Child Development: Your guide to the first five years: part 3 - Emotional development

Getting to know about emotional development means increasing our understanding of feelings and the labels we give to them which identify a specific feeling as a certain type of emotion. Such knowledge is vital because feelings lie at the heart of human 'connectedness' and relationships. Our first awareness of ourselves and of others is built on the double platform of the kind of feelings we have when we are with someone else, and those we have within ourselves.

One of the first things we have to recognise is that understanding and 'managing' our emotions has a developmental progression, just like any other aspect of development.

Babies and very young children have strong, simple feelings but don't know how to deal with them. They need us to help them. Even as we get older, we still can have feelings that can overwhelm us, either leaving us feeling helpless and vulnerable or bringing us such joy that we are unable to speak. Perhaps remembering these occasions will also help us recognise the difficulties that young children have when they are overwhelmed far more easily and frequently by their feelings!

It can be seen, therefore, that understanding emotional development is also crucial to understanding behaviour. After all, what is 'behaviour' but the outward expression of our feelings, thoughts and understanding of the meaning we give to our moment-by-moment experiences?

We must also recognise that our emotional health or well-being underpins our sense of self, our levels of confidence and our ability to make friends or work alongside others; it affects levels of motivation, persistence and willingness to change, adapt and learn. In other words, it is the quality of our emotional world, arising from our experiences, that combines with our innate temperament and genetic make-up to form much of what it means to be a unique human being.

The increasing emphasis that is being placed on emotional and social development in the Early Years Foundation Stage and in both the primary and secondary schools curricula is a testimony to the growing recognition of the importance of emotional well-being.

Why we feel

A first question might be, why do we have feelings in the first place? After all, while we can have feelings that are very pleasurable, we can also suffer because of them, such as when we are sad or frightened. Feelings can be very painful indeed, as anyone who has lost a loved person or pet would testify, or when we feel the pangs of jealousy or the terrible despair of true depression. Feelings of anxiety can also be so intense for some people that they are almost immobilised in their day-to-day living. So, wouldn't life be simpler if we didn't have feelings at all and simply lived by logic alone?

We would all be very sensible - but life would probably be without its colour and intensity. Most importantly, we would lose one of the key factors that binds us together as human beings. Feelings help us to:

- survive

- connect

- facilitate our social interactions.

First, we need to think of ourselves as evolutionary beings, evolving just like every other living thing on the planet. As humans, our evolutionary timetable is relatively short. Nevertheless, babies, like other mammals, are born with reflexes and other skills and abilities that help support our early interactions with our parents.

As babies we have the 'rooting' reflex. We can suck, grasp, and see enough to enable us to recognise the faces of our carers. We can also hear well and know the familiarity of our parents' voices.

As infants we are totally helpless and rely totally on the loving care and attention of adults. We express our needs by literally 'crying out' and this crying brings our carers close to comfort, feed and soothe us. Without this ability to call for our carers, and its emotional impact on them and their response, we would not survive beyond infancy.

Such crying, of course, means that not only do our carers come to us, but also that their responses will enable the growing 'connection' between those involved. If they give comfort, the baby learns that those horrible internal feelings of distress can go away and be replaced by warm and pleasant feelings. Our parents and other carers also are 'rewarded' by the calm and settled baby.

As you can see, it is through the type and quality of our early interactions with our parents and family that we, as babies, begin to experience the basic range of emotions. Of course, this helps establish the quality of our first relationships providing a 'template' for future relationships with others.

In their responses to us, our parents will unconsciously or consciously encourage or discourage the way in which we show our feelings. For example, can you think about what feelings are encouraged or discouraged in your own family? Do you try to avoid situations where you might get distressed, or avoid confrontations or get a bit embarrassed if someone seems too excited?

We also begin to learn the different situations in which some feelings are or are not allowed. To take a simple example, we may learn that we don't laugh loudly in a place of worship. In the end, our families teach us whether to feel, what to feel and how much. Social and cultural factors heavily influence the expression of feelings - though not what people may actually be feeling. Of course, our inner feelings never quite go away, but they can certainly be 'pushed' under the surface.

Range of emotions

As babies we see the faces of our carers and their expressions together with the sound of their voices, and we begin to put together this information so that facial expression and/or voice, eye gaze and the internal feelings that accompany those facial expressions, including the movements of our own faces, begin to be matched up.

Paul Ekman (2003), who has carried out years of research across cultures, has found that there is a basic range of emotions which appear to be genuinely universal. These are joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. There is some debate about surprise; in Ekman's research with different cultures, the facial expression of surprise is sometimes confused with fear. This is perhaps not surprising, as many of us can have different reactions to 'surprises', with some people finding them very uncomfortable. So perhaps there is an element of fear in a 'surprise' situation.

How emotions evolve

During the first two to three months of life, babies generally show contentment, distress and disgust - wrinkling their noses at unpleasant smells, for example. In fact, at only a few hours old, babies will respond differently to happy, sad or surprised faces (Cozolino, 2006). However, babies also show a 'startle' reflex, which is possibly an indication that a 'fear' response is already 'primed'.

