Social and Emotional Development

Children show developing understanding that others are both distinct from and connected to themselves, attending to physical characteristics (for example, facial features) that are associated with race, ethnicity, and gender.

Children demonstrate awareness of their own features and express themselves as distinct persons with characteristics, thoughts, and feelings. Children also demonstrate awareness of others’ behaviors, responses, and characteristics within their developing relationships with caregivers.

Children identify their feelings, needs, and interests and sometimes identify themselves and others as members of one or more groups by referring to social categories (for example, race, ethnicity, gender) or cultural practices.

Children show an understanding that they are able to make things happen.

Children experiment with different ways of making things happen, persist in trying to do things even when faced with difficulty, and show a sense of satisfaction with what they can do.

Children show an understanding of their own abilities to make things happen and sometimes refer to those abilities when describing themselves.

Children express a variety of primary emotions such as contentment, joy, sadness, interest, surprise, disgust, anger, and fear in response to different experiences.

Children express emotions in clear and intentional ways and express some secondary emotions, such as pride, through a variety of behaviors.

Children express secondary, self-conscious emotions such as pride, embarrassment, shame, and guilt. Children demonstrate awareness of their feelings by communicating words or gestures to describe feelings to others or acting them out in pretend play.

Children use simple self-soothing behaviors to comfort themselves. Children often need help managing their emotions and behavior and show emerging ability to communicate the need for help with discomfort or distress.

Children demonstrate a variety of ways either to comfort themselves or to avoid or ignore situations that cause discomfort. Children require support with managing strong emotions and are responsive to choices and expectations set by caregivers. Children also communicate feelings and wants through words and gestures.

Children anticipate the need for comfort and try to prepare themselves for transitions. Children sometimes manage behaviors and emotions with little or no caregiver support. Children show many self-comforting behaviors, depending on the situation, and communicate specific feelings.

Children show interest in objects that familiar people are attending to or actions that familiar people are doing. Children sometimes demonstrate understanding of how to get other people’s attention, engage in back-and-forth interactions with others, and imitate the simple actions or facial expressions of others.

Children demonstrate knowing how to get familiar people to respond in a specific way through gestures, vocalizations, and shared attention; use another’s social cues to guide their own responses to events; and demonstrate learning how to interact with familiar people in more complex and prosocial ways (for example, helping and hindering actions) through imitation and observation.

Children sometimes communicate about their own needs, feelings, and intentions as well as those of other people and engage with others in more extended interactions and common activities (for example, goal-oriented activities, conversations). As part of understanding others’ needs, children also express an interest in how others are treated as well as how resources are being distributed and used (for example, taking turns).

Children demonstrate awareness of others’ feelings by mirroring or reacting to their emotional expressions.

Children change their behavior in response to the feelings of others even though their actions may not always make the other person feel better. Children show an increased understanding of the reason for another’s feelings and have emotional responses based on others’ emotional experiences (for example, become distressed by the other’s distress).

Children show an understanding that other people have feelings that are different from their own. Children show concern for others and sometimes respond to other people’s emotional needs in a way that might make that person feel better.

Children purposefully engage in reciprocal interactions and follow the gaze of a familiar person (for example, care educator) to an object or person. Children are both interested in and cautious of unfamiliar people.

Children participate in routines and complex back-and-forth interactions and engage familiar people intentionally to receive help with meeting their needs. Children continue to show interest in unfamiliar people, and gradually interact with them in the presence of a familiar person. Children also check with a familiar person when uncertain about something or someone.

Children interact with familiar and unfamiliar people to play, solve problems, or communicate about experiences or ideas.

Children show interest in familiar and unfamiliar peers. Children stare at other children, explore other children’s faces and bodies, or respond to siblings and older peers.

Children engage in simple back-and-forth interactions with peers for short periods of time.

Children engage in simple cooperative play with peers around a shared goal or a shared activity.

Children initiate interactions and seek proximity with familiar caregivers with whom they have developed an attachment relationship (attachment figures).

Children explore the environment in the presence of attachment figures. Children prefer people they trust to provide comfort. When distressed, children often seek to be physically close to attachment figures.

When exploring the environment, children occasionally reconnect with attachment figures (for example, through eye contact, facial expressions, and shared attention through conversations about shared feelings, activities, or plans). When distressed, children may seek to be physically close to these caregivers.

Children show interest in other children’s actions, feelings, and interests.

Children prefer to interact with one or two familiar children in a shared space and engage more frequently in the same kind of back-and-forth play when interacting with those children.

Children prefer to interact with the same small number of children in the group and engage in more complex play with those children than with other peers (for example, extended pretend play with roles, games with movement).