication with peers already plays a big role, life does not yet pose any difficult challenges for a growing person.
At the age of six, changes occur in the child’s lifestyle and relationships with loved ones. This age is already perceived as preschool. And school, where most children go at age seven, is an important stage of development, socialization, and maturation. All parents change their attitude towards their child in some way at approximately this age.
If previously a child learned something unnoticed while playing, now he is required to be disciplined, diligent and persevering. Systematic classes begin in kindergarten.
If earlier the attitude of parents was determined by the fact that this is our baby, we love him because he is sweet and obedient, but now a new motive penetrates into relationships with loved ones: demands, the need to conform to her.
The baby no longer exists only for his family: he is being prepared to enter the big world and they want him to be successful in it. This is what raising a 6-year-old child is like. This is the specificity of this stage of growing up.
What is required from the child?
What does this challenge require from the baby? What does he need to receive, at school and beyond, the education that will give him a stable position in life?
By this time, the child should already be sufficiently saturated with the love of loved ones and childish carefree happiness. In this case, he is emotionally stable and ready to move on.
That is, as always happens in development, the success of the next stage largely depends on how successful the previous periods were. Raising children 5-6 years old (and before) provides a foundation, a kind of foundation for moving forward.
If everything is good in a child’s relationships with loved ones, he is loved, he is happy, then he has a fulcrum with which he is able, if not to change the world, then to a significant extent to change himself, his habits and attitude. This is what is required at each stage of growing up.
The baby must gradually learn to do not what he wants, but what he needs. This is already raising a child at 6 years old, its specifics. So that the child does not perceive the need for this as something bad, negative, he must feel that he is not only being taken away from part of the childish carefree freedom that he previously enjoyed, not only is he being prevented from playing and having fun all day, but is also being given something additional. That something new has appeared in his life, something positive, good and pleasant for him.
Only under these two conditions: if the child is happy and thanks to this is ready to move further in development and if part of his freedom is not just taken away from him, but is given in return something very attractive to him - a growing person will be able to cope with the challenges of life without any problems.
What should you give your child?
What should a child receive in return for his childhood freedom being partially taken away from him? Respect for adults, especially close people: dad, mom, grandparents, older brother or sister. His status in the mini-society of his family changes.
Previously, he was loved, but he did not participate in making important decisions. Everyone cared about him, looked after him, but he himself did not look after anyone. Now the situation must change.
A baby needs more than just love. He also needs respect. Success in mental development, in preparation for school, and new knowledge give him the respect of close adults, increasing his importance in the family. To some extent, mom and dad need to learn a new attitude towards their child: as an adult, a hard worker.
This does not mean that parents' attitudes will change dramatically. It is better to do everything very gradually. But new notes appear, and they sound louder.
So gradually the baby gets used to the change in his status: he is already taken into account to a greater extent, he is almost a schoolboy, he is studying, some achievements and success are expected of him. And we must meet these expectations.
This is also unpleasant because it is difficult. But it’s also pleasant, because it gives you a feeling of your significance, importance, human strength that you never had before.
This is exactly the feeling that mom and dad should instill in the child. Then everything will be fine, not without difficulties, but they will be overcome.
