Emotional and Moral Development

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 25th April 2017

Introduction

The emotional wellbeing of children and how they interact with their environment are acquired through experience, interaction and relationship they have established with people around them. As such, social development involves understanding the children’s concept of lives. This will also feature critical issues related to attachment to their mothers and other people. It also include factors that influence the way these children socialize, in relation to their culture and how their behaviors are modified to meet the set cultural standards. It is also important to consider social development from the angle of how emotions are communicate and analyzed by the people who are significant to such cases.

Generally, it is conceived that one of the important factors when it comes to providing experience for children is an environment that supports social and emotional development. There are vast strategies used in the course of developing interaction between children and guiding their behavior. As such, this paper is developed to present detailed analysis of how professionals can extent their knowledge in the area of social and emotional development as well as attain desired opportunities for reflecting their present practices. Additionally, specific strategies required for managing challenging behaviors will also be explored.

Aims

The aim of this paper is to analyze how what emotional development is all about and how they can be used to enhance the social wellbeing of children.

What are emotions?

In its dictionary definition, emotions are the interactive state of mind that one derives from one’s circumstances, moods, or relationship that the person has with other people around him or her. In cases where these factors are positive, it is expected that the person’s emotion will be positive and vice versa.

What is emotional development?

The form of definition accorded to emotional development does depend on the person defining it and the circumstances surrounding such definition. However, emotional development can be defined as the emergence of a child’s experience, understanding, expression, and regulation of emotions that start from the moment such child is born to adolescence. It is important to understand that emotional development does happen in isolation as it has been found that neural, cognitive, and behavioral developments function together with emotional development, social and cultural factors influence one’s emotional development, and the context surrounding the person pays significant role when it comes to emotional development. Although different forms of emotional development has been proposed, there seem to be an agreement on age-related features as a determining factor for emotional development.

Attachment

In terms of definition, attachment is considered a strong and lasting emotional bond that connects people with each other, across space and time (Ainsworth, 1973; Bowlby, 1969). In essence, it does not have to be reciprocated. Thus, it is possible that one individual might be attached to another individual without getting the same in return. Attachment brings about certain behavior in children, like theme seeking proximity with the person that they have attachment with in cases of upset or when they feel threatened (Bowlby, 1969).

Social and emotional development

The cultural value and belief of people determine how they behave. As such, cultural traditions, values and expected behavioral patterns does significantly influence the child’s self-concept, self-esteem, and social behavior.

Social-emotional development is the child’s expression, experience, and ability to manage emotions as well as to create positive and rewarding relationship with the people around him or her (Cohen and others 2005). In incudes the child’s internal and external personal processes that shape what the child does and how he or she does that.

The major elements of emotional development in this case is the ability of the person to identify and understand the child’s personal feeling, in order to accurately read and comprehend the emotional state of the child and derive the necessary measures for managing a strong emotion, and utilizing their experience to construct manner and regulate their behavior for the purpose of developing empathy for others and creating as well as maintaining relationships (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child 2004, 2)

Confidence and self-esteem

Right from birth until they are about two years old, a child’s self-esteem greatly depend on feeling of being unconditionally loved and accepted. From two year old, the self-esteem of a child starts to be influenced by how adults respond to their attempts to gain desire independence and full control over their own lives. In accordance with Teresa (2013), children look at the reactions of adults about their own behavior as a guiding clue on whether the adults approve their behavior. In case where approval seems the answer, the child’s confidence level will increase as a result.

Children need to feel that they are competent with issues of their own accord, and have the feeling that how they tackle issues are validated by significant people around them. As self-esteem is acquired, it is important that practitioners are conscious of the way adult responses can impact on the development of a child’s self-confidence and self-esteem. The confidence of children is fairly simple. For preschoolers, they tend to describe themselves in relation to their physical appearance. During the course of a child’s development, they start to include gender, abilities, possessions, interests and relationships as part of their confidence state.

How important is emotional development to other aspects of child development?

Emotional development is very important for the development of other aspects of the child’s wellbeing in the sense that it influences these other aspects positively. The importance are as discussed below.

·         It makes the child feel good about his or herself and in turn, encourage them to act nicely towards other people.

·         It give the child necessary values that will be used to accept and appreciate themselves as well as others.

·         Since the emotionally development makes people happy, child that are high on that are found to be more productive.

·         It allows them to form positive relationship with other children.

·         It enhances their feeling of being respect, valued and loved.

·         Emotionally stable children are more motivated to learn and very creative.

·         They are more prepared to preserve and accomplish goals.

·         Developing emotionally does make such children more loyal, honest and competent.

·         They are more likely to accept responsibility.

·         Emotional development help in development of coping skills.

·         Emotionally developed children are more likely to accept rules and limits easily.

·         Since they are emotionally developed, they are better positioned to understand that disappointment is just part of life.

·         It makes them better at dealing with disappointments in a positive way.

·         They are more equipped to feel a sense of belonging in the family and in order special units.

·         They are more likely to function well as a group and offer care to other children.

·         Emotional development helps children to appreciate the individual value of every people they meet (Kearns, 2010).

What is morality?

By definition, morality is the distinction between what is right and wrong. They are inherent in every culture, and what is wrong in a culture might be considered right in another culture. For instance, it is wrong for a Muslim to eat pork, but Christians have no problem with that. In the course of their development, children acquire moral value from people around them. In cases where children receive negative reaction from adults about certain actions, they will internalize such as negative and will try not to repeat it. However, they have been constantly found to repeat things they have internalized as positive in their lives.

Emotional development and morality in a diverse society

In mixed society such as Australia, there are national values and communal values. National values are those accepted nationally, but communal value reflect the value of people within a given community. For instance, there are both Christians and Muslims (with differences in pork and alcohol consumption), and vegetarians –vs – non-vegetarians (with general differences on the consumption of meat). As such, emotional development in children should be designed to feature emotional intelligence and accommodating spirit (fostering communal living and peace in the process) (Angela and Amelia, 2011).

Summary

Emotional and moral development is very integral in every child. It starts immediately after birth and continuous till the child turns into an adult. It shapes the moral, social, emotional and other values that are inherent in the child. A child that has strongly developed emotionally has been found to have high level of confidence and self-esteem, which make them better at every other aspects of their lives. As such, it is recommended that necessary measures should be employed by both educators and other adults alike in order to create a favorable condition for children to grow emotionally. This will generally make them better people in life.

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1973). The development of infant-mother attachment. In B. Cardwell & H. Ricciuti (Eds.), Review of child development research (Vol. 3, pp. 1-94) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Angela, M., and Amelia, C. (2011). Promoting Children’s Agency in Early Childhood Education. Novitas-ROYAL (Research on Youth and Language) Vol 5 (1), pp. 15-38.

Bowlby J. (1969). Attachment. Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Loss. New York: Basic Books.

Cohen, J., and others. 2005. Helping Young Children Succeed: Strategies to Promote Early Childhood Social and Emotional Development   (accessed on September 7, 2016) Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures and Zero to Three.

Kearns, K. (2010). Frameworks for learning and development. pp 108-141. 2nd ed. French's Forest N.S.W: Pearson Australia.

National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. Winter, 2004. “Children’s Emotional Development Is Built into the Architecture of Their Brains” Working Paper No. 2   . (accessed on September 7, 2016)

Teresa, O. (2013). Emotional Development. Available at: http://www.education.com/reference/article/emotional-development/ (accessed on September 7, 2016)