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Emotional development in preschoolers

Between the ages of three and six, all young children go through the process of starting to learn how to cope with the emotions they feel. During this time, children develop coping strategies that may last a lifetime.

Between the ages of three and five years, children’s emotional responses become increasingly complex. This is influenced by their cognitive awareness of their social and cultural environment.

Preschoolers spend a lot of time figuring out the roles they are expected to play in their world. They learn how to be themselves, how to know themselves and how to interact with others. They learn to control extremes of emotions and how to express themselves through many different media.

Preschoolers will experience strong feelings as they develop a sense of personal identity. They start to learn how to handle a wide range of feelings. They then start to learn the socially acceptable way of expressing these feelings.

We need to remember that what is socially acceptable in one culture may not be socially acceptable in another.

Preschoolers learn that some feelings are good feelings. These can include happiness, excitement, affection and sensuality. They also learn that other feelings such as anger, jealousy, fear and anxiety do not feel so good.

The biggest change in terms of expressing emotions and feelings is that preschoolers now are learning to use words to describe how they feel. As carers we sometimes need to help these children find the words to describe how they are feeling.

By helping children to talk about how they feel we will reassure them that it is OK to feel positive emotions such as joy and excitement and more negative emotions such as anger, sadness and jealousy. It is OK to feel all these emotions—we all do from time to time. We must help them find socially acceptable ways of expressing their feelings.

Children need to be reassured that all kinds of emotions are acceptable and normal. Children especially need to be reassured that feeling angry or jealous or whatever does not make them bad people.

As well as learning to verbally express their emotions, children also need to be guided in learning socially acceptable ways of releasing emotions.

Encourage children to release their feelings through play, for example:

water play will relax and soothe

hammering will release anger and jealousy

physical exercise will help to release feelings of anger and aggression

creative play such as drawing and painting can help fears and anxieties

dramatic and pretend play can help children cope with fears and anxieties

talking about their feelings during play will help them to understand themselves and others.

Self-concept in preschoolers

The development of body awareness helps form a beginning self-concept in infancy and toddlerhood.

Below are the kinds of awareness preschoolers develop:

They are aware of themselves as individuals and start to compare their characteristics and abilities to those of others. They start to describe themselves as good at craft or as being tall or, maybe, as the only person with red hair at preschool.

They begin to be aware of what skills and behaviours are valued by their family and their social group. For example, if a child’s family plays a lot of sport, the child will be very pleased with herself as she develops skills of kicking, throwing or batting.

How we think and feel about ourselves is important. Much of how we think and feel is related to the feedback we receive from significant others in our world. If the feedback is positive and our characteristics, skills and abilities are valued, we will develop positive self-esteem.

We need to understand that preschoolers listen very closely to what others have to say about them. They are also clever at reading body language and very quickly interpret a gesture of disappointment or pleasure. As carers of preschoolers, we need to be very careful what we say about them in front of them and indeed behind their backs!

None of us will ever have an entirely positive or negative self-concept. It is more likely to reflect recent experiences and our current physical state. What we do know is that when we are happy we are more likely to approach tasks in a positive way and are more likely to succeed. When miserable, we tend to be reluctant to try new things and are more likely to experience a sense of failure. This is as true for preschoolers as it is for us as adults.

Perhaps one of the strongest indicators of positive self-esteem is the ability to take negative experiences and learn from them and develop some resilience. If we have low self-esteem, the negative experiences will strengthen those feelings of low self-worth and impair our ability to learn and grow.

Developing initiative in preschoolers

As preschool children grow physically and their cognitive abilities mature, they develop an increasing sense of their own ability to make things happen. Preschool children delight in their own ability to figure things out. They learn to plan and to carry out these plans.

By the time children reach four years of age, they can formulate a plan of action and carry it through. During the preschool stage children (if caregivers encourage it) develop initiative—the sense that their own ideas and schemes are valued and encouraged.

Encouraging initiative in preschoolers

What can a caregiver do to encourage initiative in preschool children, while still letting them know they can’t do certain things (for example, take a sharp knife from the kitchen and use it for cutting up things)?

Ask children to suggest activities that could be included within the program.

Treat children’s ideas and suggestions seriously: do not dismiss them with ridicule or laugh at them.

If children’s ideas are unacceptable (for example, flooding the playground with water to make a lake), discuss alternatives that are socially acceptable.

Children will develop guilt and shame if:

they are continually punished for initiating and carrying out plans

their ideas are rejected out of hand, or laughed at or ridiculed or ignored.

