PIC Family Voices Podcast Episode 6: Social Emotional Development in the Early Year

Robin (00:33)
Today, our guest is Ellen Schreiber. Ellen is a licensed mental health clinician with expertise in early childhood mental health. She has more than 40 years of experience working with young children and their families and a special interest in work supporting caregiver-child relationships, addressing attachment concerns and the impacts of trauma. In her career, Ellen has served as the director of both early supports and services programs and children’s mental health programs in New Hampshire and currently works at Greater Seacoast Health Center as their early childhood mental health and development specialist. Ellen, thanks so much for being with us today.

Ellen (01:10)
Thank you, Robin, and it’s really great to be here.

Robin (01:12)
So I wanna start us off by talking about three things, attachment, self-regulation, and co-regulation, because these feel like big concepts in the social-emotional development journey for parents and children. Can you help us understand these concepts in easy to understand terms?

Ellen (01:31)
Absolutely. So let’s talk about attachment first. Attachment describes the relationship that a child has with a primary caregiver. And one of the interesting things about it is that a child can have different attachment relationships with each caregiver in their life. So it’s specific to that caregiver and child relationship. The ideal attachment is considered to be a secure attachment. And what that means is that the connection with that caregiver allows the child to feel safe and secure. Specifically, when that child is stressed, that relationship comforts them and helps them to calm themself and sort of recover. So that’s what is meant when you’re talking about the attachment relationship. And that leads into co-regulation and regulation. So self-regulation is anyone’s ability to manage their internal state so that they are calm and focused. So for instance, as an adult, when you have a lot going on and you’re late for an appointment and spill coffee on yourself when you’re leaving the house and you start to feel that pressure inside and you’re feeling irritable and your, you know, your respirations increase and your face feels hot and you’re not thinking clearly. And then the person in front of you on the road stops short and you let out a line of swears. So that’s, you’re becoming dysregulated and you have things that you do to calm yourself down. That’s regulating. Co-regulating is the first step in self-regulation. The first thing that happens for a baby, they get distressed, they don’t have any skills. They are relying on the comfort that they feel from their caregiver, that nearness, that security, feeling their breathing, hearing a calming voice, and that helps them learn to calm themselves, which teaches them self-regulation. And I have a quick story about the first time I ever really became aware of this. So a long time ago, I was taking early childhood mental health course that was, the whole course was observing over a long period of time, once a week, an infant and a parent as they progressed. And so I had been observing this mom with this baby. And the first, gosh, I don’t know, two months, the baby would cry, the mom would feed it. The baby would cry, the mom rock it. So this one time, I remember it so clearly, I was sitting in their living room and the baby started to get really distressed and cry, just, he was falling apart and the mom left the room to go get his formula or whatever. She was heating it up. Now he had no way to know that. He just knew she was out of the room. And then she came like into the doorway. His back was to her so he couldn’t see her. And she was just talking to him and she was saying, don’t worry, it’s coming. And I saw that baby like calm down and catch its breath. And I thought to myself, that baby’s still hungry. There’s no change in its internal state. He can’t see his mother. He’s learned to come to the sound of his mother’s voice. That is co-regulation leading to self-regulation.

Robin (04:50)
Got it. OK. So I think what I’m kind of hearing is part of supporting young children’s self-regulation is also working on our own self-regulation. Is that correct?

Ellen (05:02)
Yeah, So in order for a parent to really co-regulate with their child and then teach their child to self-regulate, the first step is really your own self-regulation. If you are
super tense or stressed and you’re like, bouncing your baby up and down really, really hard, that’s not gonna be calming for them. Your two-year-old is just pressing your buttons and you’re having a bad day and you’re responding to their a typical age-appropriate tantrums with your own being upset or your own angst, that prevents you from being able to do that co-regulation thing with them. You have to help yourself calm down, take deep breaths, observe what’s happening in your own self and manage that so that you can help your child manage so they can learn to manage themselves.

Robin (05:59)
Got it, okay. So how does that to have, I know like we always hear looking at like the developmental milestones and things like that, how important it is to have an available and consistent caregiver relationship. How does that tie in with an infant’s like emotional and social development?

