Emotional Development Milestones
As a caregiver, you pay close attention to your child’s developmental milestones.
You have frequent check-ins with their pediatrician to make sure they’re growing. You get excited when they take their first step. You might be worried if they’re not saying as many words as you think they should be by a certain age. But what about their emotional development milestones?
Laura E. Berk highlights many important points in her book, “Exploring Lifespan Development” that I want to dive into in this blog. Emotional development milestones are not discussed as frequently between caregivers, and your pediatrician may overlook checking in to make sure your child has met them all. This often leads to many questions, so today I hope to answer some of them. This also can lead to worries about your child, so I want to remind you that every child meets developmental milestones at a different time. When discussing other types of milestones, we might see that one child might start walking at 8 months, and another at 16 months. Neither of these would be a reason to worry, and in the same vein, children can vary greatly in the age they meet these emotional development milestones.
*Note: With the above being said, if you are worried something is not on track, trust your instincts and reach out to a professional.*
Emotional Development Categories
Below are some of the emotional development categories that will be referred to throughout this blog with some explanations.
Psychological Conflict: Psychologist Erik Erikson said that at each stage of life, there is a psychological conflict we must resolve.
Emotions: Children are not born with the ability to feel and express all the emotions we can as adults. The older they get, the more emotions have developed.
Relational Development: This refers to a type of social development that focuses on the relationships we have with others and how we interact with them.
Self-Regulation: This is the ability of an individual to control their internal emotional experience and return to homeostasis.
Self-Beliefs: This refers to how a child views themself based on external experiences.
Infants
Psychological Conflict: During infancy, the conflict is basic trust versus mistrust. An infant who solves this conflict positively trusts the world so they feel confident in exploring it. An infant who solves this conflict negatively is not able to trust others, so they withdraw from others.
Emotions: One emotion an infant develops is happiness. A social smile refers to an infant smiling because of another person, rather than feeling content with their physical well-being. This first happens between 6 and 10 weeks of age. Around 6 months old, anger and fear increase. The most common type of fear is stranger anxiety, which is when a baby is fearful of people they don’t know. Anger increases because infants gain the ability to do behaviors intentionally.
Relational Development: Once fear has developed, infants use their caregiver as a secure base. This is a person they can return to for emotional support. Around 8 to 10 months of age, infants are also able to look to trusted people in situations where they are wary to determine how they should respond. The caregiver’s emotional expression influences the infant’s. This is called social referencing.
Self-Regulation: Beginning around 3 months, infants are able to begin to self-regulate by looking away from what is causing them distress.
Toddlers
Psychological Conflict: During the toddler years, the conflict is autonomy versus shame and doubt. A toddler who solves this conflict positively is confident in exploration, as they have not been criticized when they’ve failed, and they have a sense of independence as they’ve been given choices. A toddler who solves this conflict negatively feels ashamed and doesn’t believe they can do things independently or control themself.
Emotions: Whereas infants have stranger anxiety, toddlers begin to develop the ability to discriminate between safe and dangerous situations. Toddlers also develop coping skills for fear. Toddlers begin to develop a vocabulary of feeling words, but they are not able to use language to manage their emotions like adults can yet. Research shows that to help your child develop regulation strategies, you can be sympathetic but set limits, offer alternatives, and then when the child is calm, suggest better ways to handle such situations. (See Kaylyn’s blog about setting limits and Natalie’s blog on regulation for more information.) Finally, older toddlers begin to develop empathy, so when others are in distress, they may begin to offer what they personally find comforting.
Self-Beliefs: Toddlers begin to have self-conscious emotions. These emotions shape the way the toddler sees themself. These include shame, guilt, pride, embarrassment, and envy. These emotions are influenced by the adults around them, as different cultures have different views on which situations are embarrassing, worthy of pride, etc.
Preschoolers
Psychological Conflict: For children ages 2 to 6, the conflict is initiative versus guilt. A child who solves this conflict positively has a sense of purpose and will initiate new activities. A child who solves this conflict negatively will have a sense of guilt and not make efforts to try new things.
Self-Beliefs: At this age, self-esteem emerges. Self-esteem is the confidence we have in our own abilities. What kind of judgements does the child make about their own worth? Preschoolers also experience self-conscious emotions such as guilt, shame, or embarrassment. These emotions are linked to self-evaluation. To help mitigate these emotions, comment on how to improve rather than on how they have performed.
