Chapter I. CHILDHOOD AS A SUBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH.

1. Historical analysis of the concept of "childhood"

Today any educated person to the question of what childhood is, he will answer that childhood is a period of enhanced development, change and learning. But only scientists understand that this is a period of paradoxes and contradictions, without which it is impossible to imagine the development process. V. Stern, J. Piaget, I. A. Sokolyansky and many others wrote about the paradoxes of child development. D. B. Elkonin said that the paradoxes in child psychology are the mysteries of development that scientists have yet to unravel.

D. B. Elkonin invariably began his lectures at Moscow University with a description of the two main paradoxes of child development, embodying the need for a historical approach to understanding childhood. Let's consider them.

Man, being born, is endowed with only the most elementary mechanisms for maintaining life. By physical structure, organization nervous system, according to the types of activity and methods of its regulation, a person is the most perfect creature in nature.

However, as of the moment of birth, a drop in perfection is noticeable in the evolutionary series - the child does not have any ready-made forms of behavior. As a rule, the higher a living being ranks among animals, the longer his childhood lasts, the more helpless this creature is at birth. This is one of the paradoxes of nature that predetermines the history of childhood.

In the course of history, the enrichment of the material and spiritual culture of mankind has continuously grown. Over the millennia, human experience has increased many thousands of times. But during the same time, the newborn child has not changed much. Based on the data of anthropologists on the anatomical and morphological similarities between the Cro-Magnon and the modern European, it can be assumed that the newborn modern man does not differ in any significant way from a newborn who lived tens of thousands of years ago.

How is it that with similar natural background the level of mental development that a child reaches at each historical stage development of society is not the same?

A paradox, by definition, is a mental contradiction, a cunningly completed form of thought. There are no paradoxes in nature. OR has no paradoxes.

A paradox is a form of thought when incompatible statements are made about the same thing, and each of them has a certain basis and should not be discarded. We can say that a paradox is an expression of the contradictions of the world, brought to an extreme degree. Paradoxes, of course, require resolution. They are found, for example, in Kant.

What is the paradox of development? Development is the process of emergence of the higher from the lower. So, this is the emergence of new content. Emergence is always arising from something. At least according to the same determinism, there must be a cause of the higher. But then it must be said that the higher is present in advance in the lower, and "hatches" out of the lower. But then we can rightly say that there is stupidly no development, since the higher already exists in advance in the lower.

Let us note that in science such problems were sometimes solved very quickly. For example, in biology there was a trend - preformism (in the biology of modern times) - the concept according to which an adult organism appears as a result of the quantitative growth of the embryo. Therefore, when a cub is born, it is born on the basis of what was already contained in the mother's body. Within the framework of preformism, there was a fantastic idea in general - the idea of ​​nesting - i.e. each embryo has a chain of generations within it. Preformism was opposed by another concept - epigenesis - the embryo does not contain all the tissues and systems of the adult organism, but contains some substance that is absent in the adult organism.

The paradox from one position is that the higher cannot be taken from nowhere, and from the other position - ᴇᴦο should not be in the lower. Removing the paradox means softening the ᴇᴦο of the original positions. The higher cannot come from nowhere. The lower contains the possibility of the higher, but not the finished higher. The higher arises only from its own possibility, inherent in the lower. How the possibility of life is embedded in organic compounds in which there is no life.

Another problem is that the possibility itself is incapable of realization, and conditions are needed that are not formed by themselves. It must be said that the lower also has the ability to realize the possibilities. As a result, from one position, the lower has the possibility of the emergence of the higher, and on the other, the ability to realize this.

Paradox of development - concept and types. Classification and features of the category "Development paradox" 2015, 2017-2018.

