Question
How can I promote cognitive and social-emotional skills in infants and toddlers?
Answer
Routines
Take a moment to make a list of your classroom routines. How do these routines support the child's cognitive and social-emotional development? Think about how your routines provide a stable, nurturing environment and predictability. Routines really are important because we are creatures of habit. When you remember back in being in school, you probably always sat in the same seat or close to the same seat. Somehow, that sort of that predictability and those routines help the brain stay in a resting state.
Think about rolling hills, where you go up a slope and then go slowly back down, then go back up and slowly go down. We want the brain to stay in that stable smooth ups and downs. That allows the children to have some learning and then let the brain relax into a state of what we would call homeostasis of relaxation. Then it goes up with some new novel learning, and then it goes down. This allows the brain to become hardwired into what we call smooth patterns. Children rely on routines. They allow the brain to stay in that calm state. Think about if you're in a situation where you're meeting someone new and you are kind of anxious or uncertain. Your anxiety goes up and the brain goes up a higher, steeper peak, and then maybe you see someone you know and it comes down. We want the brain to stay in this calm state and not do these really high peaks of chaos or toxicity.
Routines are enjoyable and provide security to children. Young children assume routines and they provide structure and ease in the transition between home and group care. Routines for infants should consistently occur at arrival, eating, diapering, napping, hand washing, teeth brushing, outdoor time, and departure. Routines for toddlers should occur at arrival, circle time or storytime, free choice time, cleanup, snack or mealtime, outdoor time, diapering or toileting, napping, hand washing, teeth brushing, and departure. Routines diminish feelings of anxiety and help children feel calm and relaxed which is optimal for children's social-emotional and cognitive development.
Building Resiliency
Building resiliency is part of a secondary gain from social-emotional skills. Resiliency is the ability to adapt to and survive difficult circumstances. It's a blend of many social-emotional skills. Resiliency develops during a child's lifetime as they learn to adapt to changes and challenges in their life. Remember, the routines you have in place help the child get back to that calm state. Resiliency is an important social-emotional skill for children to develop. The more securely attached a child is, the more apt they are going to be resilient to changes. Predictability, stable environments, and consistent caregiving all help children form that resiliency.
Secure attachment and feelings of trust established in infancy and toddlerhood help to foster resiliency throughout life. Signs of resiliency include autonomy, the skill that we've talked about, self-esteem, confidence, flexibility, increased ability to communicate their needs, resourcefulness, imagination, caring, and empathy. When we build these social-emotional skills in children we are building resilient children who don't crumble and are able to adapt and modify during change. They've got confidence. That's what we're really looking at because those are the kind of children who develop good preschool skills and young adult skills that last a lifetime.
Social Rules
Social rules are an important part of promoting cognitive and social-emotional skills. Some social rules are universally accepted such as please and thank you. Others are seen as common courtesies or politeness such as sharing, not harming other children's work, and not hitting or biting. What are your classroom rules, sometimes called expectations? The class expectations should be limited for our toddlers to no more than three, and they should be positive and developmentally appropriate. That's important to remember. Some expectations or rules can be used in a two-year-old classroom because children have acquired receptive language, but infants are too young for these. I would keep them simple and use pictures to support children. Real pictures are more valuable to children's learning than cartoon or line drawings of the gesture or expectation.
Thinking forward to when children get older, preschool expectations that are positive and developmentally appropriate include be kind to others, keep your hands and feet to yourself, and ask the teacher for help. As their language develops they are able to ask teachers for help which helps increase their sense of self and self-identity. This helps them become more attuned to who they are as individuals.
Curricular ideas for caregivers include promoting language through reading, singing, and talking. This helps children develop their social-emotional vocabulary, mental representation, spatial awareness, and mathematical awareness. Promote concept building through intentional planning and interactions. For concept building, you might have a table or area of your classroom focusing on one thing. For example, you might have children look at containers or boxes that have tops on them. The concept here is that there's a bottom and a top. The next week you might change it so there are all really small objects and the next week have big objects. Then children can learn big and little. The next week you might combine big and small objects together. I have seen classrooms that have an area that has a small, plastic zebra and a big zebra as well as a little baby cow and a bigger momma cow. All of these help to promote the concept of big and little.
Another concept table that you might have is of things that are rough. Find and collect things that have a rough, tactile surface. Then the next week, you might have some things that are shiny. Another example is things that fit inside another box or things that stack. These activities help children really conceptualize different ideas. You're there following up with vocabulary and scaffolding their learning. Then they'll take these things back into their own play, but you're beginning to help them develop those big concepts. You can support them by tieing the concepts to books and singing and adding language to help them with the hands-on play experiences. When planning ideas for the classroom, follow children's natural curiosity and interests. Engage in the play experience with children.
Integrate social-emotional skills as you read, sing, and talk to children throughout the day. Let children sit in your lap while reading, singing, or talking. This provides warmth and comfort that helps stimulate the brain as well.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Exploring Cognitive and Social-Emotional Development of Infants and Toddlers, presented by Jean Barbre, EdD.
