Your Six-Year-Old ─ Loving and Defiant

The six-year-old is a complex child, entirely??different from the five-year-old. Though many of the??changes are for the good -- Six is growing more??mature, more independent, more daring and??adventurous -- this is not necessarily an easy time for the??little girl or boy. Relationships with mothers are??troubled -- most of the time Six adores mother,??but whenever things go wrong, it's her fault. It??used to be, at Five, that she was the center of the??child's universe; now, the child is the center of??his own universe.

Parents need the expert??advice of Drs. Ames and Ilg during this difficult??year, to explain parent-child relations,??friendships with peers, what six-year-olds excel at, how??they see the world, what it feels like to be??entering the first grade. Children need patience and??understanding to help make this transition easier.

Louise Bates Ames (1908–1996)?was a lecturer at the Yale Child Study Center and assistant professor emeritus at Yale University. She was co-founder of the Gesell Institute of Child Development and collaborator or co-author of three dozen books, including The First Five Years of Life, Infant and Child in the Culture of Today, Child Rorschach Responses, and Your One-Year-Old through?Your Ten- to Fourteen-Year-Old series.

Frances L. Ilg wrote numerous books, including The Child from Five to Ten, Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen, and Child Behavior, before her death in 1981. She was also a cofounder of the Gesell Institute of Child Development at Yale.