How to develop the emotional-volitional sphere of a preschool child?

Often, parents' concern is mainly concentrated in the area of ​​children's physical health, when sufficient attention is not paid to the emotional state of the child, and some early alarming symptoms of disturbances in the emotional-volitional sphere are perceived as temporary, characteristic of age, and therefore not dangerous.

Emotions play a significant role from the very beginning of a baby’s life, and serve as an indicator of his attitude towards his parents and what surrounds him. Currently, along with general health problems in children, experts note with concern the increase in emotional-volitional disorders, which result in more serious problems in the form of low social adaptation, a tendency to antisocial behavior, and learning difficulties.

External manifestations of disorders of the emotional-volitional sphere in childhood

Despite the fact that you should not independently make not only medical diagnoses, but also diagnoses in the field of psychological health, and it is better to entrust this to professionals, there are a number of signs of disturbances in the emotional-volitional sphere, the presence of which should be the reason for contacting specialists.

Violations in the emotional-volitional sphere of a child’s personality have characteristic features of age-related manifestations. So, for example, if adults systematically note in their child at an early age such behavioral characteristics as excessive aggressiveness or passivity, tearfulness, “getting stuck” on a certain emotion, then it is possible that this is an early manifestation of emotional disorders.

In preschool age, the above symptoms may be supplemented by the inability to follow norms and rules of behavior and insufficient development of independence. At school age, these deviations, along with those listed, can be combined with self-doubt, impaired social interaction, decreased sense of purpose, and inadequate self-esteem.

It is important to understand that the existence of disorders should be judged not by the presence of a single symptom, which may be the child’s reaction to a specific situation, but by the combination of several characteristic symptoms.

The main external manifestations are as follows:

Emotional tension. With increased emotional tension, in addition to well-known manifestations, difficulties in organizing mental activity and a decrease in play activity characteristic of a particular age can also be clearly expressed.

• The rapid mental fatigue of a child in comparison with peers or with earlier behavior is expressed in the fact that the child has difficulty concentrating, he may demonstrate a clear negative attitude towards situations where the manifestation of thinking and intellectual qualities is necessary.
• Increased anxiety. Increased anxiety, in addition to the known signs, can be expressed in avoidance of social contacts and a decrease in the desire to communicate.
• Aggressiveness. Manifestations can be in the form of demonstrative disobedience to adults, physical aggression and verbal aggression. Also, his aggression can be directed at himself, he can hurt himself. The child becomes disobedient and with great difficulty succumbs to the educational influences of adults.
• Lack of empathy. Empathy is the ability to feel and understand the emotions of another person, to empathize. In case of disturbances in the emotional-volitional sphere, this symptom is usually accompanied by increased anxiety. An inability to empathize may also be a warning sign of a mental disorder or intellectual disability.
• Unpreparedness and unwillingness to overcome difficulties. The child is lethargic and does not enjoy contact with adults. Extreme manifestations of behavior may look like complete ignorance of parents or other adults - in certain situations, a child may pretend that he does not hear an adult.
• Low motivation to succeed. A characteristic sign of low motivation for success is the desire to avoid hypothetical failures, so the child takes on new tasks with displeasure and tries to avoid situations where there is even the slightest doubt about the result. It is very difficult to persuade him to try to do anything. A common answer in this situation is: “it won’t work,” “I don’t know how.” Parents may mistakenly interpret this as a manifestation of laziness.
• Expressed distrust of others. It can manifest itself as hostility, often accompanied by tearfulness; school-age children can manifest it as excessive criticism of the statements and actions of both peers and surrounding adults.
• Excessive impulsiveness of a child, as a rule, is expressed in poor self-control and insufficient awareness of his actions.
• Avoiding close contacts with other people. A child may repel others with remarks expressing contempt or impatience, insolence, etc.

