Introduction
Healthy mental, emotional, and behavioral development is important for young people to lead meaningful, productive, and engaged lives.1 Research suggests healthy social and emotional development is shaped by genetic, biological, social, and environmental factors that influence all stages of a child’s/teen’s growth (even before conception).1 “Children’s/teens’ social and physical environments literally shape their brains and consequently the behaviors and emotions they learn and experience.”1
There are many strategies that can promote and strengthen healthy development. One powerful strategy is to grow social and emotional skills.1 Social and emotional skills include understanding and managing oneself, relating to others, and making responsible choices based on self and others. In this tool, social and emotional development is defined; the benefits of growing social and emotional skills are explored; and examples are provided of the many ways that you as a parent or someone in a parenting role can support your child’s/teen’s social and emotional skill development.
Social and Emotional Development Defined
Social and emotional development can be defined as how children, teens, and adults learn about who they are, understand and manage how they act, take social cues and learn to relate to others, and how they make responsible choices. These skills include being able to understand and control emotions, understand and care about others, and make responsible decisions that do no harm to themselves or others. These skills also include acting responsibly considering the consequences of choices not only on one’s self but others too, establishing and maintaining positive relationships, and avoiding destructive behaviors.2,3
To understand how social and emotional development impacts parenting, as a parent or someone in a parenting role, it might be helpful to take a step back to reflect on the following:
- What are your hopes and dreams for your child/teen today and for their future?
- What are your hopes and dreams for your own role as a parent or someone in a parenting role?
Researchers Miller, Wanless and Weissberg asked this question of nearly 100 parents located throughout the U.S. and found that parents ultimately did not focus on their children’s grade point averages or sports achievements.4 Instead they responded in ways that you might feel are similar to your own hopes and dreams. They said they wanted to raise children who are confident, happy, empathetic, loving, kind and responsible. Similarly, in reflecting on their own parenting, they said they wanted to be happy, patient, encouraging, loving, kind, and hold high expectations. These hopes are in direct alignment with social and emotional skills.
These skills include:
Self Awareness = The ability to recognize and accurately identify one’s emotions and interpret them to inform one’s choices. The ability to understand one’s strengths, limitations, sense of identity, and opportunities for growth.
Self Management = The ability to control one’s emotions, impulses and behaviors in order to persist toward the accomplishment of a goal and/or promote and strengthen a relationship with another.
Social Awareness = The ability to identify and understand the emotions of others (empathy) in order to choose a response or behavior that demonstrates sensitivity to those emotions.
Relationship Skills = The abilities that foster growth of a connection with another person or group including verbal and nonverbal communication skills, listening, managing emotions and constructive problem-solving.
Responsible Decision-Making = The ability to make choices that not only move a person toward a goal but also demonstrate responsibility by considering the consequences to others who would be affected by the decision and acting to do no harm and according to the best outcomes for all.
The good news is that as a parent or someone in a parenting role, you can contribute to your hopes and dreams for your child daily if you view your interactions, routines, and even challenges as opportunities to build social and emotional skills in your child/teen and in yourself.
Schools use the above framework from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning to not only promote the social and emotional skills necessary for school and life success but also, to show the environments, systems, and people (the blue rings) who influence social and emotional development.5 As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you are your child’s/teen’s first and one of the most highly influential social and emotional teachers!
Social and Emotional Skills Are Essential
The benefits of strong social and emotional skills are evident for both children and adults. Social and emotional skills promote children’s positive social behaviors,6,7 lower levels of emotional stress,6,7 and increase sense of well-being.6 Social and emotional skills are also associated with doing better in school. 6,7
These positive outcomes from social and emotional development continue into adulthood. Developing social and emotional skills in adults can increase their success at work, help them achieve career and personal goals, and receive higher pay. These skills can also help adults be more creative, have healthier relationships, better manage stress, and achieve greater self-awareness.6,9,10,11
While the value of growing social and emotional skills to strengthen healthy mental, emotional, and behavioral development is evident, research shows that strengthening social and emotional skills has economic value as well. In a cost-benefit analysis of six programs designed to grow social and emotional skills, it was found that every $1 invested produced an $11 return.10
Ways to Support Social and Emotional Development
Social and emotional skills are developed through relationships, interactions, and ongoing social situations. As a parent or someone in a parenting role, there are many ways that you can support your child’s/teen’s social and emotional skill development and ultimately improve their mental, emotional, and behavioral health. Some ways include the five steps in the parenting process.