Ellen (06:18)
That’s a really good question. It’s really essential for a young child to have a consistent and caring relationship. We already talked about how it teaches them having your needs met. So first of all, you learn that there’s a person there that’s gonna meet your needs. So you learn that like the world is dependable and you have a person there that’s making the world safe for you. So the world is predictable and safe. Those things are necessary to feel comfortable going out in the world, to explore the world and so if a child does not have a consistent caretaker and they don’t have any sort of predictability in their world, it often impacts their ability to feel comfortable exploring their world, to even reach some developmental milestones. It can impact motor skills and cognitive skills and language skills because all of that exploration that kids learn from starts with the world feeling like a safe place to explore.

Robin (07:24)
Okay. And I’m assuming attachment is a big part of that. Like they have that secure attachment with their consistent available caregiver, which makes them then be able to regulate themselves, feel like the world does a safe place, and then have the curiosity to go out and explore it. Am I connecting?

Ellen (07:41)
That’s the primary starting point is you have to be able to trust that the world is safe enough to explore and you have to be able have a safe place to come back to when something bad happens. So toddler will go out, try something, maybe they hear a loud noise, they get scared and healthy development, they like look back at their parent and their parent makes that, it’s okay, face, and they come back and hug their parent and hug their leg for a little bit if they’re having to meet a new person then they’re sort of refueled in that process. They touch base, touch their parent, touch their attachment figure. It doesn’t need to be their parent. It’s whoever that’s doing that for them. And then they’re sort of can take that little bubble of security out in their world and explore. And that’s how kids learn through their exploration.

Robin (08:26)
That’s excellent. So these early experiences, I know they have the ability to shape say an infant’s brain development, including processes like reinforcement and pruning. Can you tell us a little bit about how that works for young children?

Ellen (08:43)
So I think that there are actually, are like four really important things about how experiences shape brain development,  I’m gonna actually, if it’s okay with you, I’m gonna start with, before the pruning, I’m gonna start with the serve and return relationship, which is basically just those back and forth interactions that children have with their caregivers. And it builds on, that idea of reinforcement because when you have back and forth interactions, the back and the forth is building brain connections. What back and forth interactions are are like, I smile, you smile. I say bye, you say bye. You cry, I pick you up. It’s that constant over and over again, I do something, you do something. that builds that basic architecture of their being reciprocity and then learning about predictability. I drop a toy, you pick it up. I drop a toy, you pick it up. A thousand times I drop a toy, you pick it up. So there’s that dynamic that really supports healthy development and supports attachment. And then all experience shapes the brain. So whether It’s a positive experience or a negative experience. The brain doesn’t really sort them that way. They just like register. And the more type of that type of experience you have, the more of that type of interaction you have, the stronger that connection becomes. So those things are reinforced. That’s what reinforcement is. When you have the same experience over and over and over again, be it good, be it bad, those connections that are made are reinforced. The pruning is connections that aren’t reinforced and those become less prominent and eventually die off, which is a normal developmental thing. If you had all the brain connections you had at birth right now, you would not be able to sort out foreground from background. You wouldn’t know what to respond to. So the pruning is equally important, but what gets reinforced and what gets pruned. And this is relevant for social-emotional development. Also relevant for cognitive development. A really well-known example of this is language. So children are born being able to recognize every human sound that can be made. It’s all the same to them. They’re just language sponges, but by a year, they no longer can differentiate the sounds that are not heard in their native language. So over the course of the first year, they’re hearing and hearing and hearing what is their language. They’re not hearing the other sounds. At the end of the first year, they no longer have that capacity to differentiate those sounds that they’re not hearing all the time. That’s how the pruning works and the reinforcement works. Does that make sense?

Robin (11:28)
That does make sense. So when you talked about like a baby dropping a toy and their caregiver picking it up and giving it back that serve and return, is it a myth, like I know some of my older relatives will say like, don’t spoil your child. Don’t keep doing all those things. Like keep picking them up every time they cry or keep picking up the toy and giving it back to them. Is that a myth?

Ellen (11:55)
You can’t spoil an infant by picking them up. You can’t spoil an infant by picking them up because are not crying to control you. They are crying because they have some sort of need and what you’re teaching them is you can meet that need. The spoiling thing, you can’t really do until the child has an understanding that they’re making you do something. When we were talking about experience shaping the brain, talked about positive or negative, it is probably important to say that trauma impacts the brain in very specific ways. We talked about positive and negative experiences impacting brain and shaping the brain. I think it’s important that traumatic experiences impact the brain and social emotional development in very specific ways. In addition to potentially affecting that attachment relationship and sense of security. It also impacts memory development and language development.