Between two and seven months, anger, sadness, joy, surprise and fear emerge as the baby's feelings begin to be more specific and context-related rather than 'global'. These changes tie in with the baby's increasing sociability, giving more intense and focused interactions, allied to improvement in vision and motivation to reach for objects, accompanied by ongoing physical development. The baby's world is slowly expanding - and so are the opportunities for a range of emotions.

From seven to eight months, babies are prone to 'stranger anxiety' as they begin to discriminate between the unfamiliar and familiar people in their lives. They become upset when their primary carer is not around, linking closely with the emergence of 'object permanence' - the knowledge that something out of sight still exists. Shared attention also emerges around this time, as does the baby's ability to point to objects of interest as well as what they may want.

The baby's increasing understanding of their world means that the range of feelings they will experience via their carers and others will establish further their knowledge of emotions. This task is carried out instinctively by parents as they talk to the child - for example, 'Oh, you are such a happy bunny!', 'Are you sad?', 'Oh dear, you are a crosspatch today', and so on.

As the infant enters into the second year of life and becomes a 'toddler', other significant changes also take place in their emotional world, linking with the emergence of more complex skills. For example, the child at around 14 to 16 months begins to recognise themselves in a mirror and begins to have a sense of 'me'. So, in this second year, the more complicated emotions such as guilt, embarrassment, jealousy and shame emerge. The child realises that people can be judgemental about their behaviour, so the more simple or basic emotions that were visible in the first year now begin to be layered with a greater complexity of feelings, which are tied in with the knowledge of a 'self'.

While these feelings can be unplesant, they are useful and perhaps even necessary, as they help the child begin to establish a sense of what is and is not acceptable behaviour. Gradually, over time, they will provide the basis for a moral and ethical sense which will continue to develop throughout life.

Interestingly, at around 17 to 19 months, children have been noted to have an intense period of 'nurture'-type play, where they perform caring activities on their teddies or dolls, such as bathing, feeding and putting the toys to bed.

As with all other types of learning, children need to practise the concepts or ideas that they are beginning to get to know. If a child has received nurturing care, such play helps the child's innate sense of connection with others to become established and promotes the child's feelings of empathy with others.

The existence of empathy itself is a current 'hot topic' in neuroscience because of the discovery of 'mirror neurons' that are activated not only when we watch someone carrying out an activity, but also, amazingly, when we see someone in distress.

The cliche of 'I can feel your pain' may actually have some basis in reality and can point to the fact that as humans we are primed to be social, to interact and care about others. Whether we actually feel that way or not, of course, will depend on our experiences - especially those early ones, because of the rapidly developing brain, which is being shaped and moulded by our experiences.

Managing emotions

This leads us to the question of how we learn to manage our emotions. Fundamentally, as I said at the beginning, babies and very young children simply can't do it. Their emotions are too strong. Caring adults need to be strong themselves and unafraid of the child's intensity. We also must remember how children learn in general - they need to practise and gain confidence in what they are trying to learn.

Managing emotions is no different. If a child learns that adults will be responsive, consistent and kind, they will gradually learn to adapt the level of their emotions and the type of emotions they display to what is seen as acceptable and fair.

If we remember that it can be around the age of five that a child learns to moderate their voice, we can see that it takes a long time to learn to moderate their emotions too! Some wise advice comes from the website www.circleofsecurity.org, which reminds us that children don't know what to do with their feelings and need the adult to be a safe haven, and provide the child with options for their behaviour.

In the next article, I will be linking emotions with how we form our relationships, including attachment, more about empathy, a few nods in the direction of the brain and why the influence of early relationships can echo throughout our lives.

Child Development part 4 will be published on 28 February

FURTHER READING

Cozolino, L (2006) The Neuroscience of Human Relationships. London, WW Norton & Company

Ekman, P (2004) Emotions Revealed. London, Phoenix

Robinson, M (2007) Child Development from Birth to Eight - A journey through the early years. Open University Press

Sunderland M, (2006) The Science of Parenting. London, Dorling Kingsley

EMOTIONS AND THE BRAIN

- The structures in our brain which process our emotions lie in the deeper, older areas.

- The different parts of our brain develop at different rates with the 'older parts' being mature before the 'newer' areas of the cortex.

- 'Control' comes through consistent, comforting interactions that help to develop the essential brain pathways between the deeper parts of the brain and the frontal cortex - areas of which act as a 'brake' on the strength of emotions so we may curb a response.

DID YOU KNOW ...

- A puppy taken from its mother can cry 700 times in 15 minutes (Sunderland (2006), p36).

- Being left alone in a distressed state for infant animals, babies and young children is highly distressing and calls into question the idea that leaving a baby, child or indeed a young animal to 'cry' is good for them!

- Maria Robinson is an early years consultant and author of From Birth to One and Child Development from Birth to Eight: A Journey Through the Early Years (Open University Press).