Qualities to Teach and Nurture

Nurturing Early Social and Emotional Development

Young infants are very dependent on the assistance of their parents and caregivers to meet their physical and emotional needs. When care is sensitive and responsive, infants learn that their world is safe and that they can trust others to meet their needs. Non-responsive and insensitive care creates a sense that people and the environment are not consistent or trustworthy. Without this basic trust, infants and toddlers find it hard to take risks or to develop a positive sense of self. With sensitive caregiving, infants can move into toddlerhood ready to use their increasing motor, language, and cognitive skills with confidence.

• Trust and emotional security - developed by forming relationships with a small number of people around them. These relationships provide the foundation that supports exploration of the environment, learning, and the development of relationships with others.
• Self-regulation - ability to manage needs and emotions. Moving from helplessness to competence.
• Self-concept - develop a sense of self as increasingly competent and confident.

Toddlers acquire strategies for adapting their emotions or feelings within a variety of settings and with a limited number of people. Because they still have limited verbal skills to describe their feelings, toddlers often express their feelings through actions. Emotions, including angry conflicts, can help toddlers develop new understandings about others' feelings and motives. Their successful emotional development is linked to their relationships with their parents and care providers and the adults' knowledge and abilities to respond to toddlers' individual and temperamental differences.

School Readiness Indicators

Through observation and interactions, parents, care providers, and teachers can come to understand and appreciate a child's unique characteristics. When nurturing adults offer a balance of simple choices and boundaries, they support each child's growing sense of confidence and independence as they prepare to attend school.

Indicators of school readiness:

1. Has confidence
2. Is friendly
3. Develops relationships with peers and teachers
4. Communicates well with teachers and peers
5. Concentrates on tasks
6. Persists at challenging tasks
7. Effectively communicates emotions
8. Listens to and responds to instructions
9. Pays attention

Seven Critical Social-Emotional Skills to Support School Readiness

Adapted from Rebecca Parlakian
(The Zero to Three Center for Program Excellence, 2003)
Before the ABC's

Confidence is a sense of control and mastery of one's body, behavior, and world. Children feel likely to succeed at their undertakings and expect adults to be helpful.

Curiosity is the sense of that finding out about things is positive and leads to please.

Intentionality is the desire and ability to have an impact, and the determination to act on that desire with persistence. That internal drive or emotion is expressed outwardly through an action or communication. Intentionality is related to feeling competent and effective.

Self-control is the ability to modulate and control one's own actions in age appropriate ways. This is a sense of inner control.

Relatedness is the ability to engage with others based on the sense of understanding and being understood by others.

Capacity to communicate is the desire and ability to exchange ideas, feelings, and information with others verbally or otherwise. This skill is related to feeling trust in others and pleasure in engaging with others including adults.

Cooperativeness is the ability to balance one's own needs with those of others in a group activity