The subject and tasks of developmental psychology. The concept of age

Subject developmental psychology is the age dynamics of the human psyche, the ontogeny of mental processes and personality traits of a developing person, the patterns of development of mental processes.
Theoretical tasks of developmental psychology - p cover general patterns mental development in ontogenesis, establishing the age periods of this development and the reasons for the transition from one period to another, determining the possibilities of development.
Age is an objective, culturally-historically changeable, chronologically and symbolically fixed characteristic and stage of development of an individual in ontogeny. (Zinchenko, Meshcheryakov)
Qualitatively specific stage of ontogenetic development. Every age in human life has standards by which it is possible to assess the adequacy of the development of the individual and which relate to the psychophysical, intellectual, emotional and personal development. The transition to the next stage occurs in the form of crises age development. (Kondakov I.M)
Age (in psychology) is a category that serves to designate relatively limited temporal characteristics of individual development. (Burmenskaya, Petrovsky)
Age is a relatively closed period, the significance of which is determined primarily by its place and functional significance on the general curve of child development. (Elkonin)
1. Metric characteristics: 1) The sum of years lived - different types ages (chronological - is defined as the age of an individual person (from the moment of conception to the end of life. Biological - those genetic, morphological, physiological and neurophysiological changes that occur in the body of each person are taken as a basis: the state of metabolism and body functions, puberty , ossification, etc. Psychological - is determined by correlating the level of mental (mental, emotional, etc.) development of the individual with the corresponding normative average statistical level of development characteristic of the entire population of a given chronological age

the emergence of ideas about childhood in the public mind

Childhood is the period from newborn to full social and, consequently, psychological maturity; This is the period of the child becoming a full-fledged member of human society.
The stages of human childhood are a product of history, and they are just as subject to change as they were thousands of years ago. Therefore, it is impossible to study the childhood of a child and the laws of its formation outside the development of human society and the laws that determine its development. The duration of childhood is directly dependent on the level of material and spiritual culture of society.
Based on the study of ethnographic materials, D.B. Elkonin showed that at the earliest stages of the development of human society, the child very early joined the work of adults, practically assimilating the methods of activity. Childhood occurs when the child cannot be directly included in the system of social reproduction, since the child cannot yet master the tools of labor due to their complexity. As a result, the natural inclusion of children in productive labor is pushed back. According to D. B. Elkonin, this elongation in time occurs through a kind of wedging of a new period of development, leading to an “upward shift in time” of the period of mastering the tools of production. D.B. Elkonin showed that the pattern of childhood development as a sociocultural phenomenon is not its simple lengthening, but a qualitative change in structure and content.
According to the views of Soviet psychologists, to study child development historically means to study the child's transition from one age stage to another, to study the change in his personality within each age period that occurs under specific historical conditions.
V.T. Kudryavtsev shows the further historical development of childhood and distinguishes three historical types of childhood2:
1. Quasi-childhood - in the early stages of human history, when the children's community is not singled out, but directly included in labor activity and ritual practice jointly with adults;
2. Undeveloped childhood - the world of childhood is isolated, and a new social task arises for children - integration into the adult community. The role-playing game assumes the function of overcoming the intergenerational gap, acting as a way of modeling the semantic foundations of adult activity. Socialization occurs as the child masters a strictly defined field of ready-made meanings of activity.
3. Developed childhood (V.V. Davydov's term) - develops when the meanings and motives of adults' activities are not self-evident. The image of adulthood that the child is guided by is fundamentally incomplete, incomplete, and the child must freely and creatively "self-determine himself in culture." Modern "developed" childhood involves the creative development of culture as an open multidimensional system. The productive, creative nature of the mental development of a modern child is already realized at an early stage in the form of phenomena of children's subculture, "the ability to pose problems", "a sense of the comic", "communicative initiative", etc.

Under childhood is a period of heightened development, change and learning. This is a period of paradoxes and
Contradictions (Stern, Piaget - about the parade of the children of the first time). D. B. Elkonin said that the paradoxes in child psychology are the mysteries of development that scientists have yet to unravel.
Elkonin wrote about two paradoxes of child development. 1) When a person is born, he is endowed with only the most elementary mechanisms for maintaining life. However, the child does not have any ready-made forms of behavior. As a rule, the higher a living being ranks among animals, the longer his childhood lasts, the more helpless this creature is at birth.
Childhood is a period lasting from newborn to full social and, consequently, psychological maturity; This is the period of the child becoming a full-fledged member of human society. The stages of a person's childhood are a product of history, and they are subject to change. Therefore, it is impossible to study the childhood of a child and the laws of its formation outside of human development.

Childhood is one of the most complex phenomena of developmental psychology. Speaking of it, we usually have in mind that phase of life when a person is not yet ready for independent existence and needs enhanced assimilation of the experience transmitted by the older generation. But how long does this phase last and what does this phase depend on?

Difficulties and contradictions that arise even with a superficial analysis of the phenomenon of childhood are primarily related to the fact that childhood is a historical category. We can only talk about childhood given child living in given era, in data social conditions, although there are common features with other generations.

