Social development

— The ability to understand, predicts, and creates bonds with the other people in their
environments.

Knowing the Self: The Development of the Self-Concept

One of the important milestones in a child’s social development is learning about his or her own
self-existence. This self-awareness is known as consciousness, and the content of consciousness
is known as the self-concept.

According to Kagan(1991)- The self-concept is a knowledge representation or schema that

contains knowledge about us, including our beliefs about our personality traits, physical
characteristics, abilities, values, goals, and roles, as well as the knowledge that we exist as
individuals.

Social development of an individual depends on many factors like his family atmosphere, his
physical fitness, his ability to cope with individuals in different situations etc.

1. If the family atmosphere is congenial and permissive, the child’s social development will be
facilitated and vice versa.

2. He learns how to talk, behave and converse with his family members.

3. He also develops friendship with the children in the neighborhood.

4. He develops complex social behavior characterized by cooperation, sympathy, imitation, teasing

and quarrelling. His behavior is largely influenced by the group.

5. The child prefers group games to individual games. In the beginning of this period, the child
plays with boys and girls without any inhibitions but towards the end of this period children like
to play in separate groups.
After children enter school (at about age five or six), they begin to make comparisons with other
children, a process known as social comparison. For example, a child might describe himself as
being faster than one boy but slower than another (Moretti & Higgins, 1990). According to
Erikson, the important component of this process is the development
of competence and autonomy — the recognition of one’s own abilities relative to other children.
And children increasingly show awareness of social situations — they understand that other people
are looking at and judging them the same way that they are looking at and judging others (Doherty,
2009).