Preschool children often have complex feelings about their parents, which may include possessiveness toward one parent and/or jealousy or resentment of the other. Control is another issue at this time as children struggle to become more independent and parents face the challenge of dealing with these feelings.

These conflicting emotions – typically hard for a small child to understand or verbalize – may result in frequent talking back and/or regressive behaviors (e.g., temper tantrums) aimed at testing parental authority.

The resolution of common parent-child crises, which can sometimes take years to resolve, often coincides with a child’s unspoken decision to follow the behavior of the parents instead of competing with them. As language abilities increase and play becomes more sophisticated, children have an outlet for such feelings and can play at being grownups, something they cannot do yet in real life.

By age 5 or 6, most children are better able to control their emotions and impulses enough to be able to pay attention and function in school. A child’s success in achieving this relies on healthy emotional development during early childhood.

Similar to early childhood development, emotional and social development in middle childhood includes children learning about social roles and how to interact with others. However, a child’s social arena expands beyond the home and playground to now include the school and neighborhood.

The start of school coincides with a child’s budding independence from the family. Relationships with teachers and peers become increasingly important at this time. During middle childhood, making friends is one of a child’s top concerns. This social skill will endure with varying degrees of intensity throughout a child’s life.

Because children can now think in more sophisticated ways, they begin to compare themselves to others at this time. However, a child’s home life continues to exert the most influence on psychosocial development. A positive parent-child relationship can provide a sense of security as children begin to venture into unfamiliar territory.

School-age children are able to articulate their thoughts and feelings. A child’s self-esteem tends to be strong and resilient during middle childhood. Children are typically confident, adventurous and certain of their capabilities. During adolescence, it is common for the self-esteem of girls and boys to become fragile.

Although they are no less articulate than girls, many boys are not as expressive with their emotions. This is mainly because many boys are socialized from a young age to develop characteristics viewed as masculine. By age 9, most boys have successfully learned to repress their feelings – except anger. As a result, boys tend to be more physically oriented when it comes to self-expression.

During these years, children become less dependent on the family and less self-centered than they were during early childhood. They begin to consider more than one perspective at a time and generally become more understanding and sensitive to the feelings of others. Psychologically, they are ready to form more complex relationships. Throughout middle childhood, most children strive to fit in at home, school and with their friends.

Although children are naturally curious about relationships between the genders, a child’s peer group usually consists of same-sex friendships at this time. By age 10, most children will typically deny that they are interested in members of the opposite sex.

However, they usually show off, tease or act silly as a way of interacting with them. As they progress to adolescence, a child’s group of friends gradually begins to exert more influence and include peers of the opposite sex.