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ERIC Number: EJ868177
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Jul
Pages: 9
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1538-6619
EISSN: N/A
Learning to Be "Me" while Coming to Understand "We": Encouraging Prosocial Babies in Group Settings
McMullen, Mary Benson; Addleman, Jennifer M.; Fulford, Amanda M.; Moore, Sarah L.; Mooney, Shari J.; Sisk, Samantha S.; Zachariah, Jasmine
Young Children, v64 n4 p20-28 Jul 2009
At the same time young babies are developing an understanding of self as separate from others--what it means to be "me"--many also face having to negotiate living, learning, growing, and developing as part of a group--what it means to be "we". This is true for more than half of all infants in the United States under the age of 9 months, who now spend many or most of their waking hours in some type of group care outside the home. This article discusses how to encourage prosocial babies in group settings. It features three classrooms where teachers encourage and support prosocial behaviors in babies and allow strong positive social emotional development to occur in infants and toddlers and prosocial skills to flourish. In the case of these three classrooms, it is evident that infants and toddlers are indeed up to the challenge of grappling with understanding the difficult lessons of becoming "we" and "me" at the same time. This article also provides the authors' definition of babies' prosocial behaviors and shows how young babies have a remarkable capacity for prosocial behavior, an ability greatly underestimated by traditional child development theorists.
National Association for the Education of Young Children. 1313 L Street NW Suite 500, Washington, DC 22205-4101. Tel: 800-424-2460; Tel: 202-232-8777; Fax: 202-328-2649; e-mail: editorial@naeyc.org; Web site: http://journal.naeyc.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Early Childhood Education; Preschool Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A