Historical experience shows that social and cultural traditions reinforce this segment of life in different ways: if in early XIX in. a child of 13 years old from a noble family entered the university, this did not seem strange to anyone, but in our time it is more an exception than a norm. If at the same time 15-16-year-olds were already embarking on the path of independent work and creativity, then in our time only peculiar social conditions or individual attitudes of the individual can lead to complete independence.

In modern social conditions Economically, socially and personally independent life begins in people at the age of about 25 years, or even later. Of course, biologically modern children are ready for independent life much earlier, but a person lives not only a biological life, and the end of childhood is associated not so much with biological, how much socio-economic independence. But this means that only maturity, adulthood, can be opposed to childhood as a special phase of human social development. And consequently, in modern childhood it is also necessary to include periods school age, adolescence and youth.

When, how and why did childhood stand out in history as a separate phase of human life?

The problem of childhood historiography is complicated by the fact that neither observation nor experiment can be carried out in this area, and psychologists are left to make generalizations only on the basis of the study of cultural, ethnographic, archaeological and anthropological data. And the data indirectly relating to childhood are very fragmentary and contradictory. Even in those rare cases when miniature copies of people, animals, carts, fruits, etc. are found among archaeological finds, it is difficult to establish with certainty whether they were toys or were made specifically for children. Most often, these are either objects of worship, which in ancient times were placed in graves so that they served the owner in afterlife, or accessories of magic and witchcraft, or jewelry.

Based on the study of ethnographic materials, D. B. Elkonin concluded that at the earliest stages of human society, when the main way of obtaining food was gathering with the use of primitive tools for knocking down fruits and digging up edible roots, there was no childhood in the usual sense.

In the conditions of primitive communities, with their relatively primitive tools and means of labor, even 3-4-year-old children lived a common life with adults, taking part in simple forms of domestic labor, in gathering edible plants, roots, larvae, snails, etc., in primitive hunting and fishing, in the simplest forms of agriculture. The child very early joined the work of adults, practically learning how to obtain food and use primitive tools. And the earlier the stage of development of society, the earlier children were included in the productive labor of adults and became independent producers. This led to the fact that in primitive societies there was no sharp line between adults and children.

The demand for independence presented to children by society found a natural form of realization in joint work with adults. The direct connection of the child with the whole society, carried out in the process of common labor, excluded all other forms of connection, so there was no need to highlight the special status of the child, the institutions of childhood socialization and a special period in children's lives. This conclusion of D. B. Elkonin has objective confirmation.

So, according to V. Volts, primitive wandering gatherers (men, women, children) move together from place to place in search of edible fruits and roots. By the age of 10, girls become mothers, and boys become fathers and begin to lead an independent lifestyle. Describing one of the most primitive groups of people on earth - the Kubu people, M. Kosven writes that from the age of 10-12 children are considered independent and able to arrange their own destiny. From that moment on, they begin to wear a bandage that hides the genitals. During the stay, they build themselves a separate hut next to the parent. But they are already looking for food on their own and eat separately. The connection between parents and children gradually weakens, and soon the children begin to live independently in the forest.

A. T. Bryant, who lived for almost half a century among the Zulus, describes the duties of 6-7-year-old children: they drove calves and goats out into the meadow in the morning (and older children - cows), collected wild-growing edible herbs, drove off in the fields during the ripening of ears birds, performed homework etc.

The ethnographic data of Russian travelers point to the very early accustoming of young children to the performance of labor duties and the inclusion of adults in the productive labor. So, G. Novitsky in 1715 in the description of the Ostyak people wrote: “In general, needlework is the same for everyone, shooting an animal (they kill), catching birds, fish, they can saturate themselves with them. He studies these tricks and his children and from young nails they adapt to archery to kill the beast, to catch birds, fish (train them).

S. P. Krasheninnikov, describing his journey through Kamchatka (1737–1741), writes about the Koryaks: “The most praiseworthy thing about this people is that, although they love their children excessively, they teach them to work from children; for which reason they are kept no better than serfs, they are sent for firewood and water, they are ordered to carry weights on themselves, to graze reindeer herds and do other things like that.

N. N. Miklukho-Maclay, who lived among the Papuans for many years, writes about their children: “I often had to see a comical scene, how a little boy of about four seriously made a fire, carried firewood, washed dishes, helped his father clean the fruits, and then suddenly he jumped up, ran to his mother, who was squatting at some kind of work, grabbed her breasts and, despite resistance, began to suck.

