Are children human beings like others? No offense to anyone who isn’t into gnomes, that’s exactly how it is. Furthermore, according to a study published in the journal Child developmentresearchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Texas at Austin showed that one day of the week was particularly difficult for school-age children.
Self-regulation of emotions in children
For this study, the sixty children tested were between 3 and 6 years old. Their impulsive and inattentive behaviors were captured using accelerometers, to collect an intense time series of their movements at school. Therefore, this technological tool made it possible to directly capture children’s behavior, rather than relying on teachers’ memory of this behavior.
And researchers, during the children’s typical school week, showed that as the days passed, the less the children were able to contain themselves emotionally and physically. The reason is simple: younger children have more difficulty self-regulating and controlling their emotions than adults.
Accepting and interacting with others, obeying, having to calm down, control yourself, listening, sometimes having to stop yourself from crying… It’s not easy for anyone, much less when you have a brain that isn’t yet fully mature.
Andrew Koepp, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study, expands on his analysis:
When a child has difficulty maintaining attention or sitting still, it disrupts their learning and can disrupt the classroom. (…) Research has consistently shown that difficulties controlling attention and behavior in childhood predict greater difficulties later in life, such as lower educational attainment and greater financial problems.
And we suspected the outcome: the day the most complicated for children is Friday, the one that closes the school week. But isn’t that the case for adults too? If as adults we don’t necessarily want to scream, hit, run everywhere and jump like children, Friday is often also synonymous with break, the day in which we have difficulty working, being effective. If someone who manages to be super efficient on a Friday, like every other day, after spending the week working hard, gives us his advice, we’re curious.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
