The Importance Of Childhood Socialization
Humans are social beings. Contact with other people and integration into society is inevitable at different stages of life. In fact, social relationships are great stress absorbers and ensure better psychophysical health. So today let’s focus on the origin of our interpersonal skills: childhood socialization.
The pace of life in modern society requires everyone, including young children, to develop in the most diverse social systems. In them, each plays different social roles. For this it is necessary to develop certain social skills to be able to take everyday interactions out of the letter.
Socialization is the process that allows us to learn and internalize the norms of our culture, acquire the ability to develop in society and build an identity through contact with others. It is, therefore, a fundamental process for our development as people.
Childhood socialization: stages and agents of socialization
This socialization process is divided into two main stages with its own characteristics:
- Primary socialization. It is the individual’s first contact with his environment and with the people around him. At this stage, the child acquires the most basic skills. This happens mainly through practice, imitating what she sees or is taught.
- It is an essentially informal process in which the main agent of socialization is the family, especially through the closest members. With these people the child will learn values and develop the first emotional bonds.
- In this phase, day care centers, kindergarten schools and the media can also play an important role in socialization.
- Secondary socialization. It is a more formal learning process in which the child begins to acquire more complex and abstract skills. It is carried out mainly by schools and other educational institutions. It is at this point that the child discovers new worlds beyond the family and begins to understand the hierarchy system.
But what role do parents play in this whole process? What can we do to provide adequate socialization for our children?
socialization and family
As we said earlier, the family is the main and most important agent of childhood socialization. How parents interact with their children provides the foundation for building their identity and shaping their behavior.
Likewise, the family’s social behaviors will have repercussions on the child’s future personality.
The influence of temperament
Something that plays an important role in our ability to socialize during childhood is temperament. Temperament is something innate that manifests itself from the first moments of a baby’s life.
Some are active, fearless, more responsive to environmental cues and not afraid to explore. Other babies, on the other hand, are calm, calm, and cautious. They tend to cling to their attachment figure and naturally have less interest in exploring their environment.
This is an important issue because, according to Buck (1991), uninhibited children tend to create more socially enriching environments to develop due to their way of being and reacting. People around you tend to stimulate them more and pay more attention to them.
In turn, inhibited children can create a context with less stimulation. In this way, she ends up missing opportunities to practice socialization and learn its rules.
So, regardless of your child’s temperament, be sure to provide a stimulating and enriching environment full of occasions to develop their social skills and interact with the environment without fear.
parenting styles
Another aspect of great importance is the parenting style chosen by the parents. Through it, children will learn to see the world and how to relate to it.
Parents must be democratic and assertive, be able to listen to their child’s feelings and teach them how to deal with them, encourage the child to explore and make decisions on their own, and set consistent and well-founded boundaries.
Finally, parents must allow their children to view the world as a positive and safe place. They must also teach the little ones to see themselves as capable and competent beings, who know who they are and how to act to achieve positive results.
