Social emotional development
It is a gradual, integrative process through which children acquire the capacity to understand, experience, express, and manage emotions and to develop meaningful relationships with others.
For example, in order to complete a difficult school assignment, a child may need the ability to manage their sense of frustration and seek out help from a peer.
To maintain a romantic relationship after a fight, a teen may need to be able to articulate their feelings and take the perspective of their partner to successfully resolve the conflict.
[3] Many of the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder reflect differences in social emotional developmental areas such as joint attention.
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth first delineated and tested attachment theory as an evolutionarily informed process in which the emotional ties to a caregiver are adaptive for survival.
[6] Mary Ainsworth's work using the Strange Situation method identified four types of attachment styles in young children: Beginning at birth, newborns have the capacity to signal generalized distress in response to unpleasant stimuli and bodily states, such as pain, hunger, body temperature, and stimulation.
Despite a reliance on caregivers to change the intensity, duration, and frequency of emotions, infants are capable of engaging in self-regulation strategies as young as 4 months.
[6] Starting at about 8–10 months, infants begin to engage in social referencing, in which they refer to another, often an adult or caregiver, to inform their reaction to environmental stimuli.
Children at 18–30 months will respond to verbal and nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions or body posture, of discomfort or sadness with simple helping behaviors (e.g., giving an adult a blanket if they are shivering, rubbing their arms, and saying “brr”).
[6] These exchanges do not consist of words, but of coos, gurgles, smiles or other facial expressions, and bodily movements (e.g., lifting arms, kicking legs).
As early as 3 to 4 months of age, infants show the beginning requisites of joint attention, by looking in the general direction as adults; however, they are not consistently able to find the shared point of reference.
Joint attention enables infants to identify objects that adults are labeling and promotes shared back-and-forth communication about them.
By the end of the preschool period, children acquire gender constancy, an understanding of the biological basis of sex and its consistency over time.
The characteristics of socio-dramatic play allow children to practice cooperation, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills, as well as engage in role-playing that promotes perspective taking.
[6] By 3 years old, children have acquired a basic vocabulary for labeling simple emotional experiences, using words such as "scared," "happy," and "mad."
However, the emotional vocabulary of children grows much more rapidly during middle childhood, doubling every two years in this period before slowing down dramatically in adolescence.
[6] Finally, at around 9 years old, bolstered by increased perspective taking skills, display rules are recognized as important to maintaining social harmony and relationships rather than simply a means to avoid punishment.
In middle childhood, children implement more complex distraction techniques, cognitive appraisal strategies (e.g., choosing to focus on the positive), and problem solving methods.
Notably, school age children continue to seek out regulation support, but not just from their parents, but increasingly from teachers and peers in this period.
[6] With this added complexity, a fundamental task of adolescence is considered forming a unified, coherent identity, inclusive of traits, values, and goals.
[27] In general, Identity Achievement and Moratorium statuses appear to be associated with positive psychological adjustment, including higher self-esteem, goal-oriented behavior, self-efficacy, and openness.
[6] Close friendships in adolescence can act as a buffer against the negative impacts of stressors, provide a foundation for intimacy and conflict resolution necessary in romantic relationships, and promote empathy for others.
These patterns of acceptance can become self-perpetuating throughout childhood and adolescence, as rejected children are excluded from peer interactions that promote relationship skills, such as perspective taking and conflict resolution.
[6] During adolescence, children increasingly form peer groups, often with a common interest or values (e.g., "skaters," "jocks"), that are somewhat insular in nature (e.g., "cliques" or "crowds").
[34] The majority of measures designed to assess early childhood social emotional development are parent report questionnaires.
The methodology includes components of other well-known and evidence based interventions such as Social Stories, Hidden Curriculum, 5-point scale, and others, etc.
These core skills allow people to regulate and process emotions, think critically, maintain positive relationships, collaborate, and communicate effectively.
Beginning in 2013, the Mexican government implemented programs of emotional pedagogy, like psicoeducacion, to raise self-knowledge and disseminate mental health information in many domains of public life in order to address this stigma.
[44] The psychoeducacion trainings by the Mexican government, some of them mandatory, are aimed at teaching children the vocabulary to be able to express themselves in order to recognize the need for early treatment.
[47] Western experts are studying how specific terminology used in indigenous communities corresponds with common mental health syndromes recognized by the American Psychiatric Association.
