Like those of younger children, some of the misdemeanors of older children are due to ignorance of what is expected of them or to a misunderstanding of the rules. Some are the result of children’s testing of authority and their attempts to assert their independence. Most, however, are the result of children’s conformity to gang misbehaviour. To maintain their position in a gang, children discover that they must do what the rest of the gang does regardless of how they feel about such behaviour.
The misdemeanors of late childhood are dependent upon the rules children break. And, because there are no universal rules either in the home or in the school for all American children, there are no universal misdemeanors in childhood in the American culture of today. Futhermore, because home rules are different from school rules, home misdemeanors are different from school misdemeanors.
Below is the lists of some of the most commonly reported misdemeanors of late childhood.
Common Misdemeanors of Late Childhood
Home Misdemeanors
- Fighting with siblings
- Breaking possessions of other family members
- Being rude to adult family members
- Dawdling over routine activities
- Neglecting home responsibilities
- Lying
- Being sneaky
- Pilfering things belonging to other family members
- Spilling things intentionally
School Misdemeanors
- Stealing
- Cheating
- Lying
- Using vulgar and obscene language
- Destroying school property and materials
- Being truant
- Annoying other children by teasing them, bullying them, and creating a disturbance
- Reading comic books or chewing gum during school hours
- Whispering, clowning, or being boisterous in class
- Fighting with classmates
- The use of drugs, especially marijuana, on the school grounds
As children grow older, they tend to violate more rules both at home and in school than they did when they were younger. At home this is due, in part, to the fact that older children want to assert their independence and, in part, to the fact that they often regard rules as unfair, especially if they differ from the home rules their gang-mates are expected to abide by, and the punishment they receive for violating them unjust.
Increased misbehaviour at school may be explained by the fact that older children like school less than they did when they were younger; that they almost always like their teachers less than they did in the early grades; that they find some school subjects boring and, as a result, “cut up” instead of concentrating on these subjects; and that older children are often less well accepted by their classmates than they were in the earlier grades or than they had hoped to be. Regardless of the cause, misdemeanors often are an outgrowth of boredom.
As childhood draws to a close, misdemeanors generally become fewer. This may due in part to greater maturity, both physical and psychological, but it is more often due to the lack of energy characteristic of the growth spurt that accompanies the early part of puberty. Many prepubescents simply do not have the energy to “cut up” or to get into mischief.
At home, in school, and in the neighbourhood, boys break more rules than girls. There are two reasons for this sex difference: First, boys are given more freedom than girls and are less often punished for misbehaviour on the grounds that “boys will be boys”; and second, boys feel that they must defy rules to show their masculinity and thus win peer approval.