If displays of initiative lead to punishment, rejection and guilt, then children will stop making plans and suggesting ideas and direct their energies into being obedient and conforming to avoid feeling guilty.

For example, a group of children want to make a cubby. They drag some mats and boxes together and start to build. There is great energy and excitement as children discuss and share ideas of what should go where.

A caregiver can respond in a positive way to the cubby building activity by suggesting materials to use, suggesting a number of locations that are out of the way of other children’s activities so the children plan and build within the limits. The result is that the children feel successful.

A carer can respond in a negative way with statements such as:

‘You can’t use that mat.’

‘It’s no good building it there.’

‘It’s nearly pack-up time so you can’t start a cubby now.’

The result here is that the children feel naughty and guilty about their ideas and activities.

Preschoolers—fears

One characteristic of preschooler’s thinking is that they have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy, and their imagination is growing rapidly! This can lead them to have a fear of the dark, fears about monsters or ghosts or they can be frightened by costumes or an adult pretending to be a lion — even if the lion is the friendly ‘Paddle pop’ promoting the famous ice-creams.

Preschoolers also fear being separated from their parents or being abandoned in some way. They may experience nightmares that are either related to some scary television program, story or something they have overheard.

We need to avoid talking carelessly in front of children about such things as fires and burglars. It really is important to accept and acknowledge preschoolers’ fears as real.

Sometimes children can pick up on the fears of adults. For instance, if a parent is afraid of spiders, their anxiety can cause the preschooler to become even more afraid of spiders.

We also need to monitor their television viewing so that they are not exposed to scary programs. This includes the nightly news.

Pre-schoolers—aggression

As we learnt earlier, preschoolers are now more aware of having really strong feelings. Some of these feelings make them feel good, others not so good. Sometimes when preschoolers are experiencing the negative feelings of anger and frustration, they behave aggressively.

Aggression is violent and destructive behaviour that is directed towards other people and things in the environment. Aggressive behaviour includes biting, punching, spitting, kicking, screaming, temper tantrums, snatching and grabbing, pushing hard, breaking and destroying things. It also includes verbal aggression. Older preschoolers are more likely to be more verbally-aggressive than younger preschoolers.

When a preschooler starts being aggressive, your first priority is to try and stop the aggressive behaviour immediately and then help support the child in developing ways of releasing those strong feelings in a more socially acceptable way. This, of course, is much more difficult than it sounds.

During an aggressive episode, it is important to try and remain calm. If the is also out of control, it’ll make the situation worse. At times it may be necessary to restrain a child if they a re hurting themselves or someone else. You need to be firm but calm when you are doing this.

It may be possible to redirect the child who is being aggressive to another activity and perhaps find him something to do that will allow him to release those feelings. This could be a physical activity; it could be a water play or painting activity. Remember the golden rule: the concern is always the behaviour, not the child!

Moral development during the preschool years

Moral development is about how children learn to decide whether a behaviour is right or wrong. Children under two do not understand the concept of a behaviour being right or wrong. It is no good appealing to a two-year-old to ‘do the right thing’.

After about two years of age, children start to learn that specific behaviours are wrong and you might hear them saying out loud, ‘No, no, no’ while they are doing what they shouldn’t do. Knowing that a particular behaviour is wrong won’t necessarily stop the child from doing it. Caregivers must be realistic about young children’s understanding of right and wrong.

During the preschool stage, children begin to develop a conscience and experience uncomfortable guilt feelings if they do something they know is wrong. However, at this stage, moral standards are inconsistent and will change from one situation to the next. Children will apply the standard to other children’s behaviour but not their own. Children will apply the rule in one particular situation but not in other similar situations.

For example, young children know that you can’t take lollies and eat them when the lollies belong to someone else, but that doesn’t mean that they understand that stealing is wrong. They might think it is alright to take someone else’s toy to play with, for example.

Even though children know a particular behaviour is wrong, they may forget, or they may not always heed the rule. Young children operate in the present and are unable to foresee the consequences of their behaviour. They are egocentric (unable to see situations from another’s point of view) and so often the urge to meet their own need at a particular time is greater than their feelings of guilt. With greater cognitive maturity, experience and the development of altruism, preschool children gradually develop greater understanding of what is right and wrong and will apply this in more and more situations.

Children face moral problems in day-to-day situations. They have to work out fair ways of sharing things. They have to decide whether to tell on another child who has broken a rule. They have to decide whether or not to steal the chocolate another child had put down for eating later. Children have to learn what is right and what is wrong and they have to learn to resist temptations. This takes time, experience and maturity.

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