Core components of social-emotional Learning though Play in early childhood

In this step we’re going to talk about the social and emotional development of babies and toddlers. In the previous that we talked about, how important early experiences are in shaping brain architecture. By providing babies and young children with lots of exciting, enriching and stimulating activities and interactions, we’re giving them lots of opportunity to keep growing and developing their social and emotional skills.

In this step we’ll be looking at children’s social emotional development in four main areas: First, the attachments and relationships they have with others. Second, the language and communication skills. Third, how they learn to express and read emotions and finally their ability to engage in playful and social interactions. Babies start forming relationships right from birth. These attachments are babies first relationships. They help them learn who they can rely on for comfort and who will keep them safe. You can help build the special bond with your baby by noticing and responding to their requests for attention, and making sure you set time aside every day to play and engage with them.

Babies communicate using lots of different sounds and body movements like kicking their legs in excitement. They also communicate using vocalizations and facial expressions to engage in back and forth interactions with their caregivers. These back and forth interactions are like, really simple conversations for babies. What’s your baby watching? If they smile, smile back. If they stick their tongue out, do the same. You can respond to their cues and goggles with simple expressive responses. By two years old, toddlers will have a vocabulary of around 50 words. By three years old, this will grow to over 200 words, that they can string together in three to four word sentences.

They’ll also start using pronouns like I and you, which demonstrates the growing sense of self. A big part of baby social emotional learning is expressing and reading emotions. They use simple vocalizations and facial expressions to express different emotions like joy or surprise. As they grow, they learn how to read the emotions of others using certain cues like facial expressions or tone of voice or body language. By the time a child reaches late toddlerhood, they’ll start learning that others have different thoughts and feelings to themselves. This means they might start showing empathetic behaviors, like showing concern or trying to comfort someone who feels sad or angry.

Babies enjoy playful and social interactions right from birth, and they love seeing and listening to familiar people. They love interacting through smiles, singing and simple games like peekaboo. These interactions are babies first play experiences.

Toddlers play skills develop as they start to engage in pretend play. By year one, they’ll start copying what they see others doing. So, for example, sweeping the floor or talking on a toy phone.

At year two, they start engaging in more complex symbolic play. So for example, pretending that Banana is a real phone or pretending the adult is a real baby. By three years old, their imagination starts run wild. They’ll start reenacting real life and creating their own imaginative scenarios like reenacting a trip to the supermarket. In a baby’s first year of life, they tend to play it by themselves and don’t really play with other babies. By year two, they’ll start to engage in something called parallel play. This is when they’ll play near or next to other babies, but they won’t really interact with each other.

By the end of the third year, this is when children will start playing interactively and cooperatively with other children. This might look like them working together to achieve a shared goal. This is when they start learning turn taking and sharing.