Emotions: By 5 years old, children understand the causes of basic emotions and can guess how someone else is feeling based on their behavior. Emotional understanding increases when caregivers label and explain emotions! (Learn more about this in Colleen’s blog on feeling reflections.) Preschoolers are also able to communicate empathic feelings, but empathy (feeling the emotion with the other person) sometimes leads to distress for the child instead of sympathy (concern for the other person).
Self-Regulation: At this age, children are able to use executive functioning skills, such as inhibition, to regulate themselves. Their growing language and emotional understanding also increases regulation. Here are some ways you might see your child self-regulating at this age: (1) restricting sensory input by covering their eyes or ears, (2) talking to themselves with reassurance, (3) changing their goal and deciding they want to do something else, (4) repairing the situation.
Elementary School
Psychological Conflict: During elementary school, the conflict is industry versus inferiority. A child who solves this conflict positively has a sense of competence. A child who solves this conflict negatively lacks confidence in their skill set and feels inferior in their ability to complete tasks.
Self-Beliefs: For elementary school-aged children, self-concept develops to include psychological traits and social comparisons (judgments of what they're like compared to peers). This development of self-concept affects their self-esteem. Self-esteem at this age is high but continues to become more realistic. Also at this age, children base their self-esteem on 4 categories: academic competence, social competence, physical/athletic competence, and physical appearance. These categories of self-esteem are influenced by culture, gender, ethnicity, child-rearing practices, and achievement-related attributions. Achievement-related attributions refer to mastery-oriented attributions (when a child credits their success to their ability and their failures to factors that can be changed) or learned helplessness (when a child credits their failures to their ability). When praising your child, focus on behavior and effort, as this encourages mastery-oriented attributions. On the other hand, praise that focuses on abilities that cannot be changed encourages learned helplessness. (Learn more about this in Ben’s blog on praise.) Children this age also experience pride, which can act as a motivator. Other emotions, such as guilt, that were experienced at earlier ages, are experienced even in the absence of adults.
Emotions: Children this age are able to describe emotions by explaining their internal state and thoughts. They are also aware of situations that make them feel mixed emotions. They also learn that someone's expression isn't always true to their feelings.
Self-Regulation: By age 10, kids have developed two ways to self-regulate: problem-centered coping and emotion-centered coping. In problem-centered coping, they believe the situation can be changed, so make a decision on what to do about it. When it cannot be changed, kids use emotion-centered coping, which is where the child focuses on controlling distress.
Adolescents
Psychological Conflict: During the adolescent years, the conflict is identity versus role confusion. An adolescent who solves this conflict positively follows a process of exploration which ends in commitment to a certain identity. In adulthood, they can make small changes to their identity as they reconsider earlier commitments and choices. Positively solving this conflict leads to what is called identity achievement, but there are 3 other identity statuses. Identity achievement means the individual has explored various identities and chosen one. Identity moratorium means they are exploring identities, but are delaying making a commitment. Identity foreclosure means they have committed to one single identity without exploring others. Identity diffusion refers to individuals who have not chosen an identity and they are not exploring any.
Self-Beliefs: Because of their brain development, adolescents begin to describe themselves with more context. For example, they're aware of changes depending on the situation: they are talkative around friends but maybe not family. They also describe themselves in context to others: they have a fairly quick temper. As they relate to others, they find social virtues to be more important: being friendly or cooperative. Whereas younger kids base their self-esteem off of 4 categories (academic competence, social competence, physical/athletic competence, and physical appearance), adolescents add new categories to this list: close friendship, romantic appeal, and job competence. In general, teens experience a rise in self-esteem from mid to late adolescence because of these categories: close friendship, physical appearance, and athletic competence.
And remember…
As child therapists, our team is here to support your family. We are able to help you as a caregiver understand your child’s emotional development, as well as meet your child where they’re at in regard to emotional development. If you’re not sure which kind of professional is the right choice to help your child, check out Kate’s blog on the topic here.
References:
Exploring Lifespan Development by Laura E. Berk
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WRITTEN BY RACHEL ESPARZA, LPC ASSOCIATE (SHE/HER/HERS)
Rachel Esparza is a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate supervised by Jaclyn N. Sepp, MA, LPC-S, RPT-S™, NCC, RYT® 200. Rachel is also working towards her Registered Play Therapist™ (RPT™) credential. At Texas State University, Rachel earned her Master’s degree in Professional Counseling (CACREP Accredited Program) and her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. She has experience working with children, adolescents, young adults, and families in community counseling settings.
