Young children’s social-emotional development involves learning how to understand their own and others’ feelings, regulate and express their emotions appropriately, build relationships with others, and interact in groups. Social-emotional development flourishes when children have close, supportive, and trusting relationships with adults. When adults are responsive, when they express pleasure about children’s accomplishments and discoveries, and when they create an environment in which children can participate actively in daily routines and experiences, children know that adults consider them to be important, interesting and competent.

Children’s interactions with others are crucial to their learning. When their interactions are positive, young children are more likely to have positive short- and long-term outcomes. The strong connection between early relationships and later behavior and learning makes it especially important for parents, caregivers and teachers to be aware of children’s social-emotional development and to support their growth and competence in this area.

Teaching Strategies GOLD, Teaching Strategies, 2010

Social-emotional expectations

  1. Regulates own emotions and behaviors
  2. Establishes and sustains positive relationships
  3. Participates cooperatively and constructively in group situations

Typical development of social-emotional skills

Children develop social-emotional skills from their earliest days. They can be harder to recognize than physical or language, but are equally important. These sites offer guidelines for typical development in this area:

How to facilitate development through play

Social-emotional development flourishes when children have close, supportive, and trusting relationships with adults. Playing with your child is one way to support the development of those trusting relationships. Children develop life long social-emotional skills as they move from turn taking with a favorite adult in “peek a boo” to waiting their turn in a simple board game.