Late Childhood

People who study human growth divide a life into stages, because each stage brings its own kind of change. Late childhood is the later part of childhood. It starts at about the age a child enters school and lasts until the body begins to become sexually mature. Roughly, it covers the years from 6 to 13. A boy starting grade 1 and a girl in grade 6 are both likely to be in this stage.

Why do the ages differ for girls and boys? Compared with boys, girls go through the changes of this stage sooner. So a girl's late childhood usually ends at about 12, while a boy's goes on until about 13.

Several big things happen in a child's life during these years, and together they make this stage different from the one before it:

• Formal schooling begins at the start of this stage.
• Children learn how to adjust to society and fit in with other people.
• They spend more time in formal settings, such as a classroom, and deal with many more people outside the home than before.
• Facing so much that is new, some children show unusual behaviour for a while.
• Besides changes in the body, their attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviour also change.

Parents, educationists and psychologists all watch children of this age closely, and each group has named the stage after what it notices most. Parents, who live with the child all day, notice the mess and the arguments. Educationists notice schooling. Psychologists notice friendships and imagination. So one stage has collected many names.

Putting these views together gives nine characteristics of late childhood:

• 1. The elementary school age
• 2. The gang age
• 3. The dirty age
• 4. The troublesome age
• 5. The quarrelsome age
• 6. The critical age
• 7. The creative age
• 8. The play age
• 9. The happy age

Late childhood is also called the primary school age, because this is when a child goes to school and starts to learn the basic knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for life. Psychologists regard a child of five as mature enough, in body and mind, to begin formal education. In late childhood the child can go to school, grow their abilities, and play and sit with classmates. They can also follow a teacher's instructions and be patient. Waiting quietly for their turn to read aloud, or staying seated until the bell rings, are habits a child of this age is able to learn.

Children of this age do not like to be alone. They form groups and do everything in them: sitting, playing, studying and wandering about together. The group's rules and the friends' instructions start to matter more to them than the rules at home. Because the group now influences a child more than parents or teachers do, this is also seen as a period of rapid socialisation, the process of learning to live as a member of society. Groups usually form around things the members share, such as sex, ability, community, age or language. Members help one another, and through the group a child picks up a great deal of useful knowledge, skills, ideas and social behaviour. Four friends who always sit together at lunch, share a secret signal and stand up for each other in the playground are a gang in exactly this sense.

Children at this stage sit and play wherever they like and pay little attention to cleanliness. Their sense of responsibility is not yet fully formed, so they do not look after their belongings or keep their own room and bed clean. Think of a ten-year-old who drops his school bag by the door, walks in with muddy shoes and cannot find his pencil box because it is under the bed. That is why parents call this the dirty age.

Children of this age often ignore what their parents tell them, argue with them, tease them and give them trouble. They can be mischievous, breaking and throwing things. Under the influence of classmates they demand all sorts of things: one friend arrives with a new cricket bat, and suddenly the child insists on having one too. They also keep slipping out of the house and spend long hours at play, which worries their parents. For all these reasons parents call it the troublesome age.

Children at this stage make unnecessary demands on their guardians and quarrel, pester and cause trouble when those demands are not met. With friends, too, they find small excuses to pick a fight. Negative behaviour such as insulting one another, calling each other names, hitting or pushing, and using rude words appears at this age. A game of marbles that ends in shouting over whose turn it was is typical. This is why the stage is given the name quarrelsome age.

Habits formed at this stage last and keep affecting a person long afterwards, which is why educationists call it the critical age. It is a sensitive period in a child's development: the attitudes, behaviour and knowledge picked up now shape the future. A child who gets into the habit of reading every evening at ten usually keeps it as an adult, while a habit of lying picked up at the same age is hard to drop later. It is also at this age that children begin to show up as low, average or high achievers at school.

Children of this age are curious and eager to learn and find out new things. Every game and activity they take part in builds their creativity. They draw pictures and make models of all kinds of objects out of clay, paper or sticks. They want to put their abilities to new and constructive use. From what they already know they build new ideas, imagination, reasoning and opinions, and they try to work out and test solutions to everyday problems, such as fixing a slipped bicycle chain by themselves. This is why it is called the creative age, the name psychologists give it.

This is the age at which a love of play takes hold. Children play the games they learn at school as well as games special to their own area, such as football, hide and seek or a local stick game. The moment they are free they want to spend long hours playing, sometimes alone and sometimes in a group. Because children at this age take such interest in games and join in so readily, the stage is called the play age. Psychologists also call it the toy age.

Children in late childhood want to be independent, to do things for themselves and to be happy. They like doing whatever pleases them and makes them cheerful, and they join in all kinds of group activities that keep them in good spirits. The pride of a child who has just learnt to cook noodles alone, or the fun of finishing a drawing with friends, shows this side of the age.

At every stage of growth there are certain things a child has to learn and achieve. These are its developmental tasks. Children in late childhood are at the age of going to school and playing in groups, and only when they complete the developmental tasks of this age do they grow along the right path. So parents and teachers have an important part to play here: they must understand how the child feels and help as the child needs. The main developmental tasks of late childhood are:

• (a) learning the physical skills needed for ordinary games
• (b) developing a healthy attitude towards their own growing body
• (c) learning to get along with friends of their own age
• (d) learning to take on suitable gender and social roles
• (e) developing the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic
• (f) building a positive attitude towards social groups and institutions
• (g) learning to move about, think and reason independently
• (h) coming to enjoy sports, singing and dancing, and other recreation
• (i) steadily developing the skills needed in daily life

These tasks link closely to the characteristics above. In the gang age children learn to get along with their peers. In the elementary school age they lay the foundation of reading, writing and arithmetic. In the play age they build physical skills for games and a liking for recreation. In the happy age they grow used to thinking and moving about on their own. And since this is the critical age, tasks completed well now leave a good effect that lasts for life.