Children’s Emotional Development
I think that a good way to start this blog is to have a bit of information about children’s emotional development. We are all finding things a bit of a struggle or stressful at the moment and so gaining an understanding of ways to help children deal with their emotions is important.
The first five years of life are a crucial time for emotional and social development. Children in early years’ will not understand what is going on in the world but they will pick up on, and can react to how you and other people around them are feeling. Children are immensely affected by their surroundings and the people who care for them.
Its important to create an environment at home where the expression of feelings is encouraged. Being open and expressing your own emotions is the first step towards producing a positive environment. Keep your focus on positive reinforcement and praise. Make a point of letting your children see your smile or how pleased you are about events, however small.
Try to avoid telling a child to be brave when they have hurt themselves or smile when they are clearly unhappy as it will not encourage them to share their feelings only confuse them slowing down their emotional development.
Acknowledging how your child may be feeling is the positive step forward, for instance, if they are having a tantrum use phrases such as ‘I can see you are feeling cross,’ ‘what is making you feel so sad?’ Get down to their level and offer them a hug (even if you are not particularly feeling like hugging at that moment) this is the quickest way to end an angry outburst. Your child will feel secure in your arms and you would have let them know that you understand there are some things that make them cross. Once your child is happy and calm again that is the time to talk to them about what happened and how they could deal with it in a different way.
We often spend time with our children helping them to deal with their feelings when they are sad or cross, giving less attention to them when they are playing happily. This is only natural with our busy lives. It can feel a relief when the children are happy and playing giving us time to get on with what we need to do. But spending some time acknowledging how your child is feeling when they are happy is important too. This helps to reinforce positive behaviour. Let your child know that seeing them happy makes you happy too.
Children’s feelings can be extreme – a child can be in deep despair one minute and overjoyed about something else a few minutes later, their feelings are rarely half-hearted.
Very young children may not possess the language skills to express their feelings but you can help your child to explore them through play using puppets, role-play and stories.
We have some books about feelings in our library which you could borrow to look at with your child. Although many stories have feelings expressed in them, use these opportunities to talk to your child about their feelings.