Since the well-being of the community depended on the participation of everyone in productive labor, there was natural age-sex division of labor. So, according to N. N. Miklukho-Maklay, children participated not only in simple household work, but also in more complex forms. collective productive labor of adults.

For example, describing the cultivation of the soil by a tribe on the coast of New Guinea, he writes: “The work is done in this way: two, three or more men stand in a row, sharpened udya [strong long sticks, pointed at one end; men work with them, since when working with this tool a lot of force is required] into the ground and then with one stroke they raise a large block of earth. If the soil is hard, then the fishing rods are stuck in the same place twice, and then the earth is raised. The men are followed by women who crawl on their knees and, holding their udya-sab [small narrow shoulder blades for women] firmly in both hands, crush the earth raised by the men. Children of various ages follow them and rub the earth with their hands. In this order, men, women and children work the entire plantation.”

That is why in early societies equality of children and adults and equal respect for all its members, even the smallest ones, reign. According to the researcher of the northern peoples S. N. Stebnitsky, during a general conversation, the words of children are listened to as carefully as the speech of adults. The largest ethnographer L. Ya. Sternberg also emphasizes this equality of children and adults among peoples northeast Asia: “It is difficult for a civilized person to even imagine what a sense of equality and respect reigns here in relation to young people. Adolescents 10-12 years old feel completely equal members of society ... Nobody feels any difference in age or position.

Primitive tools and forms of labor accessible to the child provide an opportunity for the development of early independence, generated by the demands of society, direct participation in the work of adults. It is absolutely clear that we are not talking about exploitation of child labor: it has the character of satisfying a naturally occurring, social need by its nature. In the performance of labor duties, children introduce specific childish traits, perhaps even enjoying the very process of labor and, in any case, experiencing a sense of satisfaction and pleasure associated with this activity carried out together with adults and how adults. According to most ethnographers, in primitive communities children are not punished, but, on the contrary, they are supported in every possible way in their cheerful, cheerful, cheerful state.

Move to more high forms production - agriculture and cattle breeding, the complication of fishing and hunting, their transition from passive to more and more active, was accompanied by the displacement of gathering and primitive forms of labor. Due to the complication of labor tools, it becomes necessary to single out a separate process of mastering them, and children begin to work with smaller tools, although the methods of using them do not fundamentally differ from the methods of using real tools.

It must be borne in mind that these weapons functionally differ significantly from toys in primitive societies: they are copies of the tools of adults, and they work, and do not imitate the process of adult labor, as happens in the game. Under these conditions, childhood begins to stand out as a stage in the preparation of the child for work, although it is short and children still play very little in it.

So, the researchers of the North A. G. Bazanov and N. G. Kazansky write that Mansi children who have just begun to walk are already being drawn by adults into fishing, and their parents are already taking them into the boat with them, give them small oars, teach them to steer the boat, teach them to river life. In another work, A. G. Bazanov notes that a 5–6-year-old Vogul child already runs around with a bow and arrow near the yurts, hunts birds, and develops accuracy in himself. From the age of 7-8, children in the forest are taught how to find a squirrel, wood grouse, how to handle a dog, where and how to set traps. Children, even the youngest, are passionate hunters and come to school with dozens of squirrels and chipmunks to their credit. S. N. Stebnitsky points out that the children are also responsible for the preparation of firewood - in any frost and bad weather, the boy must, harnessing the dogs left at home, sometimes go ten kilometers for firewood.

What smaller tools children now use depends on the prevailing branch of labor in a given society. So, for example, according to N. G. Bogoraz-Tan, who studied the peoples of the Far North, the Chukchi begin to learn how to handle a knife (the main necessary tool for a reindeer herder) from early childhood: “Little boys, as soon as they begin to tenaciously grab things, they give a knife, and since that time they have not parted with him. I saw one boy trying to cut wood with a knife; the knife was a little smaller than himself.”

A. N. Reinson-Pravdin notes that the children of the North early learn to use small but real knives and axes, bows and arrows, slings and crossbows, fishing rods and lassoes, master skiing from the moment they start walking.

N. G. Bogoraz-Tan draws attention to the fact that a doll plays a special role for girls, with which they master women's handicrafts: dressing deer skins, suede, bird and animal skins, fish skin, sewing clothes and shoes, weaving mats from grass , dressing birch bark utensils, weaving, and in many areas weaving.

