Child and social adaptation: from birth to 10 years. Our child.

Let's talk about the notorious social adaptation. Let's ask ourselves: what images, memories, knowledge arise in our heads with this phrase? Children's group, joint games, the ability to exist and survive, bunny ears at children's performances, circles with velvet paper carefully pasted according to a pattern, bows and white tights with a bouquet of flowers on September 1, school sworn friend (friend), joint trips to the basements and much more other.

That is, the majority remember children and their fun when they hear the word “society”. But society is much more than a flock of children. So, what is necessary for normal social adaptation? Normal is when the task of teaching a child to adequately interact with people of different genders and different ages is solved.

Let's look at the definition in dictionaries. Adaptation is the process of adapting to new environmental conditions. Accordingly, social adaptation is the process of an individual’s adaptation to new social conditions. I will make a reservation that everything is new for a child where there is no experience, and adaptation is a gradual process, as a result of which the child learns the rules by which a given society operates, and first learns to act according to these rules, and then develops habits of interaction.

Let's remember what is needed for a child to calmly learn these rules and develop habits? That's right, the primary condition is safety. To make this clear, I will tell you how a child experiences space and adapts to it. And then we will apply this same model to society.

Mechanism of social adaptation

The mechanism of social adaptation is complex and lengthy. An individual is under the influence of powerful external factors, he is under pressure from public opinion, he may be condemned for provocative behavior or violation of the legal structure of society.

Studying social adaptation means exploring a person’s activity and independence as an important element of decision-making, getting acquainted with the characteristics of his activities and attitude to work, diagnosing the level of responsibility and the ability to foresee the consequences of his actions.

Signs of successful completion of the stages of this process are:

The basis of human character is self-criticism;
Demanding attitude towards yourself and others;
Serious attitude to work, high-quality performance of one’s duties;
Objective assessment of the results of your work;
Developed reflection and a tendency to introspection of one’s achievements and failures.

Attention! At the initial stage of adaptation to life in society, a person strives to transform social reality and existing conditions, and ultimately transforms his attitudes and values.

What functions does this process perform?

Adaptation - what is it in psychology

Adaptation in society performs the following functions that are significant for a person:

Enriches him with new working knowledge;
Stimulates the manifestation of an active life position for the benefit of the country;
Teaches you to come to terms with contradictions within yourself;
Teaches you to correctly respond to contradictions between your own value systems and the demands of society;
Gives a feeling of security in the work team;
Allows you to work in the field that attracts a person;
Allows you to provide for yourself and your family;
Helps to find harmony.

Concept and definition in psychology

Social perception - what is it in psychology

The psychological definition of adaptability is associated with the physiological and mental properties of the organism. In sociology, adaptation is a type of personal activity, the goal of which is to achieve comfortable well-being in society. A person achieves this state through analytical abilities, an adequate assessment of his skills and potential, and developed self-control skills.

A socially adapted person is a person who is able to make thoughtful decisions and anticipate the development of a particular situation.

Adapted person

A socially adapted person is one who successfully solves problems of interaction at 3 levels: physiological, psychological, social.

Psychologists believe that social adaptation is a process of a person’s life in society in which he feels good, does not experience discomfort with minor changes in circumstances, and his psyche does not malfunction when exposed to negative external factors.

Additional Information. Social adaptation cannot exist separately from socialization. These two processes are interdependent and complementary.

Issues

The inability to fit into the standards of society and become part of it deprives a person of a normal life. This pathological condition has different causes:

Dysfunctional family scenario. If the family has a negative attitude towards society and its norms, the child will perceive this behavior strategy as the only correct one. At the same time, he will not have the opportunity to instill his values in society.
Marginal environment. The family scenario may be prosperous, but the environment puts more pressure on the individual than the immediate circle of friends. If a person acts according to the family scenario, he automatically loses the chance to enter society.
Physiological features. Disturbances in the functioning of the central nervous system, chronic diseases and other characteristics do not allow a person to be part of a group. Being forced into isolation, he does not have the opportunity to master behavioral scenarios in society.
Psychological reasons. An obstacle to normal socialization is often the psychological characteristics of the individual. For example, autism spectrum disorders, which prevent a person from correctly reading the emotional reactions of other people and responding to them appropriately.
Uncontrollable external causes. These include wars, natural disasters and other global causes, the destructive effects of which a person cannot control or cancel.

