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How can children's social and emotional skills be supported?

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Emma is 12 months year-old girl. She is friendly, has an easy temperament. She is generally happy, although she was not in the good mood, she still reacted when she saw me on the screen. She is active and adjust to the new situation or the environment easily. She likes playing with the keyboard from her mother’s laptop. Her mother divided the playing room into two separated spaces, and Emma has her own playing area. She has a 5 year-old brother, who always plays with her when they are outside. She has a strong personality and philosophy in raising and teaching children. She has the better knowledge about children’s development. She shared her philosophy with me every time we caught an ordinary moment from observing her children, and especially with Emma.

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Emma impressed me at the first time we met. Emma’s first reaction was different with other children that I have interacted before. It did not take too much time for Emma to interact with me freely and confidently. She crawled to me and smiled after her mother introduce me to her, she responded to my call with a smile. Emma knows her family members so well that she could be calm down so easily after the apologize from her brother for hurting her. The secure attachment is shown when Amy-Emma’s mother, calmed her down easily after the separate anxiety and got her back to play with me.

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The relationships affect all the areas and the stages of children’s development (raisingchildren 2020). Children seek for the connection from their parent and caregivers at the time they are brought to the world and keep on seeking it along with growing up. ‘The good relationship helps children to connect with others, build positive friendships and support children to self-regulate their emotions’ (acecqa 2018). The strong relationship also helps children to learns vital information about their world (raisingchildren 2020) and develop the feeling of safety and the sense of belonging (EYLF n.d). Children feel the safety when they were with their care givers, who they have a good relationship with. Therefore, they were comfortable to play and learn about the world through playing. In my observation, the child has good relationship with her brother, she trust her brother that he loves her, she knows she is safe with her brother and under her parent’s observation; so when her brother gave her a hug and say sorry for hurting her, she stopped crying and got back to play with her brother. Trust is one of the benefits of having a good relationship. A strong, loving relationships help children to develop trust (zerotothree 2020). According to Erick Erikson, children at the age from 0-18 months focuses on developing their trust relationship with caregivers, self-trust, and confidence (Hoffnung et.al. 2015, p. 40-41). Children trusts their caregivers, so they know that they are safe to interact with stranger as long as they recognized their caregiver’s existence. The particular child in my observation was confident, crawled to me for the first time, without stress, knowing that her mother was there to protect her. The full and strong trust relationships give children the courage to explore the world. They are able to develop their hope, which is ‘the enduring belief that one’s wishes are attainable’ (Hoffnung et.al. 2015, p. 40-41) for future learning and ‘learn how to deal with hard time and distress’ (IPSP & Yorganop n.d).
Toddlers at the age of 12 months knows their actual emotional states, especially distress, begin to match their expression with inside feeling (Angela O, n.d) and try to comfort themselves. They seek for the sources of comforts from the world around them, it can be their favourite toys, blanket, ect and people. According to Harlow’s experiment with the baby monkey in 1958, the physical contact, for example: clinging, hugging, etc, is one of the ways for children to decrease stress (Saul M 2017). The child in my observation actively sought to be next to her mother by coming back to her mother, shows that she received stress and wanted to be comforted by her mother. Then when she was comfortable, she went back to play. This happened one more time when Emma noticed that her mother was not next to her, it gave her distress. Emma solved the problem by looking for Amy and went straight to her mother after Amy was found (acecqa n.d)
The good, trust relationships gives children and their caregivers the opportunity to build the secure attachment. Children use their caregivers as the safe base to explore their environment (Saul M 2018). Because of the trust children put onto their caregivers, children still feel their caregivers’ existence, they are friendly with stranger, and vice versa (Saul M 2018). The separation from their caregivers can give children distress, but when children acknowledge the existence of the caregivers, children are happy and calm down easily (Saul M 2018)

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Children learn about the world through the relationships with their caregivers. Therefore, to help children develop their social and emotional skills, develop the trust, positive and strong relationship is crucial. With children at the age of 12 months, trust is important.  Creating and maintaining the interactions be warm, caring and responding over time can help children feel a sense of security, well-being and belonging (acecqa 2018).
Parallel with trust, respect is also essential for the positive relationship. Make every moment with the child is about the child and the quality time; focus on what the child is doing and think about what is going on with the child, for example: notice what the child is doing and comment or encourage it without judgment (rasingchildren 2020), let the child choose what s/he wants to do rather than giving directions to the child all the time (rasingchildren 2020), support the child’s ideas. Knowing that your children are different from you, so let your child express their opinion, use conversation as a way to learn more about your children’s thoughts and feeling. (raisingchildren 2020). This shows that you value and appreciate your child.
With the strong, trust and positive relationship, supporting children to have the strong sense of identity can help children develop their social and emotional skills. The relationships are the foundations for the construction of identity (EYLF n.d). When children are developing their sense of identity, they learn that they are safe and can ‘explore different aspects of it (physical, social, emotional, spiritual, cognitive) through their play and their relationships’ (EYLF n.d).
The predictable and nurturing environment support children to develop their social and emotional skills. Communicate to children every day help maintaining the interactions with children. It helps young children feel special and loved (US Department of Education n.d), maintain consistent, predictable routines to increase safety and secure (US Department of Education n.d). Creating an environment where children can build positive relationship with others (acecqa 2018).  ‘Children need to develop ‘social competence’ and the ability to interact with others with care, empathy and respect’ (acecqa 2018). This is ‘the foundation for children to understand and self-regulate their own emotions and negotiate their interactions with others’ others (National Quality Standard 2018). Providing activities for children to develop their social and emotional skills, for example: with infants, play simple social games like peek-a-boo or imitate infant’s facial expressions and sounds; With toddlers, providing plenty of opportunities for playful group activities, offering children choices throughout the day, encourage early friendships. Children often need help to recognize, understand and organise their feeling, such as anger, sadness, disappointment ad jealousy (acecqa 2018). Therefore, recognizing and talking about the emotions with children also help developing their emotional development (US Department of Education n.d), describing and labelling emotions (Be You 2018). Learning to read the moods of children in care can help educators and caregivers to be confident to respond to children’s needs (US Department of Education n.d). Children learn by watching their caregivers, according to Vygotsky (IPSP & Yorganop n.d). Therefore, educators and caregivers need to reflect on their emotional and social reaction; being an emotional role model for your children to learn (US Department of Education n.d).

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While Amy and I had a conversation, Emma played alone, move around the area, but she kept coming back and cuddled her mother several times. There was one time when Amy took Emma out and put her inside the trampoline with her brother. They played running and catching together. Then her brother accidently made Emma fall and hit her noise onto his leg. Emma cried because of getting hurt. Amy asked her son to apology and comfort his sister by hugging her. Emma stopped crying after her brother did what Amy told him to do. And they got back to play.

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There was one time I asked Amy to move away a little bit, still kept her eyes on Emma but not be side-by-side while I was playing peek-a-boo with Emma. When Emma noticed, she stopped smiling, looked left to right and turned around to find her mother. Then when she found Amy was sitting behind her, Emma stood up and walked to Amy. Then Amy picked Emma up, cuddled her and put her back to the prior position, told her to keep playing with me and the keyboard, and Emma followed.

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The first time when I met Emma, she was taking a nap. Her mother woke her up and introduced me. Emma was startled when she was waken up by her mother. She turned to her mother and turned to me for couple of time. Then she crawled directly to me, hold the screen of the laptop and smiled. Emma also responded to me with a happy face when I called her name or play peek-a-boo.

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