Step 1Create opportunities for your child to interact and engage with you.
Step 2Demonstrate how to do a skill successfully.
Step 3Create opportunities to try what they are learning.
Step 4Provide feedback, reteach, and apply logical consequences as needed.
Step 5Provide positive reinforcement and encouragement
The five-step parenting process is an intentional way to grow important life skills in your child/teen and is the process used in all of the tools on the website to address a variety of everyday challenges.
Input
Gaining input from your child/teen helps you empathize with their thoughts and feelings. It helps you as a parent or someone in a parenting role better understand what your child/teen is learning and how they are developing. And it grows a trusting relationship as you listen and demonstrate that you see, hear, understand, and value them. Listening, observing and becoming keenly aware of your child and their development is a critical first step in advancing their social and emotional skills.
- Recognizing Nonverbal Cues (Facial Expressions, Movements, and Tone of Voice) and Respond – Notice the feelings and thoughts your child may be expressing. Articulate them in a way that makes the connection between physical states and emotions such as, “Your eyes grew wide. Were you surprised?” or “Your tummy is aching. Are you worried or feeling stressed?”
- Ask about Any New Skill, Subject or Task – Many new challenges for your child/teen will involve social and emotional skills. Make your reflections a regular part of your conversations. For example, “How did it feel meeting new students at school?” or “What are you learning about how you feel when you are nervous?” or “How will we decide who to include in your birthday party invitation without making some feel excluded?”
- Ask Your Child/Teen about the Subject Before Diving Deeper – Whether you want to work on listening skills, talk about how to deal with bullying, or decide on healthy coping strategies for managing academic stress, ask your child/teen what they know, understand, or feel first. Invite their curiosity and you’ll create a partnership for working together on any issues that require social and emotional skills. For example, “What’s your definition of bullying?” or “What would you do if you felt bullied?” or “What would you do if you saw someone else being bullied?”
Teach
Social and emotional skills are developed by watching others, particularly those with close relationships, and learning from their behavior. As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you are constantly modeling for your child/teen. Through intentional modeling, you can teach your child/teen how to come to deeply know themselves, empathize, seek to understand diverse perspectives, grow healthy relationships with others, and make responsible decisions.
Each interaction, each routine or responsibility, and each challenge can be an opportunity to learn together and develop social and emotional skills. Children, as a natural part of their development, will make poor choices. Responding to those in ways that accept and help them articulate their big emotions will grow their self awareness. As you guide them to repair any harm caused (whether physical or emotional), they’ll learn there is always a next chance to make a better choice and help mend hurt feelings. This grows their responsible decision-making and relationship skills.
Practice and Support
Children need plenty of rehearsals when it comes to developing social and emotional skills! Though it can be tempting to quickly “fix” problems or do something faster than your child is able, if they are capable of trying, it’s helpful to give them the opportunity along with the time, space, and encouragement to try out new skills.
For example, young children are capable of ordering in a restaurant. This opportunity gives them valuable practice in speaking up with adults they don’t know. Sure, it may be faster and more efficient for you to order, but for your child, it is important practice. Or for example, if you are running errands with your child and have to wait in line, instead of handing them a device to occupy them while you wait, have them wait with you. Waiting in line without a device to distract them, can help your child develop self management skills which contribute to their ability to focus and can create opportunities for social interaction that would not exist if their attention was focused on a device. As a parent or someone in a parenting role, you can begin to notice and ask yourself, “What is my child capable of trying?”. Daily routines are often great opportunities to practice these invaluable life skills.
Recognize
It’s easy to get into the habit of correcting behaviors you want to stop or change. It’s more challenging to remember to notice and recognize the positive behaviors you want to see, especially if they are small or mundane. Yet, that’s precisely what your child needs – your attentiveness and encouragement to continue to build their skills, independence, and sense of responsibility. Use “I notice…” statements to recognize their positive behaviors. “I noticed you brushed your teeth this morning without my prompting. That’s taking responsibility!” “I noticed you were ready on time. Terrific! Keep it up.” These small recognitions create the safe, supportive environment your child needs to keep up the hard work of learning social and emotional skills.
Closing
Many strategies can be used to promote and strengthen healthy mental, emotional, and behavioral development. One powerful, research-based strategy is to grow social and emotional skills.1 Developing social and emotional skills ultimately helps children succeed in school and in life and parents or those in a parenting role work toward their hopes and dreams for their own roles and for their children.