Article:

For the vast majority of children under 5 years of age, it is normal to not fully control themselves.
This is not due to the fact that “this is a foal”, but to the fact that young children have immature behavioral controls - the frontal lobes of the brain. After 5 years, the majority of children more or less mature to a relatively high ability for self-control. Hysterics with or without reason are becoming a thing of the past, as the child becomes ashamed to behave “like a little one.” There is a motivation to study, get good grades, and prove to yourself “I can do it.” Attention shows features of arbitrariness - children become able to concentrate for some time on something that is not very interesting. All this becomes possible because in the system of the emotional-volitional sphere (EVS), the will begins to prevail over emotions and control them.

But what do we have if EMU lags behind? Then even after five it is quite possible that you will observe:

• Screams, scandals and tragedies out of nowhere because the wrong bus arrived, the wrong cartoon was turned on, the wrong piece of bread was given, etc.;
• Impulsive behavior - “I do first, and then I think”, inability to wait for one’s turn;
• Hyperactivity, restlessness - may get up from his seat in the middle of a lesson, walk around the class, and interfere with everyone;
• Inappropriate reaction to failure - no one likes to lose and it’s normal if a child gets upset here. However, it is normal up to a certain limit. If, when you lose, fights break out, game items break because “the stupid game is to blame,” or wild hysteria breaks out, then this indicates insufficient self-control;
• Lack of willpower - does not finish what he starts, gets freaked out and is nervous that it doesn’t work out, although he started a minute ago;
• Inattention - by 6-7, the child should begin to concentrate not only on what is of interest to him;
• The inability to adequately express one’s own feelings and understand others ’ is behavior from the series of immediately shouting, hysterical, or hitting someone in the eye without understanding what’s what. There may also be a misunderstanding of the inappropriateness of some of your actions and that another child, say, is not in the mood to play right now and needs to be left alone.

The emotional-volitional sphere most often suffers in children with developmental disabilities - children with alalia, ADHD, mental retardation, and especially autism. In the case of a diagnosis, such things are influenced only by time and activities: the central nervous system matures - such problems begin to go away, or at least soften.

But, to be honest, many children without any nuances in the health of the nervous system can also show obvious immaturity in terms of the emotional-volitional sphere. That is, its development is clearly affected not only by some neurological problems, but also by external factors.

So how can we help the emotional-volitional sphere mature and... is it necessary? Maybe it’s somehow on its own?

Let’s just say whether it’s necessary or not, everyone decides for themselves. I believe that if there are problems, then they are worth solving. Moreover, looking at many adult uncles/aunts who start fights out of the blue, behave inappropriately and cannot force themselves to do anything in life, it becomes clear that, alas, EMU, it seems, is not always brought to mind by politics “maybe somehow itself.”

And so for all children, with or without developmental disorders, the same principles work plus/minus (for special children, perhaps, it can be more difficult and longer to develop/explain something). One of the key points is working with cause-and-effect relationships .

It turns out that this is VERY important for the development of will. When a child masters cause-and-effect relationships, he stops running ahead of the train, but begins to think in the spirit: “If I do this, dad will scold me. It's worth it? No. I won’t do that.”

After our son finally spoke more or less sanely, we were faced with the problem of behavior and self-control. No, he did not behave very aggressively and did not take off his pants, as they like to tell in idle stories on Zen. But, like most children with developmental problems, in particular speech, Lev’s behavior was at a level lower than he should have been, and even normal intellectual development did not save him. He had strong problems with coming to an agreement, being able to accept refusal, losing, and so on. This happened because while others were learning to negotiate and cooperate, my son was just learning to speak normally. Difficulties with communication led to the fact that the son could often only play alone.

Now these problems still exist and we are working on them, but they have been significantly mitigated. This began to happen after we began to closely work out the cause-and-effect relationships - the only logical point that was reluctantly given to our son for a long time.

This area of ​​thinking can be developed in different ways (most effectively when the influence comes from all sides):

• Logic classes : logical series (available to most children from about 3-3.5 years old), logical squares (from 5-6 years old), laying out pictures according to the principle “What happened first, and what came next?” (from 4.5-5 years).