Robin (13:00)
That’s really interesting. So Ellen, why is it that languages are so much easier for younger kids to learn?

Ellen (13:07)
Yeah, so it’s really fascinating. There’s this concept of sensitive windows for different types of development. And a sensitive window is timeframe during which your brain is primed for certain experiences. And when you have them, your brain is particularly sensitive to learning those things. And it’s not that you can’t ever learn them later, but these are the periods where like, you’re just primed. So for language, actually, up until three years is a sensitive window. That’s why so easy to learn for babies to learn three languages when they’re babies, not so easy when you’re twenty, so sensitive windows exist. One of the really interesting thing is that very early sensitive windows, like birth to age three, four, learning to calm yourself and how you are with routines in your life and language. So learning those things early on means that you have a much greater ability to do that as a grownup. It’s much harder to learn to do that when you’re 10 or two, for instance. The earliest windows are really for vision and hearing. which really aligns with why we do vision and hearing screening in infants, because if there are issues in that very early time, vision and hearing, you want to catch it right away, because those are like very hard to recoup later on. And interestingly enough, the later windows, like up through age seven, those are for things like learning about symbols, mathematic concepts, social relationships. So those windows more open longer. So it’s interesting to think about that when you think about how we learn things.

Robin (14:52)
And so is like where you say hearing and vision, it’s really important to have screening, early childhood screenings for those. How, or is there a connection between if a child has a hearing or vision impairment, you know, a lot of times kids who are young have a lot of chronic ear infections, things like that. Does that also impact them socially, emotionally in any way?

Ellen (15:15)
In quite a few ways, actually. Well, the first is you have some hearing issues, you may have some language issues to go along with that because those things coincide. It might make it more difficult for people to understand you. Using language is one way that we learn to mediate emotion. If you can’t express yourself, you’re going to have a lower frustration tolerance. So there’s that right off the bat.

I think that that’s probably one of the most important things there for vision. If you have vision issues as a young child, you’re gonna need to explore your world in different ways. If you can’t see what’s around you, you’re not gonna know to explore it. So if people know you have a vision error issue and they set the environment up more to engage your curiosity with sound, you’re gonna be doing that exploration based on sound. So it’s really helpful to know that early on, it can support their development, their social emotional development in that way. So those are two examples.

Robin (16:14)
Got it. assuming if you child, young child with a vision issue, they also wouldn’t be able to see like you had said that that serve and return of like your smile, I smile, you smile. That could kind of get in the way of like the serve and return and attachment.

Ellen (16:31)
If you know that your child can’t see your face, you’re gonna do other things. Your serve and return might be more around touch, you would use touch, you would use sound, you would like be aware of what you can do reduce the impact of not having access to one of those senses.

Robin (16:49)

All right. So now I’m kind of thinking about, all right, I think we have a good foundation here for like the attachment, the regulation, some of these different skill development areas that relate to social emotional development. For toddlers,
when I think of toddlers, I naturally just think of like super curious, and then like the balance of setting boundaries so they can explore their world. I know toddlers often test boundaries. What can we do while knowing all of this that you just helped us to beautifully understand about attachment and social emotional development? What can we do with toddlers when they’re testing boundaries to set healthy limits, but still give them that room for like exploring their world in a safe and secure way?

Ellen (17:35)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So toddlers do, healthy developing toddlers enter that phase where they’re pushing the boundaries, they’re testing limits, and need to have the agency with getting to accomplish, getting to achieve, getting to explore. They need security of it being in a like safe environment. They need both of those things. So it’s important when we respond to toddlers, we’re being consistent in how we respond so their environment is predictable. We’re talking with them in a calm way when we’re setting limits. So we are self-regulating so they can regulate. We’re offering them positive choices. It’s generally better to say to a toddler, do you want apple juice or orange juice, than just giving them orange juice. So they’re having the autonomy of making a choice. But if you just say to them, what do you want to drink? It’s like generally too much and then they can’t answer. So that idea of giving them positive choices and you can use that in your limit setting. Do you want to brush your teeth before or after your story, if you have the capacity to do that. You’re giving them that choice, but you’re like controlling your teeth are gonna get brushed. It’s just a matter of when. So as the adult, you can use that giving them choices to both manage their behavior and support their autonomy and sense of competence. So you wanna give them control when they can in a contained environment.

