Emotion development refers to a child's increasing awareness and control of their feelings and how they react to these feelings in a given situation. Emotional development should be started at an early age as soon as children start nursery and pre-school so that their interaction with others will help develop them in both social and intellectual ways. Emotional development and intellectual development normally go hand in hand to help the child develop socially because it is the interaction amongst both children and adults that creates a healthy emotional state. Piaget determined that children, in their emotional development, pass through four distinct stages, each with several sub-stages. Each stage has a different type of thinking and reasoning, as well as a different skill set, associated with it.
Infant Emotional Development – In Piaget model the sensory motor stage is the first stage of emotional development in infants from birth to one and a half years. At this time infants will react to movement and their action are largely reflexive. Babies in the stage are beginning to learn and understand their own muscle movements and their surrounding by exploring their world. Piaget also discovered that children at this age lack "object permanence." What this mean is that if an object is move from the babies’ sights they do not comprehend that the object still exist. The sensory motor stage for babies means, out of sight out of mind. Babies show their first emotion though facial expressions. In modern studies babies can actually feel and understand more than we can imagine. An infant emotional development is built on the foundation of how the child will relate to other later in life. There are six emotional expressions for infants and they are: * Surprise * Anger * Sadness * Disgust * Fear * Happiness
These emotional expressions are distinguished though contraction of different facial muscles. Infants develop the facial expression to go with these emotions in about six months.
Infant communicate their needs to their parents or caretaker is though emotions. Infants recognize their parent voice tone and facial expressions and the parent in return learn to understand what the infant is conveying by crying, screaming, or smiling.
Toddlers Emotional Development – Pre-operational stage is also call the presentational stage, this stage begins between the ages of 18 months to two-years-old and last to about seven according to Piaget theories of emotional development. At this time children are beginning to gain an understanding and control of language. Children at this age understand their world only from their own point of view. About the end of pre-operational stage children begin to see things from different perspectives. An important stage in a toddler’s life is the growth and development. Toddlers between the ages of 12 to 36 months develop emotionally, even when a toddler throws a tantrum this is an emotion. When a toddler throws a tantrum this is the stage where the toddler shows independents, this starts around 18 months. Toddler will begin showing basic feeling using gestures and crying. You can say that a toddler emotional development make him self-centered and possessive as he establish their personal identity.
Elementary Emotional Development - Elementary children emotions come from experience. Here are some emotions the elementary children experience during developing:
