Emotional development involves learning what feelings and emotions are, understanding how and why they occur, recognizing your own feelings and those of others, and developing effective ways of managing them.

1. EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
INTRODUCTION
Emotional development involves learning what feelings and emotions are, understanding how
and why they occur, recognizing your own feelings and those of others, and developing effective
ways of managing them.
As children and young people grow and are exposed to different situations, their emotional lives
also become more complex. Developing skills for managing a range of emotions is therefore
very important for their emotional wellbeing and ability to interact successfully with others.
Children and young people who can understand and manage their feelings are more likely to
develop a positive sense of self and be confident and curious learners.
1.1Emotional development begins at birth
Emotional development is a complex task that begins in infancy and continues into adulthood.
The first emotions that can be recognized in babies include joy, anger, sadness and fear. As
children’s sense of self develops, more complex emotions like shyness, surprise, elation,
embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride and empathy emerge. School aged children and young people
are still learning to identify emotions, to understand why they happen and how to manage them
appropriately.
1.2Emotional expression includes several components:
 physical responses (like heart rate, breathing and hormone levels)
 feelings that children and young people recognize and learn to name
 thoughts and judgments associated with feelings
 action signals (for example, a desire to approach, escape or fight).
Many things influence the ways that children and young people express emotions, both through
words and behavior.

2. (Saarni, C., Campos, J., Camras, L., & Witherington, D. (2008). Principles of emotion and
emotional competence. In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Eds.), Child and adolescent
development: An advanced course (pp. 361-405). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.)
2.Emotion regulation
Upon school entry, children's emotion regulation repertoire becomes increasingly diverse as
previously relied upon methods (e.g., seeking support from parents, moving away/avoiding an
emotionally activating stimuli) become less effective. In middle childhood, children implement
more complex distraction techniques, cognitive appraisal strategies (e.g., choosing to focus on
the positive), and problem solving methods. At 10 years old, children's emotion regulation
involves a balance of problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping strategies. Problem-
focused coping represents a change driven strategy, focused on attempting to eliminate the
source of stress through proactive action (e.g., if a child feels worried about a test, choosing to
study to regulate that worry). In contrast, emotion-focused coping is acceptance based and can be
more effective when the stressor can not be easily changed or removed (e.g., if a child is
disappointed about their grade on the test, using strategies to reduce disappointment in the
moment: "this will help me know what to study for the final")
And although diversification of emotion regulation strategy use occurs at this age, school aged
children continue to strengthen their use of previous regulation strategies as well. Notably,
school age children continue to seek out regulation support, but not just from their parents, but
increasingly from teachers and peers in this period. Children also show a developmental
progression in differentiation of who to go to for emotional support given then specific
situations. Thus on the whole, by the beginning of adolescence, children have been become more
skilled emotion regulators on the whole.
(Saarni, C. (2008). The interface of emotional development with social context. In M.
Lewis, J. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), The Handbook of Emotions(3rd ed.,
pp. 332-347). New York: Guilford Press.)

3. 3.Toddlerhood And Early Childhood
During the toddler period, in conjunction with rapid maturation of the frontal lobes and the
limbic circuit in the brain, recognition of the self emerges. As a result, the toddler strives to
become more independent, and the expression of anger and defiance increases in that struggle for
autonomy. The ability to differentiate the self from others also promotes basic empathetic
behavior and moral understanding. By the end of the second year of life, toddlers respond to
negative signals from others, and they have specific emotional responses to their own negative
actions. The emotions that emerge with a rudimentary conception of the self are often called self-
conscious emotions and include shame, embarrassment, guilt, and pride. Some self-conscious
emotions, such as pride and guilt, do not emerge until toddlers and young children have learned
to conceptualize internalized standards of behavior.
(Saarni, C. (1999). The development of emotional competence. New York: Guilford Press.)
4. Middle And Late Childhood
During middle and late childhood, stable self-concepts based on the child’s typical emotional
experiences emerge. With the increased capacity for self-reflection, children gain an
understanding of their self-conscious emotions. As a result, the consistent experience of patterns
of self-conscious emotions has an impact on the child’s self-concept. For example, the tendency
to experience shame rather than guilt in response to negative transgressions affects the child’s
emergent self-esteem and may encourage a tendency to respond with aggression or violence.
Also during middle and late childhood, children begin to understand that a single situation or
event can lead to the experience of multiple, mixed emotions. For example, older children
understand that a goodbye party for a sibling who will leave for college is likely to be both a
happy and a sad event for the child and his sibling. This capacity likely emerges with the
cognitive capacity to understand multiple aspects of a situation, called decentration.Children also
learn emotional display rules as they progress through middle and late childhood. For example, a
child learns to look happy even though she feels upset when a friend or family member gives her
an undesirable gift. The use of display rules tends to increase as children begin to consider what
consequences their actions may have for others. Display rules are used judiciously, and the

