“Social and Emotional Development in Early Intervention: A Skills Guide for Working with Children”— Thoughts for Caregivers
Since in-person continuing education isn’t possible at the moment and I can’t watch another webinar (seriously, I can’t be the only one), I started reading this summer to expand upon my provider toolbox.
Though I’m not a psychologist, social worker, or mental health provider, I do get asked about social and emotional development by almost every client that I meet. And while yes, I’m the expert on social communication, I’m not the expert on mental health or social and emotional development.
So, I decided to read “Social and Emotional Development in Early Intervention: A Skills Gide for Working with Children” by Mona Delahooke, PhD.
I found the book to be a good overview of social emotional development, with concrete suggestions on how to apply frameworks to individual families and within my practice as a Speech Language Pathologist.
For all the caregivers reading this blog, I found Chapter 5 “Building the House of Social and Emotional Development” to be a complete yet simple framework for looking at how children develop social and emotional capacities. I often use the analogy of the “foundation of the house” being social/emotional development; however, I think Dr. Delahooke’s more complete “house” analogy would be helpful for caregivers to better understand how children move through the stages.
Dr. Delahooke notes that children move through each of the 6 phases at different times, and it is possible that they will not move through all the phases in a linear fashion. I think this is really insightful for caregivers in thinking about areas that may need more (or less) attention.
The quick breakdown of the “House of Social and Emotional Development” as noted by the “key supports” for each step (can be found on pages 73-96):
Foundation (Regulation and Attention)—Support each individual child’s ability to regularly experience a calm alert state (p. 76).
Framing (Engagement and Relating)—Prioritize warmth, engagement, and joyful interactions with all caregivers and professionals working with the child (p. 79).
Electrical Wiring (Purposeful Emotional Interactions)—Use the child’s natural interests, abilities, and motivations as a guide to creatively expand the child’s ability to engage in multiple turn taking interactions (p. 83).
Rooms of the House (Shared Social Problem Solving)—Help the child use their available capacities to express ideas, emotions , needs, and desires with others (p. 88).
Decorating the House (Creating Symbols and Using Words and Ideas)—Play and interact with the child to inspire their own ideas, creativity, and imagination beyond concrete problem solving (p. 91).
Driveway (Emotional Thinking and Bridging Ideas)—Help the child connect emotions, ideas, and thoughts through play or other meaningful interactions (p. 92).
So as you can see, prioritizing relationships is quite important for overall development, and that includes communication. If children don’t understand why they might want to talk to you, why would they bother? In this particular framework, verbal communication isn’t even mentioned until Step 5! And as a professional working in the field, I’d say this is something I’m consistently discussing with my clients.
Although, yes, the initial race will be towards verbal communication for many of my clients, know that communication happens even without words. Taking turns with toys, pointing to an interesting picture in a book, and your little one taking your face in their hands to turn it towards the TV are all examples of communication, just not with words.
And to back it up even further, if a child isn't regulated, what would they have to communicate to you?! I’ve been there, with a screaming child, and their caregiver and I don’t even now why they’re mad. But the caregiver keeps trying to ask them “why” or get them to show, or worse, tell them what they want. Often the caregiver expresses frustration to me to the tune of “But she can say…apple/banana/car/truck/etc” why can’t she tell me now? Simple, she’s not regulated. She can’t access her words/signs/gestures (that she probably does have) because emotionally, she’s unavailable. So, back we go to Step 1. We need to get that child regulated and calm before I’d expect ANY communication.
So, truly, especially for our youngest children, relating, engaging, and having fun experiences is teaching your child so much. It doesn’t always have to look like “therapy” and you don’t need special toys and games. But you do need to work on building the House of Social and Emotional Development together so that your child can learn how to relate to others, eventually leading to communication (of any kind).
If you’re looking for information on Dr. Delahooke, you can find her website here.
And here is an Amazon link to the above mentioned book.