Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education

Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26

Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND SUGGESTIVE DEVELOPMENTALLY

APPROPRIATE PRACTICES FOR BIRTH TO THREE YEARS - PART 2

(SOCIO-EMOTIONAL AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT)

1. INTRODUCTION

“The true direction of the development of thinking is not from the individual to the social,
but from the social to the individual” – Lev Vygotsky
As the above saying goes it is a well known fact that the desire to be connected with
people around is inborn in children. Therefore it is very important parents, care givers,
teachers or other adults who are around children must establish secure, positive
relationships right from birth, which will in turn satisfy the innate need for the child to be
socially connected. Uri Bronfrenbrenner in his ecological system theory also stresses on
the fact that the social environment of the child shapes the child and the moulds the
child’s social and emotional development.

Erikson’s theory of psycho social development also helps in understanding the

milestones of psycho social development of children. Erikson opines that the child has
to be given opportunity to satisfy the social needs or the repercussions will be a child
with very low socio emotional development. Language is a very important for
communication, and the foundation for appropriate language development be laid if the
socio emotional developmental needs of the child has been met.

As suggested in the previous module is it very important for the parent and the
caregiver to have a knowledge of the developmental milestones which will help in
minimizing far too many expectations from the child and helping the child in achieving
the developmental milestones. In this module let’s understand the socio emotional and
language developmental milestones and developmentally appropriate practices to help
a child achieve it.

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
 To understand the developmental milestones of socio emotional and language
from 0-3 years.
 To gain knowledge of the developmentally appropriate practices involved for the
same.
 To apply the knowledge gain to real life situations.

3. WHAT IS SOCIO EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT?

Socio emotional development involves the child being able to express experience and
manage emotions as well as the capacity to establish positive and reciprocate
relationships they form with others. Socio emotional includes the use of both intra and
interpersonal skills required to sustain in a society. Socio emotional development also
means able to interact socially, being aware of one’s emotions and being able to
regulate oneself.

3.1 IMPORTANCE OF SOCIO EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

 Research has proved that positive relationships formed at the early stage
can lead to a healthy brain development.
 Positive socio emotional development can lead to success in school life
and academic performance.
 Children will learn to get along with others.
 Will be able to form better relationship.
 Will be able to identify one’s emotions and also will know to react to
emotions of others.

3.2 SOCIO EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES FROM 0-1 YEARS

Right from birth babies are trying to learn who they are by the way they are
treated by adults. The 1st year of birth is extremely important in shaping the

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

social skills of the baby. Let’s take a look at the developmental milestones
and the appropriate practices that can enhance the development in detail.

3.2.1 MILESTONES FROM BIRTH TO 3 MONTHS

 Most of the feelings are expressed by crying.
 Watches a face with great interest.
 Enjoy being touched and cuddled.
 Slowly begins to smile and recognize parents.
 Eyes follow the parent.
 Is pacified by familiar voice or touch.
 Social smile is stronger.
 Attachment with the parents is very strong.

Developmentally appropriate practices

 Having a loving relationship and being responsive to the baby.

 Keep talking to the baby during their waking hours.
 Cuddling, feeding, changing nappies are a way of getting social as well
emotionally satisfying.
 Having a positive family atmosphere.
 Building a sense of trust in the baby, will lead to the development of positive self
esteem as they grow.
 Respond to the emotions of the baby.
 Talking all the time while dressing, bathing, feeding will lead to more effective
attachment.
 Explaining to the baby like “mama is putting a green colour shirt! See how
colourful it”, conversations like these helps in building better bonds with
caregivers.

3.2.2 MILESTONES FROM 3-6 MONTHS

 Smiles appear spontaneously when around people.
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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

 Waving arms and legs is a way of showing excitement.

 Enjoys playing with adults and can even imitate certain expressions.
 Slowly by 6 months can distinguish between strangers and known people. Smiles
only at familiar people.
 Enjoys looking at the mirror.
 Can respond to emotions of others and can show happiness or sadness.
 Will be able to respond to own name.

Developmentally appropriate practices

 Playing peek-a-boo is very common.

 Applauding at the child’s little achievements.
 Play interactive games with the child’s favourite toys.
 Introduce mirrors. The adult and the baby can together look into the mirror and
play with expressions or talk to the reflection.
 Keep introducing the child to other family members like aunts, uncles and
cousins.
 Take the baby to the park, as that can be a place of interaction with different age
groups.
 Introduce books and music that reflects the respective cultures.
 Physical contact with the child as much as possible is very important for
emotional development.
 Allow the child to explore. Restricting with bring a sense of mistrust (basic trust
verses mistrust; Erikson’s theory)

3.2.3 MILESTONES FROM 6-9 MONTHS

 Shows signs of separation anxiety
 Will be very clingy to familiar adults
 May become attached to specific toys.
 Can understand when said ‘no’.

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

 Able to imitate sounds and gestures and uses gestures to communicate needs
and wants.
 Crying as a form of expression takes back seat as other expression like anger,
sad, irritability, joyfulness are also expressed.
 In short children as socially interactive can play simple games.

