Children’s Emotional Development
Children’s emotional development makes them aware of the origin and development of their emotions. They begin to read the feelings of others and express them according to the social situation (1). Therefore, the change and growth expected from children on an emotional level stems from experiences that take place in their context on the one hand and in their maturation on the other.
This is why children begin to set certain emotional goals for themselves and others during their emotional development, while taking the context into account. The way children express different emotions varies greatly depending on their previous repertoire. In addition, it has a lot to do with a child’s learning history and this in turn leads to important achievements in terms of comprehension, emotional regulation, and empathic response (3).
Next, we delve deeper into three aspects of children’s emotional development that help us learn and understand their emotional competence in more detail (2).
Emotional understanding
The role of understanding in children’s emotional development is particularly important. We find an understanding of their feelings and on the other hand we find an understanding of their emotional ambivalence as well as the rules of emotion expression.
Understanding emotions and taking an emotional perspective begins to develop at an early age. Boys and girls are already linked during pre-school education to increasingly complex situations that produce different emotions (2). Indeed, an important step in understanding emotions occurs when children begin to value each other with their wants and needs.
On the other hand, the emotional perspectives and level of understanding created by children are related to both the culture around the children and the response of the parents. Ultimately, what a child believes and expects is linked to contextual factors and his or her personal formation (4).
Culture encourages the expression of emotions through different rules. Because of this, children learn to understand these rules through model learning and modeling. In this way, the cultural component, in short, sets certain limits and rules for the expression of emotions. Understanding the rules for expressing these feelings includes, but is not limited to:
- Intensity of emotion expression .
- Persistence of emotional expression .
- Preventing the expression of emotions .
On the other hand, we find an understanding of emotional ambivalence. Emotional ambivalence can be seen as the ability to understand, feel, and discriminate against the presence of several opposing emotions (2). Indeed, the ability to understand this emotional ambivalence is a basic skill through which young children can acquire skills in situations where it is a matter of managing stable relationships with a high emotional load (5).
Emotional regulation as part of children’s emotional development
Emotions are ways to be in touch with reality. Therefore, to achieve this goal, emotions must be able to be both flexible and consistent with the situation and goals.
The use of different strategies to achieve the level of emotional self-regulation is diverse, as the use of these strategies always depends on the situation. Gradually, children learn that some strategies work effectively in certain situations and that they depend on the type of achievement desired in that situation. The flexibility to manage these strategies and the evolution of levels of internalization demonstrate the benefits of emotional regulation for adaptive behavior and socio-emotional adjustment (6).
Children’s emotional development and empathy
Empathy refers to a person’s ability to understand another person’s emotional situation and thereby convey responses related to that person’s emotional state (2). In other words, empathy is an emotional component that is only achieved if the child achieves the three aspects mentioned below (2):
- The child’s own emotional understanding.
- Emotional understanding of others.
- The child’s ability to regulate their own emotional states.
These three aspects focus on those social situations that allow the child to analyze the range of goals, highlight affective actions, and understand why we feel different emotions (7).
In summary, we can say that children’s emotional development is a process that can take many different factors into account. It should be noted, however, that in order to develop these strategies mentioned above and to promote the child’s stable emotional development, both the child’s immediate circle and the social environment must be as favorable as possible.