Robin (19:13)
Got it, got it. So that makes me think too of, you know, toddlers can tend to get frustrated with especially when they’re exploring their world, if things aren’t working the way they want them to, or they anticipate them to, why is it important sometimes for parents or caregivers to let them fail or for parents and caregivers to also sometimes fail them and show children that it’s okay to make mistakes.

Ellen (19:39)
Yeah, so let’s start with that second one first. Sometimes parents feel really anxious that they made a mistake of some sort. They were trying to go to the bathroom and their kid wanted them in the moment. They were on their phone and their kid wanted them. You know, they were whatever, they fail to meet their need at that second. And it’s important for parents to keep in mind you don’t have to succeed in every moment, that actually making a mistake or not succeeding, it does a couple of really helpful things. It gives your child the opportunity to develop some mastery. They have to practice taking care of themselves for a minute or two and then they learn that they can do that and then they feel competent doing that. And that really actually enhances their ability to self calm. Also, if you then model, you know, mommy is sorry that I couldn’t get you your cookie just then I needed to do blah, blah, blah, blah. You’re demonstrating that we all have needs and make mistakes and can make apologies. And you’re having what’s called as disruption in your connection, but then a reconnecting and that breaking apart and coming back together is also really, really important and teaching that idea that your connection to them is like long-term and long-lasting. We have disruptions and we have reconnecting and that’s like a normal process that happens all the time for us. So kids having the opportunity to learn and experience that is actually good and essential and healthy development. From the child’s perspective, when they make a mistake, when they fall apart, they’re learning to regroup, they’re learning that you still love them afterward, they’re learning they can say sorry, all of those things are really important too. So those sorts of disruptions and corrections are part of that healthy experience of developing social emotionally.

Robin (21:38)
That’s great. I’m glad you explained that because I sometimes I think when I was a parent of young children, I focused so highly on attachment. I was really afraid to like not do the return part of the serve every time, you know, thinking about how that kind of helps build their resilience and their frustration tolerance. Now, I kind of see how as they go on and they’re in preschool and kindergarten.

Ellen (22:02)
Yeah, and they when they get to toddlerhood, they tolerate that. Well, the very, early stages, like we were talking about before, you want to as much as possible be able to meet their needs because they haven’t learned to self regulate yet. They really don’t know that that the world is a safe place yet. So the balance changes. You’re never going to meet their needs all the time because sometimes you have to go to the bathroom and take a shower. In infancy, the balance is towards meeting that need. And as they get to toddlerhood, they learn to tolerate a little bit more. And you can help them tolerate a little bit more by giving them the opportunity to practice using their skills and doing that reconnecting thing and knowing it’s going to be okay.

Robin (22:47)
Yeah, I love that. So as they do get older, where that shift happens that you were just talking about, and they start to enter or kindergarten, how does their world expanding now, they’re with a bunch of other children, other adults slash caregivers, how does that influence their social development at that time?

Ellen (23:09)
Yeah, they are having so many new experiences and the world is just so much bigger. There’s so many more influences in their life. I can remember as a parent when my daughter first went off to preschool and it was so weird that she would come home knowing songs that I didn’t teach her, talking about friends that I had never met. All of a sudden her world was not so much of an overlap with mine. She had more of her own separate world and that’s what the child is experiencing too. So their social relationships become much more important to them. They start to develop a little bit less egocentrism when they’re in settings with other children. They’re learning more how to share, how to take turns, other people’s feelings, problem solving, they have opportunities to solve problems with children and with peers and it just, all of that really enhances their development and expands their world. It can be in a formal setting childcare, but it can also be informal if a child isn’t in childcare, if they’re, you know you go to the playground and they’re playing with other kids three times a week or whatever it is that you’re doing that is offering that wider experience of engaging more with other children in a supervised setting because they don’t yet, they can’t manage independently without something bad happening. It needs to be scaffolded and supported for it to be successful.

Robin (24:38)
And so, this kind of around the time where we’re starting to read books about sharing and caring about others and things like that to kind of open up that those ideas and that dialogue does it.

Ellen (24:49)
It needs reinforcement for sure. Some children seem like naturally to do that more easily than others. I’m not actually, I don’t know much about research about that. If it depends on if they’re an only child or one of several children or I don’t know what those factors are, but definitely there are books and stories and videos that support those like pro-social concepts and introducing those the time that they start having these social experiences is a really helpful way to boost their learning about them. And then just being in those experiences and having like positive support and scaffolding to help them through some of the problem points. Kids don’t share naturally.

