social and emotional development

  What is social emotional development?

Social and emotional development is how children start to understand who they are, express what they are feeling and what to expect when interacting with others.

 Social and emotional development is the ability to develop a positive and rewarding relationship with others by experiencing, managing and expressing emotion in an engaging environment.

The first five years of life is a crucial period of growth in all areas of a child life. Supporting children to develop positive social and emotional development is essential as this development influences a child self-confidence, empathy, the ability to establish meaningful and lasting relationships, and build a sense of value for himself and those around him.

Strong social and emotional development underlies all later social, emotional, and academic success. Young children who develop positive early relationships with parents, family, caregivers, and educators learn to pay attention, cooperate, and get along with others. They are confident in their ability to explore and learn from the world around them.

A person life experiences, genetic makeup, and temperament can affect their social-emotional development. As your child first role model, you can send a positive message to them through various modes, thus building their social and emotional development.

 

How to support a child social and emotional development

 

• • Love your child and show your affection for them. Hug, cuddle, read, and talk with them throughout the day.

• • Encourage your child to try new things. Help them see what they are capable of doing. Let your child know you are pleased with their accomplishments.
• • Give your child opportunities to play with other children of their age, help them explore their world and get to know the people in it.

• • Model kind and generous behaviours when interacting with other adults and children.

• • Show your feelings,  Let your child see when you are happy or sad. It will help them to develop empathy for others.

• • Establish daily routines;

 Your child will feel confident and secure. They will learn that events can happen in an organised way. Create daily plans that are predictable but flexible.

• • Acknowledge your child feelings

Help them talk about what they feel and how they are feeling. Tell your child it is Ok to cry and that things will be better afterwards, comfort your child when they are upset. Hold them and speak softly and calmly.

 

 

 5 Strategies for Promoting social and emotional development

 

Be an emotional role Model

Children model their behaviour from people they admire. When caregivers model variety of emotions and coping strategies to manage emotions, children learn appropriate ways to react in similar circumstances.

 

• • Read books with social-emotional action

Reading emotional books such as grumpy birds or the way I feel and any other emotion books can provide opportunities to learn and discuss social-emotional topics, such as turn-taking and cooperation, asking children to label and explain the emotions of the characters in the story helps them learn a variety of emotions children 

• • Give choices

 Providing children with choices builds their emotional skills. A parent-child relationship that involves working together to solve problems teaches children how to negotiate and solve problems with parents, which later leads to improved social skills and higher acceptance in relationships with peers.

 

• • Use positive discipline strategies

Setting rules and expectations for behaviour, giving warnings of potential consequences, offering praise and incentives for positive behaviours, and ignoring unwanted behaviour is associated with higher social-emotional skills.

To make setting rules more effective, let children make the rules. When children act out and discuss the effects of their behaviour on others, this will help promote empathy, perspective-taking, and prosocial behaviour.

 

Coaching on a spot

 Coaching children on the spot of their action helps them to realise what they are doing, or have done, understands how their actions affect others. Coach them using positive actions.

Example, Bella and Ronnie were playing with the moon sand in the messy play area. Ronnie forcefully takes the play funnel from Bella.

 Bella is upset and immediately sit at a corner. Ms. Dawn crouches down at Ronnie level to look into his eyes; calmly and warmly, she say ‘’Bella was still using the funnel when you took it away from her.

what could you do to make Bella feel better? Ronnie then says sorry and gives it back to Bella.

Ms Dawn then says to Ronnie next time, If you want to play with the toy your friend is using could you ask if he would like to share? Ms. Dawn followed up by observing Ronnie and providing immediate positive feedback on his desirable behaviour.

Coaching on a sport will help teach social and emotional skills such as turn-taking, listening,resolving conflict and building empathy.