Social and Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood

At the start of their lives, babies are programmed to seek out the things that they want by crying. As they mature, though, children's emotional capabilities expand, allowing them to develop a variety of skills that they will need in their adult lives.

At preschool age, guilt is a common aspect expressed by children when they do something they know they shouldn’t. Erikson’s theory is initiative versus guilt. By now the child has become convinced that they are a person all their own, discovering who they are as a person. Their emotional development is also a growing awareness of self, which is linked to the ability to feel a wide range of emotions. This allows them to make sense of other people’s reactions and to control their own. After a negative behavior, a child will feel guilt or shame after being told what they did was bad.

Children are very complex, unique and varied individuals whose genetics, connections and backgrounds all perform significant roles in their emotional development (Wilson, 2003). The genetic blueprint a child inherits from its parents may plot a course for development but the environment and the influences within can affect how the child is shaped, how they connect with and are perceived by others and how their emotions are or are not expressed. Wilson (2003) points out emotions as an experience that is linked to cognitive interpretation, context, subjective feeling, physical reaction and behavioural expression. Campos, Campos, and Barrett (1989) suggest emotions are processes of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting the relations between the person and the internal or external environment, when such relations are significant to the individual.

In the initial few months babies will recognise familiar voices and faces, they will try to 'people please' and bay for attention by performing for their audience through laughter and giggles. They will enjoy playing games with others such as peek a boo.

Emotion regulation involves intrinsic and extrinsic processing of monitoring and modifying emotional reactions in both positive or negative situations (Martins, 2012). In order for individuals to have the ability to regulate emotions, they must beware of their emotions. Although infants are unaware and lack the ability to regulate their emotions, it then becomes the role of a primary carer to nurture the infant, thus acting as a model for regulating emotions. Evidently, infants grow to reflect the ways in which their carers control and modify their emotions as well as social boundaries. Furthermore, emotion regulation is considered an important aspect of an individuals life as it 'can moderate emotions and keep them in a manageable range

The child is learning form a young age to be sensitive to the beginning of others and to show some type of emotion when they have a problem. When a child is trained at such a young age about these things,

Observing a child is a fascinating and eye opening experience. It is amazing to see how children view certain things differently than adults. Things that some adults take for granted, children see as a miracle. I recently observed a little girl. For the purposes of confidentiality, the name of the little girl has been changed to Katy. She is five years old and has two older sisters. She will start kindergarten this year. I observed Katy on June 20, 2016 at twelve in the afternoon at the park with her mother present. It was nearly 100 degrees outside. There were a couple other children at the park as well.

Babies enjoy rhythm time and peek a boo games of hiding and repetition. The use of blurring and babbling will occur. The bonds with parents are

The baby will enjoy playing with toys that are within their reach and will stare at them for a long time. They will also enjoy repeating actions over and over again the effects of the actions could be that this could emotionally make the baby feel happy and have the ability to go around and explore the environment with their hands and

At 6 weeks infants develop a social smile, at 3 month laughter and curiosity develop, at 4 months full responsive smiles emerge, from 4-8 months they develop anger, from 9014 months they develop a fear of social events, at 12 months the are fearful of unexpected sights and sounds, and at 18 months they are self-aware, feel pride, shame, and embarrassment. In the first two years, infants develop from reactive pain and pleasure to complex patterns of social awareness. Emotions in infants are produced from their body as opposed to their thoughts. Therefore fast and uncensored reactions are common in infants. During their toddler years, the strength of their emotions will increase.

Stenberg, C. R., & Campos, J. J. (1990). The development of anger expressions in infancy. In N. L Stein, B. Leventhal, & T. Trabasso (Eds.), Psychological and biological approaches to emotion (pp. 247–282). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

Some parents might argue that for all their adorableness, babies are selfish beings who act with little consideration for their exhausted parents. Why else would a newborn cry at two in the morning just to receive a burping? Indeed, many early psychologists – most notably Freud – believed that young children were essentially immoral. Although these psychologists did not believe that babies actively seek to harm others, they did argue that babies care little about how their actions affect those around them.

Young children are in a dyadic dance with their caregiver, taking cues, mirroring emotion and behavior and constructing reciprocity, therefore they are greatly affected by parental stress (Hughes 2012). Parental stress is troubling and the child will work to mitigate it. By seven or eight months of age, an infant will send purposeful signals bidding caregiver’s attendance to their need, to be picked up and communicate comfort needs (Sroufe, 2011). They will also be looking for coregulation signals from their caregiver as the infant’s neural networks are not yet scaffolded to this task therefore the infant is not skilled in regulating their own emotions (cite).

Observation of an infant in the family setting 'provides the observer with an opportunity to encounter primitive emotional states in the infant and his family...' (Rustin in Miller, 1989, 7). According to Rustin infant observation allows to 'explore the emotional events between infant and mother' and 'the aim is to describe the development of the relationship between infant and others (...) and try to understand the unconscious aspects of behaviour and patterns of communication' (Rustin in Miller, 1989, 7). Early infant observation plays a vital role in the psychodynamic training and it gives a thesis of how early emotional development is being influenced by subconscious family dynamics.

When mom and dad smile with their baby, the baby smiles back. If mom or dad makes a sad face, the baby sees there is no joy in their face and will start to instinctively begin to frown. Even though that this pattern of happy and sad facial expressions are intuitive, it is also providing the baby with experience of how facial expressions are displaying playing happiness and sadness.