Issue 2.1: Emotional Development of school-aged children

In this thematic block we are going to talk, first of all, about the microgenetic and the ontogenetic changes, a concepts quite strange and that we need to understand correctly in order to understand the block. The Ontogenetic Changes, are those that happen into a subject, the developmental changes, the acquirement of abilities and skills, the brain development, etc; The Microgenetic Changes are those that refers to the psychological approach only, and that are different from a subject to another. So during childhood we first develop the ontogenetic changes, as we start developing physically and it's not until later on that when we develop, for example, our language skills that we don't start developing the microgenetic changes.

So in this first issue, we will discuss the topic of the emotions and the feelings, which we have? Do we achieve them gradually? How are they related with the feelings? So after all the class discussion we found out some interesting things about emotions such as:

• Although it's very difficult to define them, we can all know the emotions a person is feeling just looking into their face, and it's hundred times harder to describe an emotion that showing it. I think as teacher this situation happens even more, because kids are really expressive with their faces, and we can easily realize whether if they are happy, sad or angry.

• Emotions are universal, as we saw in the video in which Paul Ekman traveled to Papua New Guinea, to share some times with the last lost community of indigenous, what he did find was that those people, although they had never seen a film, or a magazine, or even other societies people, could identify perfectly which face was feeling what, and they represent the six basic feeling in the exactly same way that we do.

• The six basic feelings we can identify are happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear and disgust. And we all are able to reproduce them and identify them in other's face.

• Besides basic emotions, humans are capable of a second, higher-order set of feelings, including love, guilt, shame, pride, anxiety, jealousy, and envy. These are called self-conscious emotions because each involves injury to or enhancement of our sense of self, what this basically means is that for a kid to identify this emotions we may need some emotional regulation (we will talk about this in the next Issue of this second block).

I found also interesting to talk about the relation between the emotion and the different dimensions, for example:

• Relation with the cognitive dimension: for example, we saw an study in which it was compared the smile of graduated people with the years of happy marriage.

• Relation with the physical dimension: for example, being happy reduces the blood collapse, and increases the immunological system, basically you are more health. People that smile a lot tents to live more years.

• Relation with the social dimension: if people see you smiling they find you more competent and enjoyable.

To end up we will talk about the three types of emotions that we can identify, divided between simple, complex and ambiguous.

• Simple emotions: are developed in the firsts months of live and their basic function is to help us survive, basically are the six we previously mention: happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, fear and disgust. For example, anger helps us to defend ourselves, fear to avoid risks, and sadness is a kind of curative process in front of frustration and so one. We need this emotions with primary kids in order to help us know how we feel and help them feel the right way.

• Complex emotions: also called secondary, self-conscious or moral emotions, are developed between the 2 and the 12 years old, and the main function is to enhance our sense of self. We can find here the pride, the shame, the anxiety, the jealousy, the envy, etc. To develop correctly we may need some emotional regulation to distinguish, for example, between the jealousy and the anger, as they are not the same but can be confused for a little kid.

• Ambiguous emotions: are developed from the 10 years old, and are really closed with the regulation process you had previously achieved, the main ones are surprise, hope and compassion. As it can be seen all this emotions can depend on the person who is feeling them, you can feel compassion for others just if you know how to identify how others are feeling.