Social – Emotional Development

1. Social – Emotional Development Year One

2. What affects our social – emotional development? • Disposition: mood • Emotions: thoughts that lead to feelings and cause changes in the body. Name an emotion you have had today.

3. Temperament • The tendency to react a certain way • Environmental and hereditary How do people’s temperaments differ? Give an example How do babies’?

4. Temperament Categories • Easy: regular habits such as eating or sleeping. Respond quickly to a new situation. Cheerful. • Slow to warm up: take more time to adapt to new situations. • Difficult: irregular in their habits. Often withdraw or protest (even scream) when faced with a new situation.

5. Interacting with others • Babies understand social messages by the way others talk to, look at, or hold them. • Babies send messages to others by coos or smiles • Between 3 and 6 months, babies distinguish between those who care for them and strangers.

6. Babies thrive most when they are held, talked to, cuddled and comforted. • They are often happier babies and cry less often than those who receive little attention. • Babies enjoy being around siblings • Like to play with toys of other children

7. How are interactions between siblings and infants beneficial to older siblings?

8. How are interactions between siblings and infants beneficial to babies?

9. Learning to Trust • Trust is a key part of social development. • Erik Erikson – child development theorist who studied trust as an aspect of personality development. • Trust vs. Mistrust (Year One): Consistency in having basic needs met and sameness in environment leads to a feeling that the world is reliable. The baby develops a sense of basic trust.

10. Showing Attachment • A closeness between people that remains over time. • Bonding is not the same as attachment. Bonding is a type of attachment. • Attachment behaviors are actions that one person demonstrates to another to show closeness to that person. • Trying to stay close to, following, clinging, smiling, crying, calling.

11. Bonding: parents come to love their babies soon after birth (this is a parent to baby relationship) • Attachment: babies whose needs are met come to love their parents. They realize there is a relationship between meeting needs and caring (this is a baby to parent relationship)

12. Four types of attachment

16. On the back side of your attachment chart, create a scenario to describe each of the four types of attachment.

17. Why is it important for children to have a strong attachment with at least one adult? The adult – child relationship is essential to the formation of basic trust.

18. Expressing Emotions • Love • Those who care for them • Objects that give them security (pacifiers, blankets, toys)

19. Fear • React with the startle reflex • Fear of the unknown: strangers, a new bed, sudden movement • Fear learned from direct experiences or teachings: doctor’s office, napping dog, hot stoves, dogs How can parents protect infants from danger without making them afraid? Redirecting them and staying calm

20. Anxiety • Fear of a possible future event • The first anxiety of an infant is separation anxiety, the fear that a loved one who leaves them will not return. • Separation anxiety usually lasts between 10 and 18 months

21. Anger • Infant rage when distressed • By 8 to 10 months, babies begin to develop true anger. • Direct this anger toward a certain person or object. • May express anger in physical ways, such as trying to get away from the person holding them, hitting, shaking an object or grabbing.

22. How does an infant’s anger help provide caregivers with clues about a baby’s wants and needs? Helps to anticipate future needs and meet them before anger begins.