Robin (25:32)
Got it. So, right. I was just gonna ask you, like, so at this time, at this point in development, we might see the struggle to express their feelings. How do we support them learning about and expressing their feelings, even including things like if they’re worried about something or afraid of something? I remember my kids around this time developed like, some fears either of people they didn’t know all of a sudden or certain things on the playground, like you mentioned.

Ellen (26:01)
So some of the first things that we want to teach kids about is about their feelings, their basic feelings, and then a lot of that is helping them by recognizing, I see that you are feeling frustrated. You were stomping your feet because you were so angry. So that’s helping them have a label for what they’re feeling inside and recognize the behavior that’s attached to it. That’s helpful to do. Doing that for yourself. Like I often encourage parents to verbally share, label their feelings and how they know that they’re feeling that way so that kids internalize that language. And it really helps you manage your feelings when you actually can label them. So there’s that, there’s lots of books, there’s movies, like everybody knows the Inside Out movie, which is an awesome movie. So you can use those things out, use those things as well. I think that those are the key points in helping kids talk about feelings. And then you want to go to the, you know, it’s all feelings are okay and helping them learn. Ways to express their feelings that are acceptable separating feelings from behavior. You know, it’s okay to be, it’s okay to be angry that Suzy took your toy. It’s not okay to hit her over the head with it because that hurts and we don’t hurt. You can tell Suzy it’s not okay to take your toy by using your words or telling me or stomping your feet, but we can’t hit. We have to take the toy away if we hit because we don’t hurt. We have kind hands or something like that.

Robin (27:36)
Okay. Ellen, what strategies can parents use to support their child’s self-esteem
or sense of competence as they start entering this bigger world, forming their identity?

Ellen (27:47)
Yeah, so I think a really important idea is that in order to support their sense of competence, you want to support and reward their efforts, not the end result. It’s so easy to go, oh, that’s a beautiful picture. I love how you’re using the colors or, you know, it’s so great that you’re working so hard on your picture. So you are commenting positively more or at least as much on their effort as on the end result. I think that’s a really important strategy. I think helping them problem solve when they’re trying to figure something out instead of jumping to this a lot of times parents like jump right in when they’re struggling. Try and let them problem solve a little bit themselves prompt them. What do you think you could do? You know that would so-and-so took my toy. You know, what do you think we could do about that? Give them the opportunity to come up with some ideas themselves so they’re relying on themselves just a little bit more. Reinforcing the characteristics you want to see in them. I’m so proud of you for trying so hard. I’m so proud of you for being kind. Being aware of yourself as a model. So if you’re a parent that always talks about yourself negatively, you wanna be aware of that with your child and instead, know, even say, that was so hard. I was so mad that I couldn’t get that recipe right and I had to do it three times, but I’m so, you know, I stuck with it and look, now we have a cake. So again, emphasizing the things that you want to see in them. Using language like, I like how you were playing so well with your sister. I like how gentle you are with the dog. Then also giving them small doable jobs. Nothing builds competence like being competent. So letting them help you with the dishes, the vacuuming, the laundry in ways that are safe. Just their helping you really helps them feel, toddlers, preschoolers love to help. It makes them feel so good. So being able to reinforce that is a really good way to help them build a sense of competence and positive self-esteem and just feeling good about themselves.

Robin (30:04)
Yeah, that sounds great. And like kind of almost preparing for, I’m kind of thinking of, kids are older now, know, setting for like, you’re a member of our family, our team, and like we all do things around the house, take care of each other. And, know, I really like the idea of that. That’s nice. So when kids get at this age, know, preschool, kindergarten age, when they’re getting frustrated, like you talked about saying, like, I like the way you tried so hard at else can we teach them as far as like when they’re in a frustrating situation? It might be with another child playground or wherever. How do we help that reinforce skills for frustration, tolerance and emotional regulation when they’re out in the world?

