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Emotional Intelligence: Cultivating Emotional Skills in Growing Children
From the moment of their birth, children embark on a complex yet fascinating journey as they navigate the world through a myriad of sensory experiences. At this early stage, babies are learning to understand and respond to their emotions by tapping into instinctual reactions stored deep within the amygdala - an ancient part of the brn that houses primary emotions like joy, fear, and anger.
In infancy, these primitive emotional responses form the foundation upon which a child's emotional intelligence is built. As time progresses, they gradually begin to explore more nuanced emotions such as pride, shame, and jealousy, expanding their emotional vocabulary even further. The initial phase of life serves to provide them with the groundwork necessary for emotional development, social integration, and intellectual growth.
Parents play an essential role in nurturing their child's emotional development through their responses to emotional cues provided by infants. By offering comfort when needed and responding appropriately, parents model how children should understand emotions and relationships. This interaction between parent and child is critical during early years when babies are trying to make sense of the world around them.
As a child advances from infancy into toddlerhood and beyond, they begin developing more complex emotional needs alongside physical and cognitive growth. Parents can support this development by encouraging open communication, setting boundaries, and acknowledging fears. Engaging in play becomes an avenue for children to explore and express their emotions, providing opportunities for self-awareness through enjoyable experiences.
8 Playful Games Supporting Emotional Development
Emotion Charades: A fun game where babies act out different emotional expressions without using words, fostering the understanding of various feelings like happiness, sadness, excitement, or surprise.
Emotion Cards: Creating cards with different facial expressions depicting various emotions that children can choose from and discuss their interpretations about situations that might make them feel those ways. This activity ds in identifying and relating to complex emotions.
Feelings Journal: Encouraging children to write or draw about their emotions each day through a dedicated journal, providing an avenue for them to articulate how they feel in real-life scenarios while discussing these with parents.
Mindfulness Exercises: Practicing simple techniques like deep breathing or guided imagery helps children develop self-awareness and relaxation skills necessary for emotional regulation during stressful situations.
Emotion Faces Collage: A creative activity where cut-out pictures of facial expressions are assembled into a collage that discusses the meaning behind each expression and its corresponding emotion, helping them understand complex emotions through visual representations.
Storytelling with Emotions: Telling or reading stories that feature characters experiencing different emotions while discussing how they might feel and why these feelings arise, promoting empathy development among children.
Role-Playing Games: Engaging in scenarios where the child prets to be in various situations eliciting various emotional responses, offering a safe space for them to explore their reactions without real-world consequences.
Gratitude Jar: A gratitude-focused activity involving writing or drawing about things that made them happy throughout the day into a jar, cultivating positive thinking and appreciation for emotions like joy and gratitude.
Understanding Emotional Development in Children
Supporting children through various phases of emotional development requires knowledge gned from resources such as What’s Going on in There? by Lise Eliot and the Encyclopaedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development. These materials provide insights into how children learn about social interaction, emotional expression, self-regulation skills, and more.
As parents, educators, and caregivers, it is our responsibility to create an environment that nurtures emotional intelligence in growing children. Through play-based activities that encourage expression, discussion, and understanding of emotions, we can foster strong foundations for their future relationships and overall well-being.
References:
Lise Eliot 2015 What's Going on In There? The Science of the Newborn Brn. WW Norton Company.
Encyclopaedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development Edited by S. E. Hetherington. Elsevier, 2018.
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