It is quite natural that learning all these skills went in two ways: on the one hand, early inclusion in the work of the mother (assistance in cooking, caring for babies, participation in purely female crafts - harvesting berries, nuts, roots); on the other hand, the manufacture of puppetry, mainly wardrobe. The dolls collected in the museums of the peoples of the Far North amaze with the perfection of skills in sewing, using a needle and a knife.

Children, of course, cannot independently discover ways to use tools, and adults teach them this by showing them how to work with them, pointing out the nature of the exercises, controlling and evaluating the actions of children in mastering these tools. There is not yet a school with its system, organization and program, but there is already a special education, caused by the needs of society.

In contrast to the process of mastering the tools of labor, which occurs with the direct participation of the child in the productive labor of adults, this process is singled out in special activity carried out in conditions different from those in which productive labor takes place. A little Nenets, a future reindeer herder, learns to use a lasso not in a herd of deer, participating in its protection, as it was originally. A little Evenk, a future hunter, learns to wield a bow and arrow outside the forest, participating in a real hunt with adults. They do this in open space, lassoing (or shooting with a bow) first at stationary objects, and then at moving targets. And only after that they move on to hunting small birds and animals or lassoing dogs and calves. Probably, according to D. B. Elkonin, role-playing games, exercise games and competition games are born at this stage. Gradually, children are entrusted with more and more sophisticated tools, and the conditions of the exercises are increasingly approaching the conditions of productive labor.

The age at which children are now included in productive work depends primarily on the degree of its complexity. In the process of further development of society, tools become so complicated that if they are reduced, they, while retaining an external resemblance to the tools of adult labor, lose their productive function. So, for example, if a reduced bow did not lose its main function - it was possible to shoot an arrow from it and hit the target, then the already reduced gun becomes only image guns, you can’t shoot from it, let alone kill, but you can only portray shooting. In hoe farming, the little hoe was still a hoe with which a child could loosen small clods of earth - it was similar to the hoe of a father or mother, not only in form, but also in function. In the transition to plow agriculture, a small plow, no matter how much it resembles a real one in all its details, loses the main functions of a plow: you can neither harness an ox to it, nor plow it.

According to D. B. Elkonin, at the same stage toys appear in their modern sense - as objects, depicting tools, household items. The mastery of tools by children is divided into two periods: first associated with the mastery of household tools, second shifts forward, to older ages, and a gap forms between them. This gap will be the longer, the more complex the forms and tools of activity that every child of a given society has to master.

In a certain sense, children are left to their own devices, "children's communities" arise, and it is during this period that children develop. a game, where the existing in a given society are reproduced in a special form relations between people.

But since the tools of adult labor become so complicated, it becomes impossible for young children to master them directly in the course of productive activity. Of course, household labor with its elementary tools remains for the children, but it can no longer be considered socially productive work, and the labor of children is no longer so necessary to maintain the well-being of society. Children are gradually being squeezed out of the complex and most responsible areas of adult activity. A long period of preparation of children for the future mastery of complex forms and means of social production becomes necessary, and therefore a special social institution of childhood is distinguished and, accordingly, a special period in children's life.

D. B. Elkonin noted that childhood occurs when the child cannot be directly included in the system of social reproduction, since he still cannot master the tools of labor due to their complexity. As a result, the natural inclusion of children in productive labor is pushed back. According to D. B. Elkonin, this elongation in time does not occur by building a new period of development over the existing ones (as, for example, F. Aries believed), but by a kind of wedging of a new period of development, leading to an “upward shift in time” of the period mastering the tools of production. Childhood becomes a period of development, when the basic elements are actively assimilated social experience until the subject reaches social and psychological maturity.

Considering the phenomenon of childhood in historical aspect, it is impossible not to recall two of its main paradoxes described by D. B. Elkonin.

First paradox nature, predetermining the history of childhood, is as follows. Man, being born, is endowed with only the most elementary mechanisms for maintaining life. In terms of physical structure, organization of the nervous system, types of activity and methods of its regulation, man is the most perfect creature in nature. However, as of the moment of birth, a drop in perfection is noticeable in the evolutionary series - the child does not have any ready-made forms of behavior. As a rule, the higher a living being is in the evolutionary series, the longer his childhood lasts, the more helpless this creature is at birth.

In the process of the emergence of man, biological evolution stops, and in the transition from ape to man, almost all forms of behavior become acquired. The childhood of man, in comparison with the childhood of animals, is qualitatively transformed and in itself changes significantly in the process of man's historical development.

