62 Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan
seen as particularly vulnerable to the detrimental consequences of neglect and
abuse because these attachment styles are developed and reinforced during
this time and these styles become neurobiologically encoded (Siegel, 2012).
Siegel (2012) asserts that toddlers’ and preschoolers’ budding implicit and
explicit memory skills enable their ability to build relationship templates,
empathy, and to develop the mind. Loss during this time would obviously tax
the youngster’s ability to encode a sense of security in relationships.
Temperament is another characteristic that emerges between infancy and
early childhood. Based on the degree of nine characteristics (activity level,
rhythmicity, distractibility, approach/withdrawal, adaptability, attention
span, intensity, responsiveness, and quality of mood), Thomas, Chess, and
Birch (1970) discerned three categories of temperament: easy, slow to warm
up, and difficult. These temperaments are noticed in the newborn nursery
and seem to provide a behavioral template for the infant’s behavior stretching
through early childhood. It seems they can be moderated in later childhood
and adulthood only with overt effort.
These temperaments likely have a biological base, but are modified in
the interaction with caregivers. For instance, a difficult and fussy infant will
push away from the caregiver, will reject new foods, and will seldom sustain a
full night’s sleep. A caregiver who is also of a difficult temperament will have
a challenging time adjusting to this infant style and may have great difficulty
providing attuned care, amplifying the child’s difficult temperament and set-
ting the stage for poor attachment. In contrast, a patient, secure caregiver may
help the infant feel safe, help contain distress, and gently but persistently pro-
vide gradated new experiences without becoming angry and loud with the
child. This allows the child to desensitize, learn to accept help in self-soothing,
and develop strategies to cope with transitions.
Some readers will notice that Piaget’s theory of sensory-motor intelli-
gence (1954) and the preoperational stage are missing from this discussion.
Many studies cast doubt on whether children in toddlerhood to preschool
really are as egocentric and concrete as Piaget suggested (Rosengren et al.,
2014). The ability to understand the finality of death, its universality and irre-
versibility, and the idea that the body ceases to function at death are all con-
cepts necessary to understanding death (Speece & Brent, 1996). Piaget would
conclude that youngsters would not be able to understand these concepts,
yet empirical work shows that they do (Rosengren et al., 2014). Children as
young as 4 are able to talk about death (of a person, dog, and plant) in ways
that indicate that they understand its irreversibility and finality as well as the
social norms about sadness (e.g., that plants do not elicit sadness but dogs and
people do) (Rosengren et al., 2014).Social Development
The development of language ability is another major accomplishment
of the time from birth to entry into school. Language opens other capaci-
ties such as imagination, play, memory, empathy, and the beginnings of
symbolic thought. Babbling and vocalization combine with gestures and
pointing to lead the way toward development of communicative language