Negativaty During Child Development

A frustrated mother remarked, "I wouldn't mind having another baby it he could be born at age five." This remark raises a basic question: if development is a gradual process, why do we often characterize behavior by age levels? One answer is that it is convenient. Chronological age is always there in terms of months or years; psychological age is, on the other hand, less easy to determine and to describe.

We realize that one person may be both physiologically and psychologically younger at sixty than some other person who is chronologically younger at fifty. But such variations are difficult to classify. In a sense, we have the same problem in talking about early development. As a matter of fact, longitudinal studies demonstrate great individual variation, between and within individuals, in the expression of such behavior as negativism or annoyance.

Illustrative of the fact that behavior does not develop along a smooth slope is the observation that as we grow older, behavior seems to peak out in different people at different age levels. Noting some of these "crisis" periods roughly related to chronological age can help us to illustrate the overall nature of development; let us begin such an approach.

Can we predict what the next crisis period will be? Yes. At least we can predict that the stage of negativism will precede the stage of annoyance and that later the crisis stage of adolescence will follow; perhaps less well defined are the decision making age of early youth, middle-age revolt, and the declining years.

Roughly from eighteen months through three years of age, we have the stage at which the child dictates where you are to sit and what you are to do. He or she will snatch toys from other children and say, "No-no-no" to even a most reasonable request. The child is beginning to show dominating ways. This is the stage of negativism, characterized by biting, pulling, and hitting. It is as though development has reached a point where the child has an abundance of uncontrolled energy that at times he or she cannot channel usefully. The child is emerging from dependence, but finds the world not totally the way he would have it.

It is the period of a host of adjustment problems; a time of oscillation between temper, tantrums and affection, exuberance and shyness, eagerness for and rejection of food. Behavior goes from one extreme to another; there is laughter at one moment and fussiness at the next; the child will share possessions, and then grab them back; he will shift affection from one parent to another. The resistance behavior, which generally starts as early as eighteen months, ends around four years of age. It leaves the observer with a feeling that all is negative, but there is also a positive side to development at this stage.