In the course of history, the material and spiritual culture of mankind has been continuously enriched. Over the millennia, human experience has increased many thousands of times. But, oddly enough, during this time the newborn child has not changed much. Based on the data of anthropologists on the anatomical and morphological similarities between the Cro-Magnon and the modern European, it can be assumed that the newborn of a modern person does not differ in any significant way from a newborn who lived tens of thousands of years ago. And this second paradox childhood.

The helplessness of the human being is also the greatest achievement of evolution: it is precisely this “detachment” from natural environment, “freedom”, plasticity, readiness for variability allows a person to “become everything” in the future - to speak any language, master any cultural form of behavior and activity, appropriate any form of experience (by the way, this is why children who, for whatever reason, fall into animal environment, so organically “merge” with it).

Unfortunately, practically nothing is known about the childhood of Neanderthals, Pithecanthropes, and Cro-Magnons. move human development, according to L. S. Vygotsky, does not obey the eternal laws of nature, the laws of the maturation of the organism, and the course of a child’s development is of a socio-historical nature: there is no eternally childish, but only historically childish.

At the same time, the duration of childhood in a primitive society is not equal to the duration of childhood in the Middle Ages or today. Since childhood is a product of history, its duration and psychological content are directly dependent on the level of material and spiritual culture of society.

So, in the literature of the XIX century. there is quite a lot of evidence that proletarian children actually had no childhood. For example, in a study of the situation of the working class in England, F. Engels referred to the report of the commission of the English Parliament in 1883, which examined working conditions in factories: children sometimes started working at the age of five, often at six, more often at seven, but almost all children of the poor parents worked from the age of eight, and their working day lasted 14-16 hours.

It is generally accepted that the status of the childhood of a proletarian child is formed only in the 19th-20th centuries, when the legislation on the protection of childhood began to prohibit child labor (by the way, the upper limit of modern childhood is set in exactly the same way - criminal liability for committed acts begins at 14 years old). Of course, this does not mean that the adopted legal laws are capable of providing childhood for the lower strata of society. Children in this environment, and above all girls, still perform the work necessary for social reproduction (baby care, domestic work, agricultural work, women's "crafts": darning, sewing, embroidery, etc.). Thus, although there is a formal ban on child labor in our time, one cannot speak of the status of childhood without taking into account the position of parents in the social structure of society*.

* The "Convention on the Rights of the Child", adopted by UNESCO in 1989 and ratified by most countries of the world, is aimed at ensuring the full development of the child's personality in every corner of the Earth.

Childhood, being a long period in human development, is divided into sub-stages, which V. V. Zenkovsky even suggested calling “first (early) childhood” and “second” (meaning adolescence and youth).

Childhood ... Special feelings, memories are associated with it ... Many scientists show interest in it, in last years- especially close. And this is not surprising - after all, everything starts from childhood. The future is connected with it. Recall that a person passes this stage of ontogenetic development between birth and the beginning of adolescence.

What is characteristic of childhood, what distinguishes it from other age periods?

For an adult reader, especially one who has already raised his children, the answer, as a rule, is ready: childhood is a period when a person grows especially quickly, develops, learns, absorbs, like a sponge, the effects of the environment, and changes intensively. True, but it's far from complete characteristic childhood (especially modern).

Let's start at least with such a question - thanks to what is a human child born from a weak, helpless being in a short period becomes a reasonable person, in many ways striking us?

During preschool childhood, all mental processes(sensations, perception, memory ...), imagination, elements of arbitrariness are born and actively manifest. During these years, quite complex experiences arise (feelings of pride, shame, jealousy, empathy), the beginnings of higher feelings (moral, aesthetic, intellectual), interests develop, talent develops, the foundations of personality and character are laid ...

Why such rapid growth, amazing changes, the pace of development? Perhaps this will surprise some readers, but scientists associate the incredible intensity of the development of a human child in many ways - with the specifics of his brain, in particular - with the high plasticity of the human brain. The absence of a significant number of innate forms of behavior of the baby is not a weakness, but his strength, providing him with an openness to acquiring previously non-existent forms of human behavior.

And this is only one of the answers to the problem under discussion. After all, how can a child of a person satisfy his needs, become a full-fledged personality without interaction, communication with others, and the help of adults? Initially, already from infancy, he is a social being. All his behavior from the first days of his life is "woven" into the social.

