Socio-emotional Development from 3 to 8

This chapter is about socio-emotional development, about when the children develop the important skills for cooperation and contribution in terms of pro-social and moral development and self-regulation. Pro-social development is key in the transition form parallel to cooperative play, which is important for later collaboration and teamwork skills. These are rooted in empathy and guilt, which are universal human emotions and related to conceptions of fairness and justice. There are differences between moral transgressions and conventional transgressions, but the understanding of what’s right and wrong differs across cultures and societies. Another aspect of moral development is the understanding of individual rights versus collective fairness. Self-regulation refers to how children deal with conflict, stress, and strong emotion, and their methods of coping and self-soothing, Children can develop two kinds of problems with self-regulation, which can be internalizing behaviors like anxiety or externalizing behaviors like aggression. Culture differences dictate to what extent these behaviors are viewed as problematic. This chapter also reflects on how parenting can influence social development, especially in terms of disciplinary style. Corporal punishment is linked to higher internalizing and externalizing behaviors, while parental warmth indicated reduced behavioral problems, but this depends on how common those behaviors are in a certain culture. Preschool and organized learning programs can have strong influences on children’s positive social and emotional behaviors. History can also cause changes in the meaning of socio-emotional behaviors. Behavioral inhibition is wanting to be socially involved but being inhibited and shy to do so; this is related earlier to shy temperament and has to do with historical and economic trends in a society.

This video is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA license.