If the cause of socio-psychological maladjustment is identified in childhood, a person still has a chance to overcome the obstacle and compensate for it. In adults, therapy will take longer and require significant effort.

Signs of social maladjustment

Attention! Despite the complex work of socialization institutions, social adaptation is not always a natural result of the process of growing up. Sometimes a child, having become an adult, from a pedagogical point of view, remains socially unadapted.

Social environment - what is it in psychology

Signs of unsuccessful completion of the socialization and adaptation program are:

A person has poor knowledge of the laws of functioning of the market and the socio-economic sphere;
An individual cannot decide on the choice of profession, remaining unemployed for a long time, despite having a professional education;
A person takes an illegal path, acts as a person organizing crimes, and serves time in prison.

Attention! Disabled and elderly people cannot be considered socially maladapted. At one time they were successful in the social environment. Disabled people cannot perform certain functions, but this does not mean that they cannot undergo rehabilitation.

Factors ensuring social adaptation

At the psychological level, the factors ensuring the development of adaptation are understood as the external conditions in which a person lives.

Factors of social adaptation are usually divided into external and internal. Internal factors include all personal characteristics of a person:

Floor;
Age;
Nationality;

Different nationalities

Temperament type;
Family composition;
The system of value orientations of the individual;
Character.

External factors of adaptation include all types of human activity and his belonging to certain social groups.

It is also known that the factors of social adaptation are divided into:

Pedagogical (the child’s assimilation of the norms and rules of behavior in society, knowledge of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and other legal documents regulating certain aspects of public life);
Psychological (intellectual abilities, properties of the nervous system, character traits, socio-psychological status of the individual in the team, system of life guidelines and values);
Social (gender, age, nationality).

Attention! If a psychologist receives a request to solve problems related to adaptation to modern society, the specialist begins work by analyzing the prerequisites for the occurrence of problems, that is, by identifying unfavorable factors.

The child learns about space

Here's a newborn. The boundaries of his body are unclear, he feels like... a ball with a mouth. The spaces of the room are huge compared to the walls of the uterus that limited him in intrauterine life. In the first 40 days, his main task is to make sure the mother is reliable and safe. As soon as this task is solved, he begins to look around the room from his mother’s hands. For him, this is a safe territory of the nest, and mother is a constant “fulcrum”, the center of the world.

As he masters his body and masters the skills of crawling and walking, he masters different levels of space. Mom’s favorite vases, TV remote control, beautiful buttons on the computer, etc. - everything should be examined and studied. To the touch, to the taste, to the strength.

Do you remember how your child explored your apartment? At first he crawled around my mother's legs. Then he crawled to the edge of the room and returned. Then he crawled outside the room and came back again. And so on and on. He mastered new things, going further and further in his adaptation to this space. And the “fulcrum” was mom. Safe mom.

When his mother went out with him, he carefully examined everything he saw from his mother’s hands, and it never occurred to his mother to let the crawling baby go in the store (well, I hope) or on the roadway to explore the “new space.” Simply because it is unsafe. It is alien, and the child does not have enough skills to adequately interact with it (this space).

The child grows up, goes for a walk with his mother hand in hand, then walks next to him, then runs back 2 steps, then 5. And so, gradually, observing and trying, he masters the space of the street. He learns that the green man is not a glitch, but a traffic light sign, and that he can ride the slide.

Technology and types of social adaptation

The technology of social adaptation involves the use of special methods that form in a person the legal basis of consciousness, activity, resistance to stress, sociability, responsibility, independence, self-organization and self-control skills.

Additional Information. According to famous teachers, the most effective methods of forming social adaptation are the positive example of adults, methods of labor education, persuasion, explanation, and analysis of the behavior of literary characters. Parents can facilitate this process by allowing the child to clean his room independently and perform feasible chores around the house.