A lesson without a lesson is also possible: you simply ask random questions, focusing on your child’s knowledge and level , in the spirit of “Why?..”, “What will happen if?..”, “What will you do if..?”. For example: “Why doesn’t anyone make snowmen in the summer?”, “What happens if it rains?”, “What will you do if you get lost?”

Fairytale therapy. But not just any fairy tales, but to have an instructive component: that is, the hero did something - received such and such an event/action in response. For very young children, fairy tales like “Kolobok” and “Turnips” are good in this regard - simple plots with a simple ending. For older children, fairy tales written specifically for the purpose of correcting behavior may be suitable. Loew, for example, really liked Elena Uleva’s books, as in the picture below:

It’s not advertising – it’s just really short and understandable stories from the “Right and Wrong” series.

I know that children with developmental disorders often do not understand fairy tales at all. My son also tore books out of his hands and didn’t listen to anything, but a special reading style helped us. Perhaps you will find it useful too - I described it in the middle of this article. Now you can’t tear him away from fairy tales - he’s ready to listen endlessly.

• Pictures “Good and bad” (you can just search on the Internet) help children think about what any actions will lead or led to. For example, you can ask questions like: “Look. The boy painted the wall. How will mom react? Will you be upset? Is it good or bad? Is it possible to do this? Where should I draw?

To correct children with developmental disorders, more visual techniques can be used - for example, social stories (below is an example about inappropriate hugs):

picture from open sources

Social stories are a good method of explaining rules of behavior, which, due to their clarity and laconic nature, is also suitable for many children with ASD and sensory alalia. On the Internet you can find a lot of options for almost any occasion - just enter “Social stories” in the search for Yandex images and you will get a lot of options that you can print and use.

But you must be prepared for the fact that this method requires patience and is introduced for quite a long time. It won’t be like yesterday you showed pictures once, and tomorrow the child is already behaving correctly. It is necessary to repeat the rules many times and especially explain socially acceptable alternatives , as well as systematically reinforce any successes with praise and encouragement.

• Consistent parenting. If a child is guilty, he should know that some kind of punishment will follow.

“There’s no need to hit so that you’re afraid to raise your eyes,” as one commentator wrote on my channel, who has clear inclinations. Violence either breaks a child or creates future kitchen boxers and the same inadequates, just waving their fists and belts instead of talking. However, it is quite possible to deprive someone of sweets, ban cartoons, or take away toys for a while in response to obvious disobedience and especially disrespect.

And no, this is not violence, not pressure or encroachment on the fragile child’s psyche. This is a practical demonstration of the cause-and-effect relationships of a child’s bad actions and their consequences, which works well in conjunction with spelling out what the punishment is for. And yes - it’s better to show at home that there are consequences by depriving you of candy/toys than by teachers taking a test, other children in the alley, or a boss firing you from work.

If a parent has the fortitude to keep promises time after time, children really begin to understand at a glance what the dangers of bad behavior are and there is no need for any belts here.

Since “Brevity is the sister of talent” is clearly not about me, that’s all for now. In the next part I will tell you how you can work on the development of emotions and will in children.

Formation of the emotional-volitional sphere of the child

Parents observe the manifestation of emotions from the very beginning of the child’s life; with their help, communication with parents occurs, so the baby shows that he feels good, or he experiences unpleasant sensations.

Later, as the child grows up, problems arise that he has to solve with varying degrees of independence. Attitude to a problem or situation causes a certain emotional response, and attempts to influence the problem cause additional emotions. In other words, if a child has to show arbitrariness in carrying out any actions, where the fundamental motive is not “I want”, but “I need”, that is, volitional effort will be required to solve the problem, in fact this will mean the implementation of a volitional act.

As we grow older, emotions also undergo certain changes and develop. Children at this age learn to feel and are able to demonstrate more complex manifestations of emotions. The main feature of the correct emotional-volitional development of a child is the increasing ability to control the manifestation of emotions.

