Influences on social development

[TODO: summary] Social development begins at birth and is influenced by a variety of factors. This article examines the key factors influencing the development of social skills and behaviours.

Social development begins from the earliest days of babies’ lives and is strongly influenced by their experiences with their parents and caregivers. Parents and care givers, in turn, are influenced by the temperament and behaviour of infants from the earliest days. Some babies are more difficult than others and some parents will be able to cope with difficult babies with more confidence than others. In other words, development is a dynamic and interactive process in which the behaviours of children and parents influence each other, and children’s ongoing experiences influence their development in addition to their biological makeup. In this section, four main influences on social development are highlighted briefly - temperament and personality, language and cognitive abilities, family environments, and expectations and management. The evidence of their influence on outcomes for children with Down syndrome will be returned to later in each section when discussing the different aspects of social development.

Temperament and personality

Children’s behaviour and social development is influenced by temperament and personality. Some children are anxious in temperament, others placid and calm. Some children are outgoing and sociable, others are shy and find it less easy to make friends. Research studies indicate that the range of temperamental and personality characteristics among children with Down syndrome is the same as the range observed in typically developing children. There is little evidence to support the stereotype which suggests that all children with Down syndrome are invariably placid and happy.[1–7]

Temperament is used to describe the basic behavioural style of children.[8] It is characterised in infants by collecting information on their activity level, regularity in biological functions such as hunger, sleep and bowel movements, readiness to accept new people and new situations, adaptability to changes in routine, sensitivity to noise, bright lights and other stimuli, whether a child’s mood leans towards cheerfulness or unhappiness most of the time, intensity of responses, distractibility and degree of persistence. Based on these characteristics, different types of temperament have been identified by researchers studying typically developing infants and young children, including ‘easy’, ‘difficult’, ‘slow to warm’, and ‘intermediate’.[TODO: 23-25] Studies of children with Down syndrome indicate that the proportion of children classified in each type is similar to the proportions for typically developing children. For example, in a study of 12-36 month old infants with Down syndrome, 42% were classified as ‘easy’, 16% as difficult, 13% as ‘slow to warm’, and 29% as ‘intermediate’.[TODO: 26] This compares with a study of typically developing infants in which 38% were classified as ‘easy’, 12% as ‘difficult’, 6% as ‘slow to warm’ and 44% as ‘intermediate’.[TODO: 27]

These figures illustrate that the range of temperaments seen in the infants with Down syndrome was the same as the range seen in the typically developing children. The figures also illustrate the range of individual differences in the temperaments of the infants with Down syndrome, making clear that the stereotypes which suggest that all the children are the same are not supported by the evidence. This information also indicates that, like typically developing children, some children with Down syndrome will be more difficult to manage than others and that some will have more social difficulties than others, as a result of temperamental differences.

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Some children and teenagers with Down syndrome, like other children, will have additional difficulties such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD), obsessional compulsive disorders (OCD), anxiety or depression, which should be diagnosed and treated appropriately. Any of these additional difficulties will affect their social functioning.

Language and cognitive abilities

Children’s social development is influenced by their understanding of the world around them and the behaviour of others, therefore children with delayed cognitive (mental) development are likely to have more difficulty in becoming socially competent and in controlling or self-regulating their behaviour. They will be older before they understand the reason why certain behaviours may be dangerous for example.

Children’s rate of progress with language development will also influence all aspects of their social development. As children’s understanding of language develops, it is possible to reason with them and explain why certain behaviours are desirable and others are not (though this can also be effectively communicated in non-verbal ways, with actions and gestures, in most situations). As their language and communication skills develop, children experience less frustration and can explain how they feel or ask for what they want. Supporting this view, a 2017 study of 6 year olds with Down syndrome[9] showed that children with better language development had better social capabilities and fewer social problems. They highlight the need for interventions to teaching vocabulary, including words important for social interactions. In addition, in typical development, language is also important in self-regulation as children use silent or private speech to control their own behaviour and this also seems to be true for children and teenagers with Down syndrome.[10]

It is likely, therefore, that those children with Down syndrome who progress more slowly than most in language and cognitive development will be more at risk for behaviour and social difficulties and will be more demanding to manage for longer periods of time during childhood. For almost all children with Down syndrome, their social competence and behaviour steadily improves with increasing age.[2]

Family environments

All children are influenced by their experiences within their families and the relationships within families, the personalities and the interpersonal communication within families vary a great deal. Children need to feel loved, wanted and emotionally secure as well as having their basic needs for warmth, food and care met. Some families experience more difficulties than others in establishing a supportive emotional climate as well as good communication between members of the family. In these families, the task of bringing up children will be more difficult than in cohesive and emotionally stable families and children in these families are likely to have more social and behavioural difficulties and to do less well in school.