Complete social adaptation consists of the following types of this process:

Managerial adaptation is the ability to create a comfortable environment at home and in the workplace. This type of transformation of the surrounding reality helps a person to better understand and master a wide range of social roles, learn to enjoy work and benefit society.

Enjoys life and work

Economic adaptation is the assimilation of the laws of functioning of the economy and society, the formation of the foundations of a person’s financial literacy, the ability to plan their income and expenses. The economic block is extremely important for developing a person’s ability to earn money and provide themselves with a comfortable life.
Pedagogical adaptation is the child’s getting used to the principles of organizing a continuous educational process, during which a value block is formed in the personality structure. Indicators of the formation of this block of adaptation are developed cognitive interest, love of reading, thirst for activity, constant self-development, successful self-realization in one type of activity or another, and creative activities.
Psychological adaptation is the development of adequate reactions from the nervous system to the influence of external stimuli. Socially adapted, from the perspective of this block, can be considered balanced people who know how to find a common language with different communication partners, who are able to maintain self-control and not show their bad mood to others.

Social adaptation is associated with conscious global changes in ideas, attitudes and patterns of human behavior. Living conditions in society are dynamic, so it is necessary to train stress resistance and flexibility in order to successfully adapt to society.

Successful adaptation to society

Negative reactions of children: main stages of adaptation

It is important to understand all the critical points that make it difficult to adapt to kindergarten.

Let us highlight the main ones:

Early rise
. For children whose daily routine was rarely regulated before, waking up at 7:30 (or even earlier) can become seriously stressful. To mitigate this negative factor for adaptation, a couple of weeks before visits to kindergarten, start waking up your baby earlier, accustoming him to the new routine. In kindergarten, also wake him up a little earlier than necessary, so that he can collect his thoughts for 10-15 minutes, lounging in bed, gradually moving from sleep to full awakening.
Daytime sleep
. To make it easier for a preschooler to adapt to kindergarten, do not ignore this aspect. Is your child used to falling asleep with a soft toy? Let him take her to the garden first. You can also buy fun pajamas for sleeping in the garden that your son or daughter will love.
Lunch without the company of mom or dad
. Feeding children causes many adaptation problems. Some refuse food that differs in taste from homemade, others simply do not want to have dinner without their mother.
Getting used to the regime
. Do you want the adaptation to be smoother? Find out in advance the schedule of the selected kindergarten. In a month or two, begin introducing the regime at home. Do this not abruptly, but gradually. In preschool age, it is recommended that a child sleep about 2-3 hours during the day and 10 hours at night. For comfortable adaptation to kindergarten, bedtime should begin as early as 21:00.
Full-day stay in kindergarten
. It is recommended to attend kindergarten before bedtime for the first week. In the second week you can stay until afternoon tea. It is advisable to stay full-time after a month of visits. Of course, these norms are quite individual. If adaptation is severe, pick up your child earlier. For any degree of adaptation, it is not recommended to pick up the baby last - children have a hard time experiencing this either consciously or subconsciously. Try not to allow the child to be left alone after all the children have been picked up by their parents.
Contacts with unfamiliar children
. Often in modern families there is only one child, and he rarely has the opportunity to establish relationships with peers. Usually, intersections with them occur only in the clinic, on the playground or at a party. Result: the child is not accustomed to contact with other children. Observe how he interacts with others. An extroverted child quickly makes contact and actively communicates with others - in this case, adaptation will be easier. A young introvert is usually shy and very obedient, so he will likely have difficulty communicating with more aggressive or active peers.
Contact with the teacher
. Undoubtedly, the teacher is an important figure in the process of getting used to kindergarten. Experience and communication skills allow him to correctly assess the psychological state of a preschooler and prevent various problems. If you have the opportunity to meet the teacher in advance, you will probably immediately determine how comfortable your son or daughter will be with such a person. Tell him about the child’s individual characteristics, his preferences, and concerns. Condemn all stages of adaptation.