Imagine two little 3-year-olds building a creation out of blocks. Just as she wants to take the last red block, another child snatches it away. Maddy’s reaction is to grab the block, shout “No!”, and start to cry loudly when the other child does not return the block. Escalating into anger and frustration, she throws the block away and knocks over her own creation. Jamie’s reaction is different. She also says, “No!” and reaches for the block, but instead of erupting in anger, she says: “I wanted that block. I don’t like it when you take it!” She waits for the other child’s response and, meanwhile, is able to stay calm enough. When the other child does not return the block, she turns to a trusted adult and says, “He took my block! I don’t like it!” and is open to listening to the adult’s suggestions.
In a scenario like this, a lot depends on a child’s developmental level. But at any age or stage, we can support children’s skills to recognize and regulate their emotions and to communicate with others about what they want or need. When children are well-regulated, can communicate their needs, and have skills to initiate and maintain relationships, raising them is less stressful for parents. Social and emotional competence also helps children create and maintain friendships, be more successful in school, and foster optimal mental health. This is why it is one of the Five Protective Factors (also known as the Five Strengths):
- Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development: Parenting as Children Grow
- Concrete Support in Times of Need: Knowing How to Find Help
- Parental Resilience: Building Inner Strength
- Social Connections: Connecting with Others
- Social and Emotional Competence of Children: Helping Kids Understand Feelings
Strengthening Social and Emotional Competence
Social and Emotional Competence of Children can be supported by helping children develop skills so they can manage their emotions and build healthy relationships (Children’s Trust Fund Alliance). What are the ingredients needed for developing these skills? There are a lot! Social and emotional competence is fostered by child factors, such as temperament, and by parenting practices and other supportive factors.
Temperament
Some people are born with an easier temperament (innate behavioral and emotional tendencies) than others. Temperament traits include activity level, regularity, approachability, adaptability, intensity, mood, distractibility, sensory threshold, and persistence. Babies who are predictable (e.g., in eating and sleeping) are easier to get onto a schedule. Smiley babies are easier to connect with. Babies who need more time to get used to changes will need a more patient approach and careful observation of their cues. Those who startle easily, are unpredictable, and are hard to soothe, it can be a puzzle to figure out what works best for them. It can require a lot of trial and error to find which bedtime routine soothes them best, or which change in the environment helps them stay calm.
The good news is that positive parenting practices make an even bigger difference for babies with challenging temperaments! For instance, Dr.Grazyna Kochanska at the University of Iowa observed 7-month-old babies during free play with their moms or dads. When they were 15 months old, they played with each parent and participated in several tasks, such as cleaning up the toys they played with. Interestingly, the babies who tended to get angry at 7 months were excellent helpers at 15 months, but only when the respective parent had been responding in a positive way to their cues when they were babies. This study illustrates that parent-child relationships support social and emotional competence from a young age – especially when the child has a more challenging temperament!
Supportive Relationships with Parents
Young babies have needs and feelings, but they need loving adults to co-regulate with them so they can learn to recognize what is going on inside. Co-regulation is a continuing process of noticing the baby’s cues and what to do to help the baby’s body return to calmness. It is a process of trial and error. Because babies cannot talk, parents have to use their best guesses and intuition to decide how to support their baby in that moment. After several months, parents usually come to recognize patterns (e.g., the baby usually goes to sleep easily, except when overtired). This helps them know what to do (e.g., trying to put the baby to sleep before getting too tired).
Babies are learning how to recognize their different feelings, and this process helps their developing sense of self. If they could speak, they might say, “When I have a gnawing, painful feeling in my tummy, it means I’m hungry. Then, mommy or daddy comes and feeds me, and I feel satisfied.” The responses of loving adults help the baby become more aware of their inner feelings. Being responded to consistently also teaches the baby that they are a valuable person and that loving others are there to help, support, and reflect their feelings.
Over time, babies learn to identify their own needs and feelings better if parents attune to their cues. They gradually learn to recognize their own emotional cues. As they learn to talk and their parents continue to help them learn to name their feelings, toddlers then learn to label their feelings, understand why they are feeling this way, and learn ways to help them regulate those feelings. At first, that may simply look like, “Stop!” to indicate they need a break. Later, the child can be more precise and express in multiple-word sentences how they feel and why, and what they need.
Cultural factors
In some ways, social and emotional competence looks similar across cultures. For instance, peek-a-boo is played all over the world! Through this game, babies learn that their parents can briefly disappear but are still there (an early way of practicing brief separations in a joyful way). Babies and toddlers also show all basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise. These are experienced everywhere, but cultures differ in which emotions are highlighted or minimized. For example, studies have shown that pride is encouraged in Spain but discouraged in China. There are also complex webs of social connection and status that are different in every culture. Even ‘family cultures’ emphasize different emotions and social rules.
All over the globe, however, parents can learn ways to support their children’s social and emotional skills, and all children learn in their own unique ways!
Resources to Support Social and Emotional Competence
At Help Me Grow Utah, we offer many resources and tips to strengthen relationships and foster emotion regulation skills. One helpful tool is the “emotion wheel” (this one, for example) that displays various basic emotions and then more nuanced versions of those. At outreach events, our Help Me Grow team often hands out so-called “emotion faces” that you can use to practice identifying what different emotional expressions look like. The five steps of Emotion Coaching offer clear guidelines for how to help your child identify and name emotions and find ways to handle them. To foster secure relationships, a daily or weekly practice of Special Time can strengthen your bond with your child, and the Circle of Security offers a map of the balance between attachment and exploration. Call Help Me Grow Utah at (801) 691-5322 or download the Sparkler app for more ideas!