The most important features of preschoolers

Researchers have identified several key features of the emotional-volitional sphere of the preschool period:

1. Emotions control all the child’s actions. They are involuntary and bright, flare up quickly and can fade away instantly.
2. The child gets upset because something didn’t work out for him, is offended when he doesn’t get what he wants, but just as easily forgets about it.
3. Most often, he is unable to hide or suppress his own feelings and emotions. Although some children manage to do this.

Already by the senior preschool period, the baby has motives, needs and interests that will determine his actions and activities. Children also understand rhythm and harmony, they develop a concept of beauty.

The main causes of violations of the emotional-volitional sphere of the child

Child psychologists place special emphasis on the statement that the development of a child’s personality can occur harmoniously only with sufficient trusting communication with close adults.

The main causes of violations are:

1. suffered stress;
2. retardation in intellectual development;
3. lack of emotional contacts with close adults;
4. social and everyday reasons;
5. films and computer games not intended for his age;
6. a number of other reasons that cause internal discomfort and feelings of inferiority in the child.

Violations of the children's emotional sphere manifest themselves much more often and more clearly during periods of so-called age-related crises. Vivid examples of such points of maturation can be the crises “I myself” at the age of three and the “Crisis of adolescence” in adolescence.

How does ZPR differ from ZRR and ZPRR?

Delays in speech and psychospeech development (SRD and DSD) occur as a result of organic lesions of the brain and central nervous system. The reasons for the delay may be: illnesses suffered by the mother during pregnancy, fetal hypoxia, birth pathologies, chromosomal or genetic diseases, severe infections, congenital anomalies of the central nervous system, cerebral vascular pathologies, cerebral palsy, mental illnesses (epilepsy, etc.), tumors brain, etc.

For ZRR and ZPRR:

• intellectual impairments are secondary, and timely correctional work aimed at speech development gives positive dynamics in the normalization of intelligence;
• the lag is not synchronous - speech development lags behind much more than mental development;
• With timely diagnosis and competent correctional work with specialists and at home with parents, the child will be able to catch up with his peers by the senior preschool age.

For ZPR:

• Initially, it is the intellectual development that does not correspond to age, as a result - problems with speech formation;
• there are no specific speech errors, the level of speech development corresponds to the level of development of younger children;
• speech development is delayed as much as general mental development as a whole - synchrony is maintained;
• speech can develop spontaneously, just later than in peers. To correct secondary speech problems, sessions with a speech therapist may be required.

Diagnosis of disorders

To correct disorders, timely and correct diagnosis is important, taking into account the causes of the development of deviations. Psychologists have a range of special techniques and tests to assess the development and psychological state of a child, taking into account his age characteristics.

For preschoolers, projective diagnostic methods are usually used:

• drawing test;
• Luscher color test;
• Beck Anxiety Scale;
• questionnaire “Well-being, activity, mood” (SAM);
• Phillips School Anxiety Test and many others.

Correction of disorders of the emotional-volitional sphere in childhood

What to do if the baby’s behavior suggests the presence of such a disorder? First of all, it is important to understand that these violations can and should be corrected. You should not rely only on specialists; the role of parents in correcting the behavioral characteristics of the child’s character is very important.

An important point in laying the foundation for a successful resolution of this problem is the establishment of contact and trust between parents and the child. In communication, you should avoid critical assessments, show a friendly attitude, remain calm, praise adequate manifestations of feelings more, you should be sincerely interested in his feelings and empathize.

Contact a psychologist

To eliminate disturbances in the emotional sphere, you should contact a child psychologist, who, with the help of special classes, will help you learn how to react correctly when stressful situations arise and control your feelings. Another important point is the work of the psychologist with the parents themselves.

Psychology currently describes many methods for correcting childhood disorders in the form of play therapy. As you know, the best learning occurs with the involvement of positive emotions. Teaching correct behavior is no exception.

The value of a number of methods lies in the fact that they can be successfully used not only by specialists themselves, but also by parents interested in the organic development of their baby.