At break time, 6-year-old Charlie sits down with his peers and opens the snack his mom packed for him that morning. Suddenly, a classmate sitting across from him grabs his favourite item, a chocolate chip cookie, and takes a bite. Later, at recess, Charlie’s friend Sasha doesn’t pick him to be on her team for soccer. At the end of the day, Charlie’s teacher was surprised when Charlie – who typically does not have any behavioural issues at school – pushes another student when lining up to leave the classroom. Navigation of an emotional outburst is a common occurrence in an elementary classroom. This could result from a friend not sharing a toy, a disagreement in a group activity, or simply because a child needs a nap.

Recognizing and managing the emotions they are feeling and the appropriate reactions to have at these moments are a huge part of a child’s development. Although these situations can be especially challenging for adults to handle, educators and caregivers have the opportunity to provide maps and tools to support a child’s wayfinding through these moments. This includes situations throughout their elementary years and other circumstances they may encounter as they grow.

Between the ages of four and eight years, children are introduced to the diverse social environment of a school classroom. In this setting, children come face-to-face with the complexities of peer interactions. During this time, because of the various social situations they will experience, children enter a critical period in their emotional development. Building a strong foundation for emotional development during this time includes strengthening children’s skills in understanding and managing emotions.

Emma Galarneau, and other researchers from the Social-Emotional Development and Intervention (SEDI) lab at UTM, explore these two skills (the ability to understand and manage emotions) as they relate to children’s sympathy between the ages of 4 and 8 years. They were interested in discovering what factors in a child’s environment may influence these skills and how they can be strong indicators of a child’s healthy social and emotional development.

Many people often expect girls to have better skills in controlling their emotions due to gender stereotypes. Surprisingly, in this article, there were no differences discovered in boys’ and girls’ abilities to manage and recognize sadness and anger. Dr. Speidel, a co-author of the study, commented on the lack of gender difference by drawing attention to the fact that although some studies show gender differences, others do not. She suggests that, “these conflicting patterns [of findings] in study after study … [suggest] there are other factors that are just better predictors [than gender].”

One such factor that can be a better predictor for managing emotions is emotion socialization. Dr. Speidel describes emotion socialization as, “behaviours that are often used by important adults in the child’s life [to support their emotional development].” She explains that these behaviours could involve, “how parents respond to an emotional outburst from their child. Do they respond punitively, or do they acknowledge and validate the child’s emotions?”. When adults return supportive and validating responses to a child’s expression of an emotion, children seem to obtain better understanding of emotion and better abilities in managing and coping with emotions.

Additionally, Dr. Speidel includes how the way caregivers or educators “talk about emotions” can reflect supportive emotion socialization behaviours, especially when they discuss the signs and causes of emotions and “how emotions look and feel in the body.” She underlines how “all these factors are associated with better emotion understanding and emotion regulation in children”.

The results of studies like this one can be applied to inform educators and caregivers about how they can better support children in identifying and managing distress-related emotions like sadness and anger. Dr. Speidel hopes that for many educators and caregivers, opportunities for emotion-related skill-building come naturally in their day-to-day interactions with children.

For example, Charlie’s teacher may pull Charlie aside to ask him why he pushed the other student. His teacher might use this as a learning opportunity to help Charlie understand the emotions he was feeling and more appropriate ways to express them. However, to further support teachers engaging in conversations like these, Dr. Speidel suggests that what may be required is “a shift in the way we are evaluating students and how we are evaluating teachers,” including evaluation of the curriculum they are guided by. Dr. Speidel suggests that we may have to ask, “Are we providing educators with tools that support their understanding of social-emotional development and how they can work that into their curriculum?”

Dr. Speidel sees an opportunity to incorporate supportive tools for educators to encourage children’s social-emotional development in schools. Although, this may require what she says is “a little bit of creativity” that encompasses students’ strengths and interests. For example, this might include facilitating engaging art activities in the classroom that introduce skills to aid in students’ emotion understanding and management. Similarly, a more physically active game such as charades, where students act out different emotions, may also be effective. This allows more active children the opportunity to move around and communicate emotions in different ways. Furthermore, by introducing these activities Dr. Speidel notes that “increasing understanding of how emotion regulation and sympathy skills develop and how to support this development … [can] create more intentionality in how caregivers and educators are supporting these children”.

In terms of community impact, Dr. Speidel hopes to see improved accessibility in “translating research into practical resources that parents and educators can use.” She believes that the more freely available research-based resources there are for educators and caregivers,  “the more we can support all children.” By encouraging and providing opportunities for caregivers and educators to apply what they have learned and offer support to the children in their care, Dr. Speidel hopes that we will “start to see not just support in an educational setting and not just supporting [students’] academic performance but also supporting their growth as individuals and as humans who interact with others.” Therefore, next time Charlie has a difficult day, even after he leaves the classroom, he can use the skills he’s developed to find his way to a balanced expression of his emotions.