Ellen (30:53)
The first best skill that we all use all the time is really breathing. That calming, like breathing that you do and you teach your kids to do. And for preschoolers up to age six, I have just really fallen in love with the Tucker the Turtle video series that Head Start uses. I give this to more parents and it’s, It’s remarkable how effective it can be. So if you’re not familiar with Tucker the Turtle, it’s a cartoon and it’s a little book and Tucker, he has a low frustration tolerance and he gets really red in the face and he’s impulsive and he makes people feel bad. And then he learns that he can do this simple thing, which is to step out of the situation, take three deep breaths, keep his hands and feet to himself. and then do some problem solving and try out different solutions. So the thing with Tucker the Turtle is I have parents introduce it to their children, not in a moment of frustration. When things are calm and I have them practice with them, so the parents too are practicing their breathing and self-regulation, either through the video or through the little book. Pretty much nightly for a couple of weeks because that’s reinforcement so then in the moment you can cue your child to do their deep breathing and it can be very, very effective. I also really like using, got what I call breathing wands, which are magic wands. You can get them on Amazon for 12 bucks and you tip them over and all the little glitter falls to the bottom and it’s very soothing. And I teach them that you breathe in while you’re turning it upside down and then you breathe out while the stuff falls. And it just, it’s almost like a little meditational kind of thing with a prop. And kids really like that. Some parents will find that their kids will with them or relaxation sort of stuff, which is all really great. Probably takes a little bit more time. But recognizing those feelings in the body and then learning to do just something that calms yourself and helps you center before dealing with whatever’s going on in the moment. 

Love that. I like the breathing wand. Older kids in school, often use the zones of regulation, which is also very good. It’s a more paradigm. for some five, six year olds, it’s too hard to have four different zones of regulation. Some can do it. 
It’s great if that’s what your school is using to use it at home and you can actually download little pictograph of what are the zones and what you can do about them and put it on your fridge and use it.

Robin (33:38)
Yeah, I love that one. It’s pretty simple. they have some coloring pages too of like there’s five different faces of the zones of regulation. I wonder too, if just exposing kids, even if they’re not ready to fully embrace that, you know, that idea, but like just slowly kind of.

Ellen (33:54)
I usually will talk about the just three of the zones with the younger kids. What I like about the zones of regulation is that the idea is moving yourself from blue zone to the green zone or the red zone, which is that escalated angry place to the green zone. So it’s about the strategies that will get you to your happy calm focused place. And that’s usually enough to be really helpful.

Robin (34:19)
Great. I love that. Do you see many schools, you said, are implementing this in the younger kindergarten preschool classrooms or?

Ellen (34:30)
I know many that do. I know of many, like I know many schools and many classrooms. It’s worth asking about, or it’s just worth asking at your children’s school, what are they doing to teach self-regulation? So that you can be working off the same thing. And if they’re not, well, you can introduce them to Tucker the Turtle.

Robin (34:49)
That’s great. So my last question as far as this little age group goes is cooperative play obviously a real big deal for this age group. How can or caregivers encourage that sharing and problem solving, but also conflict resolution? How do we talk or teach our kids conflict resolution at these young ages?

Ellen (35:12)
Yeah, I think the first step is really knowing and understanding that they cannot do this by themselves. It’s not developmentally anticipated that a three or four year old is going to manage their complex social struggles on their own. So it’s important that they have access to a grownup that can help with this. And so the grownup’s job is to really scaffold and support the kids not to sort and not intervene unless necessary. And then to support the self-regulation stuff we’ve talked about and the problem solving, asking them what they can do to solve the problem instead of jumping in saying, that’s it, go to your rooms, know, to, okay. So it sounds like so-and-so is frustrated because he hasn’t had a turn. What do you think that we can do about that? So everybody feels like they have a turn. It’s really taking that sort of approach. And that’s good for sharing and problem solving and again, helping people, helping children recognize their language. It seems like Sophie’s crying because she’s feeling left out. It doesn’t feel very good to be left out. What do you think that we could do so that Sophie feels like she has a place to play with us too?

Robin (36:23)
Nice. Okay. Yeah, I love that. And then probably there’s an opportunity there too to
also talk about what behavior you liked. I liked how you helped Sophie, you know, Right. Like kind of closing that.

Ellen (36:33)
Yeah, absolutely. I love how you guys are playing together and taking turns.

Robin (36:38)
Wonderful.

Ellen (36:39)
A great rule of thumb is for every time you have to intervene to correct something negative, it’s awesome if you can find at least two things that are positive. So you want, and you have to be kind of proactive about it. I love how you guys are playing together. What a fun game you’ve made up. You’re so creative. What can we do so that Suzy has a turn? It’s not okay to hit with your toy. We need to find another way for you to say that you’re angry. So you wanna just bear in mind that overall, you wanna try and have two positives to one negative.