The social nature of the child's psyche is even more actively manifested at subsequent stages of life, in the process of familiarization with the socio-historical experience accumulated by mankind, the bearers of which are adults. Without it, full development is impossible. And although the idea of ​​this has already been expressed by us above, we cannot but turn to it again, now in a conversation about the specifics of the development of the child.

Already in the process of objective activity (1-2 years), the business communication of a baby with an adult helps him to learn that a tower, a garage, a crib for a doll can be built from cubes; learn how to start a spinning top, roll a puppet stroller, repair it together with an adult (if a wheel has come off, etc.); use a spatula, spoon, and other objects as intended. With the help of an adult, he enters the world of music, visual arts, masters literacy ... An adult helps to reveal, realize the abilities, giftedness of the child, thereby contributing to his development.

Let's ask readers one more question (it worries scientists as well): has there always been a childhood in the history of mankind? It may seem strange, because we are used to it - children are always there. Once we ourselves were children, now we work with them, interact at home, in kindergarten… What a question? Meanwhile, many researchers answer it in the negative.

At present, childhood is considered not only as a physiological, psychological, pedagogical, but also as a socio-cultural phenomenon that has a historical origin and nature.

Scientists have revealed: a person's childhood is not unchanged, given once and for all. Moreover, it did not always exist. The remarkable psychologist Daniil Borisovich Elkonin in his book "The Psychology of the Game" substantiates the proposition that role-playing game, and consequently, childhood as a peculiar period of human life, arises when the child can no longer take direct, equal part in the life of adults and is forced to enter it through symbolic activity - creative play.

One of characteristic features modern childhood is that it performs not only the function of socialization associated with the assimilation of social experience, social ties and relationships, but also cultural. The essence of the latter lies in "... the birth of historically new universal abilities, new forms of active attitude to the world, new images of culture as the creative (creative) potential of mankind is mastered." This function, according to a number of modern child psychologists, primarily distinguishes modern childhood from the childhood of earlier eras of mankind (primitive, ancient or medieval, etc.). A significant role in the implementation of the cultural function is assigned to preschool childhood.

In recent years, studies have also noted a number of other features of modern children that have arisen due to changed socio-cultural and economic conditions. Among these are an increase in tension (especially older preschoolers), a decrease in emotional potential, a decrease in the level of arbitrariness of preschoolers, a decrease in self-esteem, a change in the gaming subculture of children, a decrease in activity in the game, etc.

Specialists pay attention to a number of changes in the cognitive sphere of modern children. So they noted an increase in the volume in preschoolers long-term memory, operational patency (which allows children to perceive and process more information in a short period of time). This ability of modern children makes it easier in the age of high technology to successfully navigate the information flow. Features in the development of speech of modern preschoolers are also revealed. So, for example, it was previously believed that by the end of preschool age, most children correctly pronounce all sounds mother tongue and only certain older preschoolers have shortcomings in the pronunciation of hissing, sonorous, sometimes whistling sounds. However, in recent years, the level of sound pronunciation of children has decreased significantly. According to A.G. Arushanova, about 40% of six-year-olds enter school with poor pronunciation. Experts associate the decrease in speech development indicators of modern preschoolers with their increased tension, emotional discomfort, and a lack of personal communication.

Note that changes in mental development modern children are recorded not only at the stage of preschool age, but also in early childhood. Thus, studies conducted in recent years indicate, in particular, an increase in the need of a modern baby to perceive information; about more early dates the emergence of a personality neoplasm "I myself" in pre-preschoolers; about the manifestation of intolerance towards violence, the orders-demands of adults, and at the same time - a more pronounced perseverance in the realization of one's own desires.

There are other problems, questions that I would like readers to think about: what is the meaning of childhood? What role do impressions from childhood play in life, in the fate of a person? We often refer to the words of A. de Saint-Exupery: "We all come from childhood." Some psychologists believe that the whole fate of a person, all the events of his life path determined by childhood experiences. Others think that childhood is like episodes in a movie, just following each other.

Well-known Russian psychologist, academician V.P. Zinchenko believes that in terms of its genius, significance, the childhood of each individual can be compared with the childhood of humanity as a whole: “Both childhoods are the time of discovering many worlds, entering them, the beginning of building our own worlds that we carry within ourselves all our further life, we cannot get rid of them (even with the assistance of a psychoanalyst).

The view of childhood as a period when it not only reacts to the world of adults, but itself objectively and actively poses more and more new tasks for it is gaining wider recognition in modern child psychology. Views on childhood are different ...