As our children grow older, we tend to celebrate their various academic achievements, such as learning the alphabet or knowing how to count to 20. Although these are important achievements, we must also prioritize their social-emotional development: the process by which children begin to understand who they are, what emotions they are feeling and what to expect when interacting with others.
A healthy development of this area will allow us to form and maintain positive relationships, experience, manage and express our emotions, and explore and interact with our environment. Social-emotional skills are essential for connecting with others. This is of utmost importance since, in the near future, our little ones will spend much of their day interacting, learning and playing with other children at school.
Some examples of social-emotional skills in use are:
● Recognizing if someone is sad and asking if they are okay.
● Transitioning easily from one activity to the next.
● Sharing toys with others.
● Following directions.
● Waiting patiently for our turn.
We must not forget that emotional development and social skills are essential for school readiness. These skills lay the foundation for the development of literacy, numeracy and other cognitive skills that are critical for success in school and in life. In addition, the development of social-emotional skills can increase children's confidence and empathy, and contributes to the development of a sense of importance and self-worth, which are essential for good self-esteem.
What can we do to contribute to our children's social-emotional development?
● Talk to them about different emotions from an early age. With younger children, we can use visual material to talk about different emotions.
● Model the emotions and behaviors we want our children to show.
● Ask open-ended questions, such as "What would you do if this happened to you?", "How do you think your sibling felt after that?", "What can we do to feel better?", "What can we do to make ourselves feel better?".
● Read stories together or watch movies to talk with our children about different social situations and how each person might feel.
● Be receptive to our children’s emotions and behaviors, as this will help develop trust between us and our children.
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