Essay on Pro-Social Behaviour in Child Development and Education

This essay delves into the concept of pro-social behavior in child development, using a story of friendship as a foundation. It explores the factors that influence children's behavior in their early years, including the roles of parents, consistency in care, and health and nutrition. The essay then outlines three strategies teachers can use to promote pro-social behavior, such as active play, one-on-one time, and serving as positive role models. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of reciprocal relationships between teachers and parents in fostering children's pro-social development, highlighting the need for collaborative strategies to achieve desired behavioral outcomes. The essay is supported by references to academic literature, offering a comprehensive understanding of the topic.

Running Head: PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR
0
Child development
Essay
student
4/14/2019

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Friendship
Friendship is a gift from God to us. We can't choose our families but friends are the one
whom we choose and with some great moments and joyful memories they became our family.
The bright light of cities, friendship is becoming deemed, but there are such friends like Ronny
and John whose relation is never going to change neither from the storms nor from any other
obstacles. Ronny and John were the best of friends since their childhood. They were neighbours.
They both used to play football and John was very sporty he always won the game, Ronny uses
to feel sad about it. At some occasions, they become angry and fought with each other on the
ground. As it is known that people generally got angry but they understand that the fights and
aggression occur on the ground should be left on the ground after the game. Ronny and John
were aware of that they used to play hard and put all their efforts when they play against each
other. The alliances between both of them were a great example of a peaceful alliance or
friendship. One day they were playing and suddenly it started raining heavily. John was in high
spirit. He started playing very energetic but lost his balance and fall on the ground badly, this
happened because the opponent team member pushed him hard. They started fighting each other,
but Ronny and John knew that this is a part of the game; therefore they stopped their team
member and resolve the issues peacefully. They discuss with the referee and ask him to provide
his reactions. They referee praised both Ronny and John as they understand the value of peace in
a game. Referee imposed a penalty on the player who pushed John. After the game, both teams
went home happily.

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This particular could be a great example of a peaceful friendship for all the children. In
today’s world, children experienced different problems like academic stress, family issues, and
personal problems. Therefore it is obvious that they might develop negative behaviour towards
other like social isolation or lack of interactions with other kids in their schools or society
(Walker, Wachs, Grantham-McGregor, Black, Nelson, Huffman, & Gardner, 2011).
Socialisation develops from childhood, it depends upon how they are educated or encouraged to
be pro-social. The pro-social behaviours are actually the intent to assist or benefit other people or
friends. It is the social behaviour that benefits surrounding people as a whole. This can be done
in the form of helping, donations, cooperating, and volunteering. Obeying the rules and
accepting the socially accepted nature or behaviour are likewise related to the pro-social
behaviours (Decety, Bartal, Uzefovsky, & Knafo-Noam, 2016). The story mentioned above can
help the children to understand that we should help each other, no matter what the situation is,
we should cooperate and follow the rules while doing any activity like playing the game and
performing academic tasks. This will encourage the student’s understanding of the role of
peaceful friendship in developing pro-social behaviours. Different experts or investigators
reported that pro-Social behaviour developed during childhood can be good practice to develop
peaceful behaviour in adulthood. As the story suggested that how the friendship of Ronny and
John resolved the issue occurred on the ground (Gross, Stern, Brett, & Cassidy, 2017). The
children can learn from the story that how to remain calm and help each other in adverse
condition. They should follow the rules and should not be egoistic while dealing with the fiends.
It has been proven that pro-social behaviour is central to the health of social groups like
schoolmates, classmates. This particular story will help the children to reduce or eliminate
undesirable or negative social behaviour.

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Three factors that influence children’s behaviour in the early years
Children are continuously learning how to control their emotions and imitate to the
behavioural prospects of the atmosphere around them. There are many factors or aspects that can
affect the behaviour of children including the role of parent, constancy in care, and health and
nutrition. Parent and or guardians are the prime educator in a child's life; therefore it is essential
that they play a vital role in the development of positive behaviour. A parent should work
together with the child development service providers. The behaviour of the child may be
impacted due to unfavourable parent care (Tizard, Blatchford, Burke, Farquhar, & Plewis, 2017).
Consistency in child care is another factor that may impact children's behaviour. Kids
require reliable and consistent adults who keep the children bodily and emotionally safe and
understand their individual requirements to allow them to develop the skills important for the
self-regulation like self-esteem, confidence and trust. Children, who see adults continually or
regularly, are more attached to them. They feel happy when they return back home after a tour or
visit. When the known faces of children get disappear, the children feel sad and cry. This may
develop irritation and other adverse behaviours among the children (Jones, 2017).
Health and nutrition are directly correlated with children behaviour. It is proven that the
children having healthy food with all the essential nutrients feels energetic and happy. On the
other hand, children with unhealthy food habits or mal nutrition’s generally developed
unfavourable behaviours like being angry and sad. In the different underdeveloped nations, the
student might experience malnutrition which leads to social isolation among the kids and
showing negative behaviours towards their parents or caregiver (Castro, Halberstadt, Lozada, &
Craig, 2015).

