ABSTRACT
For most children, beginning school is an important developmental step. Bronfenbrenner (1979) speaks of an “environmental transition,” where the child moves from a familiar world to a world that is unknown. This new world involves increased social contact with teachers and peers, new conditions in the physical environment (places, rooms, physical objects), and modified norms and role expectations. Increased contact with peers allows for new friendships. Teachers make demands on the child that require an extension or modification of the child’s previous conception of his or her role. It seems reasonable that so many changes in types of interaction with the surroundings could lead to feelings of anxiety in the child. It is with good reason, then, that the terms critical life experience (Filipp, 1981) and critical transition, in the sense of the “organismic developmental approach” (Kaplan, Wapner, & Cohen, 1976), have been used to designate such a change.
