Social-Emotional Development of Infant and Toddler (Essay Sample)

Social-Emotional Development of Infant and Toddler
Introduction
Social emotional development is a specific domain of a child’s development process. The social-emotional development process is a slow or gradual process where children gain the ability to understand, express, experience, and even manage their emotions to develop into sound relationships with other people. Much of the social-emotional development process happens in the early years of a child and starts immediately after birth. Positive social-emotional development affects children’s self-confidence, empathy, and relationship in their later life whereas, negative social-emotional development breeds children with less self-confidence, low self-esteem, and poor relationships with other people. Parents and caregivers are the shapers’ of children’s social-emotional development because they are the first people children come in contact with.
According to Gross (2019), social and emotional learning, and social-emotional development among infants consists of five components. These components include; self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decisions making. In other words, if a child goes through this development process successfully, the child would acquire all these skills (Gross, 2019). At birth, children start developing their social-emotional skills which include turning their heads towards the mother or caregiver and crying to let the mother know their needs. Infants exhibit emotional signals such as smiling, crying, smiling, and showing interest. The emotional reaction of the caregivers tends to strongly affect children’s social-emotional behaviors (Benson, & Haith, 2019). Therefore, the early years of a child are very critical to the child’s development of positive social-emotional feelings towards oneself, other people, and the world at large.
Malik, & Marwaha, (2022) and many other research about social-emotional development have found that young children who display healthy social-emotional behaviors are more likely to perform well in their academics in elementary school. In other words, when infants and toddlers are nurtured well and develop positive social-emotional development, they will perform well in their next level as they join elementary school (California Department of Education, 2009). Recent research supports the idea that early childhood programs tend to strengthen later positive learning outcomes by focusing on promoting healthy and social and emotional development (Malik, & Marwaha, 2022). Proper caregiving help infants to start regulating their emotions so that they can develop a sense of safety predictability and responsiveness in their social surroundings (Gross, 2019). Thus, early childhood relationships are very crucial to growing infants in that researchers have come to the conclusion that in the early years of a child, nurturing, and consistent relationships are the pillars of healthy social-emotional development.