Developmentally appropriate practices

 To overcome separation anxiety, make the child feel safe with others. Be along
with the caregiver or other adults for some days. Slowly start by not being around
for half an hour, then one hour and so on.
 Never break routine, if there is a necessity to break the routine, do it at a slow
pace.
 Play simple games like rolling the ball, and keep conversing, encourage the child.
 Set certain limits to the child. The child must gain an understanding that
everything is not accessible.
 Play expression games with the child.

3.2.4 MILESTONES FROM 9-12 MONTHS.

 Shows fear in new situations or surroundings.
 Seeks attention by repeating actions or sounds.
 Can follow one or two words of direction like “come here”, “no”.
 Child would prefer to be independent and may resist a caregiver help as well.
 Child will be involved in solitary play.

Developmentally appropriate practices

 Prepare the child mentally if the child has to be taken to a new surrounding.
 Start playing games which has a 2-3 words instructions. ‘ball catch’, ‘mama
where’ and so on.
 Start encouraging the child to do things independently.
 Putting toys back, learning to wear cap or pants.

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

 Allow the child explore things around.

 Make toys and other child safe items accessible to the child, which the child
can use to involve in solitary play.
 Repeat the actions and sounds the child does. It makes the child feel proud that
an adult is copying its actions.

3.2.5 MILESTONES FROM 1-2 YEARS

 This stage is also known as the “terrible two’s “.
 Child may exhibit behaviours like being willful, stubborn and throwing tantrums.
 Exploring the environment independently.
 Symbolic play and imitation are prominently observed.
 Child can be seen involved in parallel play too.

Developmentally appropriate practices

 This is the time to introduce the child to other children of same age.
 Parallel play automatically sets in when the child is with its peers.
 Give importance to symbolic play.
 Encourage to child to imitate. Simple imitation tasks like cooking, dressing up
the doll can be played.
 Following simple sentences is easy at this stage. Hence involve the child in a
simple treasure hunt games, hide and seek, instruction based activity and so
on.
 Give a lot of importance to allowing the child to be independent. Allow the
child to choose dresses to wear, choosing games, and going around
exploring.

3.2.6 MILESTONES FROM 2-3 YEARS

 Feeling empathetic towards others.

 Can differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’.
 Feeling of pride, embarrassment, independence is more prominently seen.

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

 Child is capable of showing wide range of emotions.

 Role play, cooperative play is observed.
 Change of routine can cause uneasiness.
 Helping in simple household tasks causes pleasure.
 Being in the world of fantasy, having imaginary friends are very common at this
stage.
 Seeks attention of adult and striving to please the adult.
 Strange anxiety and separation anxiety is reduced.
 Understanding about the concept of privacy is very minimal.
 Sense of self is based on what others tell about the child.
 Ability to control emotions is increasing and outbursts are reduced.
 Very curious and self directed.

Developmentally appropriate practices

 Encourage the child to be empathetic.

 If another child is crying, ask your child to go and stand next to the child and pat
the back. The adults can act out also saying ‘My head is aching, will you please
stroke my forehead’. All these simple acts can help in enhancing empathy in
children.
 Appreciate the child for all the work he/she does and also reprimand behaviours
that are not appropriate. Never tell a child you are ‘Bad’ directly.
 Start helping the child in learning to express and control emotions as well.
Encourage the child to express emotions verbally.
 Have smilies flash cards, and everyday play a game of picking one smilie card,
which expresses the child’s feeling at that time.
 Cooperative play sets in, therefore the child must be prepared to handle wins and
defeats.
 Play games with the child, where sometimes you knowing win and loose. Never
give in to temper tantrums a child shows when they loose any game. Follow this

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

everyday without breaking the routine. The child must understand that throwing
tantrums will not help in winning and getting anything.
 There is no need to panic if the child has imaginary friends.
 Curiosity and questioning sets in.
 Make small changes once in a while to arouse curiosity of the child.
 Allow the child to make mistakes and learn from it.
 Keep praising and appreciating the child. The child will do the same for others.
 Teaching good manners like saying ‘sorry, thankyou and please’, helps in the
social development process.

Socio emotional development is very important part of all the developmental areas. As
Vygotsky believed that effective learning is observed when child is in interaction with the
social world and the adult acts as a guide or a scaffold to help children achieve things,
which will help in making them feel confident and strong. Socio emotional development
is very important to survive in the outside world

4. WHAT IS LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT?

The process of language development starts at a very early stage of human life. The
cooing, babbling at the early stages of life are a part of the language development
process. Language is very important for communication. So young babies start
communicating in their own way to get their needs attended. The famous theorist Noam
Chomsky opines that human are born with language acquisition devices (LAD) that is
biologically every human being had the ability to understand language, but nurture also
plays an important role in achieving language development. Research also has proved
that the foetus responds to the voices around and especially the mother and the father,
hence assuring the fact that the capacity to learn language is in born. In contrast to
Chomsky’s views, Vygotsky theorized that language develops from social interaction
and is the greatest tool for communication. According to Vygotsky, language remains as
silent inner speech at birth, then gradually transforms to private speech and finally
blooms into social speech. There are various views of language development with both
nature and nurture playing an equally important role.