Robin (37:12)
OK. And what’s the reason for that? Well, what should we as adults keep in mind about that?

Ellen (37:17)
Kids remember negatives, we all remember negatives more than we remember positives. They stick with us longer and harder. And when you’re trying to develop a positive sense of self, you want your child to have at least as many good things that they have to think about as bad things.

Robin (37:32)
Got it.

Ellen (37:33)
Working on not making them bad, making them corrective, but still.

Robin (37:37)
Right. Are there any common misconceptions about early childhood as far as social emotional development goes that you’d like to dispel for families that are listening to our podcast?

Ellen (37:49)
You told me you were going to ask me this question, I thought really hard about it and I came up with three things that I thought were really important. The first thing is people often think that really young children aren’t impacted by the things that happen to them because they don’t remember them or they don’t have the words for them. The first thing is even if they don’t have the words, we have memories from infancy a lot of times those memories are stored in our body but that doesn’t mean we don’t remember them. So it’s important to know that babies are impacted by all the things that happen to them even if they don’t have the words to tell you what happened. So that’s the first thing the second thing is that small moments matter an enormous amount sometimes people are like, you know, parenting just seems so big and so overwhelming and huge and it’s really built on those tiny moments. The serve and return. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t spend all Friday night with your child. Just make sure that there’s like 15 minutes of really good time. That you read them a story every night or that you have play in the bath and you’re just having fun with them makes a huge difference. It makes such a positive emotional environment for them. So you can build those moments into your daily routine, like letting them help with dinner, even though it’s a mess, can be really, really impactful. And then the third thing is really, and it’s sort of connected to this last thing, is we live in a world where there’s so much pressure, so much rush, so much technology, and particularly for young children, it’s the face-to-face interaction that matters to them emotionally and cognitively. In fact, there are some research that shows that little kids, like if you interact with them and teach them words, they learn them. If they’re watching a video, they don’t learn them because they need that back and forth. Just knowing that, you know, It’s okay, it’s okay if you have to go to the bathroom or take a shower or you need 10 minutes to yourself to just zone out or cook dinner and you put them in front of a 15 minute video, but limit it, be conscious of it. Even if you’re doing nothing with them, but walking around your house talking about what you see on the walls and what’s out the window, or better yet, get outside and spend time in nature. Walk around your yard and let them pick up rocks and sticks and what do they feel like and what do they smell like? And you pick leaves and flowers and it’s so enriching and valuable, much more so than watching an equally timed video. It’s, I think, really valuable to build that in. So those are the three things that I would stress.

Robin (40:41)
Love those. My final question, I think you kind of answered it though with the three things was going to be, what do you think families need most right now to build strong social emotional lives together?

Ellen (40:52)
Well, you know, think that I did, but I think it comes down to those moments of human connection and making some just unstructured shared time to have experiences together. Then actually, I do think that connecting in a world where there’s so much technology and artificialness, this is. There is research that supports this, but it’s also just a really deeply personal held belief for me is that connecting to nature can be so healing and valuable and has all of these great impacts for dealing with things like anxiety, depression, ADHD, anything you can name and it’s free and you don’t need a prescription for it. So, you know, I would just really encourage families.

Robin (41:39)
I think we live in the most perfect state with so many opportunities for getting outside that don’t cost anything, know, just a little bit of time, but lots of opportunities for connecting with nature.

Ellen (41:51)
You know little games like, don’t know if they still call it pooh sticks, but when you take broken sticks and you put them in a stream and you watch them race down the stream and you narrate the race and like what, it doesn’t cost a thing. And it’s very, very engaging for a toddler or a preschooler.

Robin (42:08)
Absolutely, absolutely. Doesn’t take a lot of time to do something like that to have like experience like that. Yeah. Well, it’s been an absolute pleasure to talk with you today. We’re so grateful for your time and for the work that you do with families and children.

Ellen (42:14)
15 minutes.

Robin (42:24)
We’d love to have you back on the podcast again.

Ellen (42:27)
No, thank you. This has been so much fun and it really is just a joy and a pleasure to have the opportunity to support parents in creating healthy, happy environments for themselves and their children. It’s really rewarding and it’s an honor to do so.

Robin (42:44)
Well, until next time.