Some families have many more social disadvantages than others, such as unemployment, one parent coping alone, poor housing, or poverty. Parents who are disadvantaged in any of these ways will find parenting more difficult and their children will tend to be more at risk for developmental difficulties.

The research indicates that these family differences have the same effects on the progress of children with Down syndrome as they do for other children.[3,11–13] In addition, some families find it more difficult to adapt to becoming parents of a child with a disability and the way that parents do adapt and make use of support systems outside the family influences the progress of their children with Down syndrome.[TODO: 15-18]

Expectations and management

Bringing up children is a difficult task and the progress of all children is influenced by the expectations in the family and by parents’ management skills. All children respond to the social feedback that they receive about themselves, their behaviour and the way in which they are expected to behave. Parents have different expectations for the behaviour of a two year old compared with their expectations for the behaviour of a five year old. Parents vary in their requirements for good behaviour and in their ability to manage difficult behaviour. These variations in behaviour expectations and management skills influence the social development of children in all families.

When a child has a disability, it is often much more difficult for parents to know what expectations and demands for good behaviour are appropriate. Do they judge these on the basis of the child’s developmental skills or on the child’s chronological age? It is easy to ‘baby’ a child with a disability - that is, to treat them as if they are younger than they are - and the child may then behave in immature ways for longer than is necessary.

The delays in cognitive and language development experienced by most children with Down syndrome may make them more difficult to manage in some ways. Routines and quite clear behaviour expectations help the child to understand the rules more easily.[3] In other words, there may be less room for more flexible attitudes to behaviour and parents may benefit from support and guidelines on the need for good behaviour management from the first year of the child’s life.

Teachers and other carers also need to be encouraged to expect and reward good behaviour. In preschool and school, children with Down syndrome should be expected to behave in socially age-appropriate ways and to conform to the school routines. Our experience suggests that behaviour difficulties arising in school or in community settings are most often the result of inappropriate management.

However, children with Down syndrome can be quite challenging, often in naughty ways, as they often see how far they can push the boundaries in a new situation. Some of these behaviours may be learning and exploratory behaviours. Children with Down syndrome often use their good understanding of the behaviour of others to get the reactions that they want, for example running away, which usually results in being chased, and a variety of other behaviours such as touching other children’s work or making a noise in class to gain the teacher’s attention.

For some children, behaviour is not easy to change and if a child is persistently difficult in school and at home, parents and teachers will have to work together to develop common strategies in order to change the behaviour.

References

1. Carr, J. (1995). Down’s Syndrome: Children Growing Up. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511581779
2. Buckley, S., & Sacks, B. (1987). The Adolescent with Down’s Syndrome: Life for the Teenager and for the Family. Portsmouth Down’s Syndrome Trust, Psychology Department, Portsmouth Polytechnic, King Charles St.
3. Cunningham, C. (2006). Down Syndrome: An Introduction for Parents and Carers. Souvenir Press Limited.
4. Gunn, P., Berry, P., & Andrews, R. J. (1981). The temperament of Down’s syndrome infants: A research note. Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines, 22, 189–194. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1981.tb00542.x
5. Gunn, P., & Cuskelly, M. (1991). Down Syndrome Temperament: The Stereotype at Middle Childhood and Adolescence. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 38(1), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/0156655910380106
6. Ganiban, J., Wagner, S., & Cicchetii, D. (1990). Temperament and Down syndrome. In D. Cicchetti & M. Beeghly (Eds.), Children with Down Syndrome: A Developmental Perspective (pp. 63–100). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511581786.004
7. Manion, I. G. (1995). Understanding behaviour in its developmental context. In Down Syndrome : Living and learning in the community. (pp. 29–36). Wiley-Liss.
8. Chess, S., Thomas, A., & Birch, H. G. (1976). Your Child is a Person: A Psychological Approach to Parenthood Without Guilt. Penguin Books.
9. Næss, K.-A. B., Nygaard, E., Ostad, J., Dolva, A.-S., & Lyster, S.-A. H. (2017). The profile of social functioning in children with Down syndrome. Disability and Rehabilitation, 39(13), 1320–1331. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2016.1194901
10. Glenn, S., & Cunningham, C. (2002). Self-regulation in children and young people with Down syndrome. In Down syndrome across the life span (pp. 28–39). Whurr Publishers.
11. Byrne, E., Cunningham, C., & Sloper, P. (2002). Families Child Downs Syndrome. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203206041
12. Sloper, P., Cunningham, C., Knussen, C., & Turner, S. (1988). A study of the process of adaptation in a cohort of children with Down’s syndrome and their families. End of grant report for DHSS. Hester Adrian research Centre. University of Manchester, UK.
13. Sloper, P., & Turner, S. (1994). Families of teenagers with Down syndrome: Parent, child and sibling adaptation. End of grant report for ESRC. Hester Adrian research Centre. University of Manchester, UK.

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