What Is Social-Emotional Development and Why It Matters
Social-emotional development refers to the skills and behaviors that enable children to interact effectively with others and manage their own emotions. It involves a child’s ability to understand the feelings of others, control their own feelings and behaviors, and get along with peers.
Key Benefits of Healthy Social-Emotional Development
Developing strong social-emotional skills enables children to thrive socially, academically, and professionally. Research indicates that positive social-emotional development fosters healthy relationships, enhances mental well-being, facilitates children’s academic success, and reduces the incidence of bullying and violence.
How Parents Can Help Support Social-Emotional Development
A child’s developing brain is constantly adding new knowledge, skills, and lessons. Repetitive events become permanently wired into the brain, leading to the formation of habits. That’s why we encourage parents to be intentionally positive in their interactions – yes, have a lot of fun, which is also a learning experience.
Everyday moments, during playtime, mealtime, or bedtime routines, are powerful opportunities to strengthen a child’s emotional functioning and social-emotional health.
Through simple, repeated acts of connection, parents are helping their child develop brain habits that last a lifetime. Their children develop social-emotional health and the confidence to navigate both joy and disappointment. Learn below how you can support healthy social-emotional development with activities to guide you in every age and stage.
Below you’ll find explanations of social development stages and opportunities for parents to help children gain strong and positive emotional resilience.
Building Social-Emotional Development in Infants
Understanding Bonds of Attachment
Secure attachment is a state of deep sense of trust in a caregiver’s availability and responsiveness. Infants with secure attachment demonstrate confidence that their emotional and physical needs will be met, allowing them to explore their surroundings, build positive relationships, and regulate emotions effectively.
Mirroring for Emotional Connection – Make gentle eye contact with your baby and repeat their expressions and movements. This simple social interaction helps infants feel understood and connected, fostering emotional competence and early social-emotional skills. Softly talk with them while communicating through your facial expressions and eyes.
Nurturing Emotional Bond Through Touch – Gentle, nurturing touch—like an infant massage with lotion or oil—promotes relaxation, relieves discomfort such as gas or colic, improves circulation and sleep, and supports healthy brain and emotional development.
Attunement in Child Development
Tuning into your baby’s emotions and responding with care is an essential part of social and emotional development. Attunement begins with meeting basic needs for warmth, nourishment, rest, safety, and love—creating a supportive environment where your baby feels secure and valued.
Comforting Touch for Emotional Connection – Gently touch your baby and speak in a soft and calm, reassuring voice. Smile with them, laugh, soothe, and reassure them you are present. By responding to their cues and anticipating needs, parents help infants feel safe, loved, and understood.
Building Social-Emotional Development in Pre-School Children
Build initiative and confidence
Preschool years are a key stage in child development, where children start to show curiosity, imagination, and leadership. Encouraging initiative and confidence helps strengthen social-emotional skills and overall emotional health.
- Practice new experiences. Offer your child opportunities to explore stimulating, new environments—such as an outdoor park, the zoo, or a family outing in the mall. Encourage social interaction through play with other children, helping them learn how to interact. Verbal encouragement and safe exploration build confidence and teach independence, important developmental milestones in early childhood education.
- Sit and pretend. Imaginative play is developing during the preschool years. Encourage creativity through art, music, and dance—activities that stimulate the part of the brain important for problem-solving, a skill essential for resilience. Allow your child to take the lead in play while you follow along, letting them use their imagination. This fosters emotional competence, flexibility, and resilience—all vital for healthy emotional development.
Build competence in verbal skills
- Create time for meaningful conversations with open dialogue. Your child’s language skills are growing at this age. Please encourage them to think about things, to figure out how something works, why someone behaves in a certain way, etc.
- Ask questions like “How do you think that works?” or “Why do you think your friend felt that way?” Encourage them to use their words when they want something. These conversations promote emotional learning, help children express emotions, and teach self-advocacy—a core part of social-emotional development and emotional functioning.
Build personal connection
- Make time for one-on-one communication: Set aside 10 minutes each day for uninterrupted one-on-one time with your child while you do the listening.
- Let them choose the activity and lead the conversation. This intentional connection builds trust, confidence, and social competence, providing a supportive environment for open emotional expression
Build coping skills for self-control
- Allow failure. Help them learn patience when encountering a challenging activity. Label what they may be feeling (“It looks like you’re feeling frustrated”) and encourage problem-solving instead of fixing things for them.
- Teach patience, persistence, and the power of the word “yet”, which motivates them to keep trying. (You can’t do that yet, but let’s try again). Remind them of their strengths. (“That was a good choice on how to make that work.”) This approach fosters emotional regulation, resilience, and long-term mental wellness.
Build communication and negotiation skills
- Teach your child three simple steps to help them learn how to successfully communicate. This evidence-based strategy builds social competence, empathy, and supports healthy emotional development.
- Use words politely with respect, without whining, crying, or repeatedly complaining.
- Use words persuasively, with explanations and emphasis on the “why”.
- Respect the answer. We don’t always get what we want, and no means no. Accept “no” calmly. Parents should be consistent with their use of these communication skills.
Fostering Social-Emotional Development in School-Age Children
Regular conversations about how people feel strengthen emotional development and promote positive relationships.
Teach empathy
Encourage your child to recognize and share the feelings of others by talking about emotions they see in other people. For example, ask, “I wonder why that boy is crying? Do you think he’s hurt or sad?” Ask them to imagine how others feel, practicing social awareness, and consider ways to offer help to those in need.
Help foster friendships
Arrange playdates or group activities that encourage cooperative play (not always getting what you want) and teamwork (taking turns and negotiation). Step back and let children work through small conflicts independently, but stay nearby to guide them if needed.
Schedule friend dates
Parents can stay in the background to observe but not resolve all conflicts. Practice being a positive mediator with suggestions on how to work things out. Emotional regulation may still be a work in progress, as some children continue to struggle with managing strong feelings. Techniques to work through these feelings can be taught like deep breathing or talking about feelings—to help manage negative emotions and support emotional functioning.
Encourage cooperative play
Healthy child development requires learning how to collaborate and work with others. Organize games or activities that require cooperation and teamwork for the game to be fun.
Learn the value of failure
Try new and challenging things to build a growth mindset. Encourage your child’s effort event when things didn’t go perfectly, or they may feel they failed. Help them understand that new abilities can be achieved through effort, learning, persistence, and patience. Teach them to embrace challenges and practice repeating them. Let them know that mistakes are part of the process of growth and learning. This approach builds emotional competence, perseverance, and a healthy attitude toward learning new things.
Nurturing Lifelong Social and Emotional Growth in Children
Healthy social-emotional development in children plays a vital role in shaping their lives today and who they become. Through consistent, daily, high-quality connections with their child, parents can have positive influences on their child’s social-emotional development. They can help children foster strong relationships, maintain healthy interactions, and provide a foundation for learning self-control of their emotions.
When parents provide a supportive environment that encourages learning communication and empathy, children develop the tools needed to be resilient and thrive — both in childhood and as adults.
Metro Pediatrics offers Information on Building Resilience in Children
At Metro, we encourage parents to learn more about how to support social-emotional development in children. We offer a Resilience RX program, developed by pediatricians, with materials that inform parents how to be more active in developing these positive skills in their kids. Ask your pediatrician how you can access these materials and let us help you along every step of the way. If you have questions or concerns about your child’s mental wellbeing, please reach out to our Behavioral Health team or your doctor.