4. likelihood of suppressing negative emotion depends on a number of factors, including the child’s
gender, the likely recipients of the expression, the specific context, and the child’s
cultural milieu.
(Denham, S., Blair, K., DeMulder, E., Levitas, J., Sawyer, K., Auerbach-Major, S., et al.
(2003). Preschool emotional competence: Pathway to social competence. Child
Development, 74, 238-256.
5. Adolescence
With adolescence comes an additional struggle for autonomy and increased time spent with peers
and less time spent with the family. Adolescents become less emotionally dependent on their
parents, but this emotional autonomy often emerges after a period of conflict and increased
experience of negative emotions. Young adolescents often experience more negative affect than
younger children, but the negative affect often decreases during the high school years. However,
girls often experience a longer period of elevated negative affect than boys. Adolescents tend to
experience more extreme emotions, both negative and positive, than their parents even in
response to the same event. The rise in negative emotional experiences during early adolescence
emerges in conjunction with the capacity for abstract thinking. Adolescents often experience
emotional distress in response to ambiguous and imagined romantic exchanges, and their
capacity to experience complex and diverse emotions further promotes the development of
abstract thinking. As adolescents grapple with increasingly abstract and complex social
problems, they often seek a stable peer group as the context for emotional management. Positive
peer relationships emerge from the recognition of equality and the tendency to offer emotional
support. Adolescents who are not accepted by their peers face numerous risks, including school
dropout and delinquency. Even adolescents who are accepted by peers and have close friends
often show an increase in negative emotions such as anger and anxiety in the peer context during
adolescence. Overall, positive and supportive peer relations during adolescence promote healthy
emotional development and mental health as the adolescent enters adulthood.
Dating relationships also become prominent during adolescence, but young adolescents may still
have difficulty understanding that one person can evoke different and conflicting emotional

5. responses. Therefore, dating during adolescence is often characterized by extreme emotional
variability. Dating partners are also prone to experiencing jealousy, particularly when they make
errors in determining the intent of their partner’s actions.
(Pollak, S. D., Cicchetti, D., Hornung, K., Reed, A. (2000). Recognizing emotion in
faces: Developmental effects of child abuse and neglect. Developmental Psychology, 36,
679-688.)

6. References
1. Saarni, C., Campos, J., Camras, L., & Witherington, D. (2008). Principles of emotion and
emotional competence. In W. Damon & R. Lerner (Eds.), Child and adolescent
development: An advanced course (pp. 361-405). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
2. Saarni, C. (2008). The interface of emotional development with social context. In M. Lewis,
J. Haviland-Jones & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), The Handbook of Emotions(3rd ed., pp. 332-
347). New York: Guilford Press.
3. Saarni, C. (1999). The development of emotional competence. New York: Guilford Press.
4. Denham, S., Blair, K., DeMulder, E., Levitas, J., Sawyer, K., Auerbach-Major, S., et al.
(2003). Preschool emotional competence: Pathway to social competence. Child
Development, 74, 238-256.
5. Pollak, S. D., Cicchetti, D., Hornung, K., Reed, A. (2000). Recognizing emotion in
faces: Developmental effects of child abuse and neglect. Developmental Psychology, 36,
679-688.