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Three strategies that an early childhood teacher could use to promote pro-social
behaviour
Pro-social behaviour is the main factor of a child's positive development, and teachers
can play a key role in developing this behaviour. There are three different strategies that can be
used by the teachers in order to develop pro-social behaviour. The first strategy is active play; to
assist the children to learn any type of pro-social behaviour, they need to be engaged in the active
play with the teacher and other children (Bower, & Casas, 2016). They must share and help each
other during the active pay a lot as one kid may require to play with the toy that another kid has,
or another kid might need help with something else and another child may help. Encouraging the
kids to assist or help and share with each other leads to them developing generous behaviours
and open to asking help when required. Another strategy is one-on-one time, kid’s desire for
one-on-one time with individuals they interact with. The teachers can be a key factor here, and
they can become a source of this requirement and the stability for certain children (Ferreira, et
al., 2016). The children can learn in the teacher, rely upon them the need them, even when the
children are at home. One-on-one time enables the teacher to be optimistic, point out the
favourable moments of the kid’s day and motivate them to be a good individual (Walker et al.,
2011). The last strategy the educators can use is being a good role model for the children. Like
mentioned above teacher are looked up to by the child, nonetheless, they should not forget it
after leaving the class. They can teach the students how they help others and how a child can
learn from them. They can share real-life positive stories. This will allow the children to see the
teacher a role model and follow him or her in a positive manner (Guinote,Cotzia, Sandhu, &
Siwa, 2015).

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Importance of reciprocal relationships between teachers and parents in promoting
children’s pro-social behaviour
Developing healthy behaviour is not an easy task, therefore the teachers, and parents
should work collaboratively to develop pro-social behaviour. As an already mentioned parent is
the prime teacher or educator for children’s, therefore they must discuss with the teacher about
how to develop the desired behaviour in the child. Some parent promotes the pro-social
behaviour differently from the educators, in several manners that undermines the educator’s
work. This might include treating, rewarding the children to gain the expected behaviours. But it
has been identified that how the rewards might backfire, leads to the possibility of kids being less
supportive and respectful if the parents stop rewarding them. Therefore the teacher must discuss
with the parent to use proper strategies to achieve the long term behavioural outcomes. The
children spend more time with the parent or caregivers; therefore they might be more responsive
toward them. It is also possible that using different strategies by teacher and parents may confuse
the child, therefore both the parties need to work together in order to achieve the pro-social
behaviour goal that is already set for the child.

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References
Bower, A. A., & Casas, J. F. (2016). What parents do when children are good: Parent reports of
strategies for reinforcing early childhood prosocial behaviours. Journal of child and
family studies, 25(4), 1310-1324.
Castro, V. L., Halberstadt, A. G., Lozada, F. T., & Craig, A. B. (2015). Parents' emotion‐related
beliefs, behaviours, and skills predict children's recognition of emotion. Infant and Child
Development, 24(1), 1-22.
Decety, J., Bartal, I. B. A., Uzefovsky, F., & Knafo-Noam, A. (2016). Empathy as a driver of
prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across
species. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences, 371(1686), 20150077.
Ferreira, T., Cadima, J., Matias, M., Vieira, J. M., Leal, T., & Matos, P. M. (2016). Preschool
children’s prosocial behaviour: The role of mother-child, father-child and teacher-child
relationships. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(6), 1829-1839.
Gross, J. T., Stern, J. A., Brett, B. E., & Cassidy, J. (2017). The multifaceted nature of prosocial
behaviour in children: Links with attachment theory and research. Social
Development, 26(4), 661-678.
Guinote, A., Cotzia, I., Sandhu, S., & Siwa, P. (2015). Social status modulates prosocial
behaviour and egalitarianism in preschool children and adults. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 112(3), 731-736.

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Jones, N. B. (2017). An Ethological Study of Some Aspects of Social Behaviour of Children
in. Primate ethology, 347.
Tizard, B., Blatchford, P., Burke, J., Farquhar, C., & Plewis, I. (2017). Young children at school
in the inner city. Routledge.
Walker, S. P., Wachs, T. D., Grantham-McGregor, S., Black, M. M., Nelson, C. A., Huffman, S.
L., & Gardner, J. M. M. (2011). Inequality in early childhood: risk and protective factors
for early child development. The Lancet, 378(9799), 1325-1338.