This document discusses emotional development from infancy through adolescence. It notes that emotional development progresses along with physical and cognitive development from birth. While emotions are difficult to study, researchers have developed theories of emotional development. The document then outlines key milestones in emotional development at different ages, including the emergence of smiling, crying, laughter, and other emotions in infancy, and the development of self-awareness, empathy, and emotional regulation in toddlerhood and childhood. It discusses challenges with emotional expression and understanding among adolescents.

2.  Along with physical and cognitive development every
child progresses through phases of emotional
development. Studies have shown that parents admit
to having little information on emotional development,
even through they also admit that their actions have
great influence on their children’s emotional
development.
 Emotions are not as easy to study or recognize as
cognition, and for many decades the study of
emotional development lagged behind study in other
areas of child development. However, by the early 21st
century researchers had developed several theories on
emotional development.

3.  Emotional development is the growth in the child’s ability to
distinguish between and to express their emotions in socially
acceptable ways and to be able to understand the emotional
content of other people’s communication.
 Emotional development is the emergence of a child’s experience,
expression understanding and regulation of emotions from birth
through late adolescence.
 Emotional development does not occur in isolation; neural;
cognitive and behavioral development interact with emotional
development, social and culture influences and context also play a
role.
 Social and emotional development are strongly linked. Parents
and other caregivers plays an important role in emotional
development, but as a child’s world expands, other people in the
social context also plays a part in emotional development.

4.  Smile occurs early, but the earliest ones are more reflexive
than social. A smile may express emotions as early as 6
months that a smile can be considered more emotional and
social in nature.
 Crying is a powerful emotion for infants and may be used as
a communication tool.
 Distress, pleasure, anger, fear are among the earliest
emotions that infants express.
 Laughter begin at about 3 to 4 months of age. Eliciting
laughter in babies at this age often involves an action that
deviates from the norms.
 Development of negative emotions probably follows soon
after with anger still winning over sadness to express
negative feelings. Fear begins to emerge and infants often
follow the emotions of their caregivers and form strong
attachment to them.

5.  By toddlerhood and early childhood children begin to develop
more of a sense of self. Emotions such as pride, shame, and self-
recognition begin to emerge.
 These emotional developments lead to the strong sense of
independence and defiance that often characterize the toddler
years. Of course, toddlers also are becoming more independent
physically, having developed skills such as walking. They may
begin to play independently too. The self-recognition bring new
levels of emotional development. For example toddlers begin to
respond to negative signals from caregivers and others. It is the
toddler stage or at least by age 2, that children also begin showing
empathy, which is a complex emotional response to a situation.
 Emotional expression is largely nonverbal, although some
emotional language may develop by age 20 months. For the most
part, facial expressions, and gestures still express many of
toddler’s emotions. In early childhood children are able to talk
about their feelings as they learn how to express themselves
verbally.

6.  As young children enter preschool, they may
be able to label their emotions and learn about
them by understanding family discussions and
actions concerning emotions. Preschoolers
begin to understand the rules of family, school,
and society concerning how they express some
of their emotions. Preschoolers begin to
distinguish between negative emotions such as
sadness, anger, and fear. But their knowledge
of other’s feelings generally is limited to people
and situation with which they are familiar.

7.  Secondary school teachers should be sensitive
to the stresses that adolescents face and should
realize that emotional disturbances are
common. They should understand that
depressed, hopeless, or unaccountably angry
behavior can be a clue that the adolescents
needs help, and they should try to put such
students in touch with schools counselors or
others psychological trained adults.

8.  Taunting, harassment and aggression towards
weaker or friendless peer occurs at all age levels,
but can become particularly serious as children
enter early adolescence.
 Dropping out:
 Dropping out of secondary school can put
adolescents at considerable risk, as dropouts
condemn themselves to low level occupation,
unemployment and poverty of course, the factors
that lead to dropping out begin early in students;
school careers; school failure; retention(staying
back) assignment to special education and poor
attendance all predict dropout.

9.  One of the most dangerous problem of
adolescence is the beginning of serious
delinquency. The problem is far more common
among females. Delinquents are usually low
achievers who have been given little reason to
believe that they can succeed by following the
path laid out for them by the school.
Delinquency in adolescence is overwhelmingly
a group phenomenon; most delinquent acts are
done in groups or with the active support of a
delinquent subgroup.

10.  A major part of emotional development in children
and adolescents is how children recognize, label,
and control the expression of their emotions in
ways that are generally are consistent with cultural
expectations. This is called emotional regulation.
In short, development of an emotion almost is
dependent on regulation.
 By about age 7 to 11 years, children are better able
to regulate their emotions and to use a variety of
self-regulation skills. By adolescence, they adapt
these skills to specific social relationships.
Adolescents also have heightened sensitivity to
how others evaluate them.

11.  Their self-consciousness and the culture specific
nature of guidelines concerning the
appropriateness of emotional expression make this
a particularly difficult time to learn when and how
to express or regulate many emotions.
 Emotional understanding can positively relate to
adaptive social behavior, yet it can negatively
relate to internalizing behavior. This may lead to
feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness.
Knowledge of emotion can affect verbal ability,
and in return academic competence. Verbal and
prosocial skills are critical to academic
achievement

12.  The emotional related behavior may be
obvious, it is important to gather some data to
assess the child’s emotional development or a
typical development and to aid in developing a
plan to improve the behavior.
 Assessment begins with deciding which
behavior is the most challenging and needs
immediate intervention.

13.  Dr.Carolyn Saarni, professor of councelling at Sonoma
State University(California) has discussed two rules of
emotional display, prosocial and self-protective. With
prosocial rules, a child alters his or her displays of
emotions to protect another’s feelings. In self-
protective display, the child’s mask emotions to avoid
embarrassment or to protect himself or herself from
potentially negative consequences. Throughout child’s
life, however, the risk of displaying emotion persist,
probably most blatantly in adolescence, when peer
pressure works on emotional regulation. Gender also
plays a role in the types of emotions children, and
adolescents, in particular, feel comfortable displaying.
Boys are less likely than girls to express fears in times
of stress.

14.  : Emotional development plays an important
role in human personality development. It
assess how people react on specific situation
and of course it help us to judge people
according to their facial expression or
according to their behavior.

15. Thank You