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

 Language is the most important tool for communication.

 Language development is a very important part of the social skills that the
child had to acquire.
 Language helps a child to effectively communicate and relate to others.
 Delay in language development can lead to frustration, low confidence and
poor communication skills in a child.

4.1 DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES FROM 0-1 YEAR

 During the first three months baby reacts to loud noises and cries.
 Stares at faces, smiles and makes cooing sounds.
 Around 4-5 months baby can ascertain the direction from which voices
are heard and also to other kinds of sounds.
 Laughing, squealing, drooling, cooing in response to voices or cooing
to toys.
 By 6 months baby respond when called by its name.
 Observes adults lip movement when they are talking.
 With cooing, there is babbling as well.
 The babbling resembles the sounds of vowels.
 By 9 months, baby is able to understand conversations.
 Tries to put two or three sounds together.
 Can imitate reading books aloud.
 Can understand ‘no’.
 By one year baby can call out for the father and mother.
 Can put two or three words together like ‘milk give’, ‘want doll’ and so
on.
 Can imitate speech sounds.

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

 Can follow simple directions.

 Very attentive to conversations.
 Sing along rhymes.

Developmentally appropriate practices

 For a new born baby, as the vision is blurred, its very important that the adults
interact with the child being very physically close to them.
 The adults face must be very close to the baby, as babies like staring at faces.
 Never be quite when the child is awake, talk to the baby. Babies can pick sounds
of the language and imitate them.
 Cooing and babbling is very common in the first half of the baby’s life. Encourage
more cooing and babbling, by repeating whatever the child does.
 Keep calling out to the child by its names, adults can introduce themselves as
‘mom ’, ‘dad’ and so on.
 Introduce books as early as possible. This serves as an excellent tool for
language development.
 Help the child learn to differentiate between real objects and the same
represented in pictures.

4.2 DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES FROM 1-2 YEARS

 At 1 year, the toddler is able to understand nouns, but sense of
classification is yet to develop.
 The toddler will be curious to things that are farther away, will be able
to point out and ask about it.
 Private speech is observed.
 By 1.5 years the vocabulary capacity can be upto 50 words.
 The child is able to refer itself by its name.
 The child is able to identify parts of the body, can point to objects when
asked.

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

 The child might know the words, but pronouncing certain words can be
difficult, and help might just pronounce half of the word or can replace
words that rhyme the same way. For example ‘cat’ may become ‘tat’,
‘car’ as ‘tar’ and so on.
 The child will be able to answer simple questions, can make out the
difference in tone of the conversation.
 Can express emotions through words
 By 2 years child is able to speak in longer sentences, can sing rhymes,
and able to express need clearly.

Developmentally appropriate practices

 Teach names of all objects and things around.

 At this stage children will use both gestures and single words to communicate.
Encourage the child to talk more and use fewer gestures. If adults keep
responding to gestures, the child will feel comfortable in using gesture rather than
talk.
 Story telling, rhymes and drammatisation are excellent tools for learning to talk.
 Usually most of the children are in a day care, and hence will start learning
another language as well.
 Encourage the child to express emotions through words.

4.3 MILESTONES FROM 2-3 YEARS

 At this stage the child is able to narrate simple stories.
 Understand complex instructions.
 Understand simple questions like what, where and who.
 Vocabulary capacity is around 1000 words approximately.
 Can definitely speak 2-3 sentences at a time.
 Grammatical errors are very common.
 Baby talk still exists. Child may put words together, which can appear
as stammering or stuttering, but it is not so.

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Course Tile: Early Childhood Care and Education
Name of the Content Writer: Dr. M. S. Rajalakshmi Module 26
Name of the Camera Presenter: Dr. K. Srividya

Developmentally appropriate practices

 Encourage narration and singing.

 Give simple topics for the child to talk.
 It’s the questioning age as well. So answer the questions patiently as well
question the children back, to enhance thinking skills.
 Expose the child to various concepts, to increase their vocabulary strength.
 Children will be introduced to alphabets, which is an important part of language
development.
 Learning through sounds is the best way.
 Children in their excitement to express things, can talk very fast leading to
gibberishes’. Encourage the child to talk slowly. Make the child understand that
you will hear patiently.

Language development ultimately is related to socio emotional development as well.

Only if a child is able to express well, communicate it will lead to forming good social
relations and positive emotional development.

5. CONCLUSION

The caretaker, parents and teachers play a very important role in helping the child to
meet their developmental milestones. Care has to be taken that individual differences
will exist, and teachers especially have to be considerate towards children. Parents
must take care that they don’t compare their child’s progress with that of other children.
If there has been any marked developmental delay, proper screening is required and
immediate assistance can reduce the repercussions of such delays. The contents given
in this module are very general; the activities can be made more unique and
individualistic keeping in mind the capacity of children.

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