Initiative vs. Guilt

In his great new book Giants in the Nursery — reviewing the work of the pioneers in our field such as Rousseau, Froebel, Steiner, Montessori, Freud, Piaget, Erikson and Vygotsky — David Elkind summarizes Erik Erikson's views on initiative versus guilt:

"...the child, age three to five, is pretty much master of her body.... The child can thus initiate motor activities of various sorts on her own and no longer merely respond to or imitate the actions of other children. The same holds true of the child's language and fantasy activities. Erikson argues that the social dimension that appears at this stage has initiative at one of its poles and guilt at the other.

"Whether a child will leave this stage with his sense of initiative outbalancing his sense of guilt depends to a considerable extent on how parents respond to the child's self-initiated activities. A child who is given the freedom and the opportunity to initiate motor play... has his sense of initiative reinforced. Initiative is also reinforced when parents answer the child's questions and do not deride or inhibit fantasy or play activity.

"On the other hand, if a child is made to feel that her motor activity is always noisy and disruptive, that posing questions is a nuisance, and that her play is silly and stupid, then she may develop a sense of guilt over self-initiated activities that will persist through later life stages."

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