11th Parenting –Observing a Child: Socio-emotional Development

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Observable Characteristics and Typical emotions

Socio-emontional development in early childhood

Social and emotional development of a child takes place starting from her parents. Parenting becoming an important role to helping child developing social and emotional skills. Social competence not only includes the ability to cooperate with peers; it also involves the ability to express feelings, and share generously.

Parents tend to these difficulties to help their child:

My child does not want to share his toys with his siblings and friends.
My child always throw tantrum when he does not get the thing he wants.
My child does not pay attention when I am talking to him.
So, what are the ideas from the expert to deal with these difficulties.

Socio-emotional development by Laura Berk

Berk (2012, p. 409) emphasized that milestones for 3-4 years children
(1) Describes self in terms of observable characteristics and typical emotions and attitudes (examples shown in picture above).
(2) Has several self-esteems, such as learning things in school, making friends, and getting along with parents.
(3) Emotional self-regulation improves.
(4) Experiences self-conscious emotions more often.
(5) Relief more on language to express empathy.
(6) Engages in associative and cooperative play with peers, in addition to parallel play
(7) Proactive aggression declines, while reactive aggression (verbal and relational) increases.
(8) Forms first friendships, based on pleasurable play and sharing of toys.

According to picture above, Grace showed different emotions with different people. She liked to stick to mummy at home and her nephew always is her best friend. Before 3 years, she always put on "happy" face when she liked to play with them. But she changed to a "sad" face when they rejected to share toys with her or she can't get her preferred object (i.e. buying ice-cream in shopping mall). By age 3, she realized that using verbal way of communication (i.e. "May I" and "Please, thank you") rather than just facial expression or body language can get the things she wants effectively. Sometimes, she was frustrated when she found out herself differently from her friend (for an example, a boy). When she was tired, she lied on the floor and fell into a deep sleep quickly.

Conclusion

From my discussions above, I can see that Berk’ research contributing to early child development. As a father and also a teacher, I will integrate his theory into Grace’ daily life. I will show examples in my next vlog.

To be continue…