The Development of Emotional Maturity in Kindergarten Children

by Haley Fleury

Children Need HELP!

The Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) is a research team from University of British Columbia who has compiled information annually about children across communities in British Columbia since 2001. Each year kindergarten teachers use the Early Development Instrument (EDI) to collect individual information about age-appropriate skills and competencies among five important domains of development: physical health and well-being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive development, and communication skills. Data from the EDI provides insight to the health of children and helps us use the trends and associations to focus on promoting healthy development for children. These core areas of development are good predictors of adult health which highlights the importance of collecting the data at such a young age.

What is Emotional Maturity?

The scale of emotional maturity encompasses children’s prosocial and helping behaviors, hyperactivity and inattention, and aggressive, anxious, and fearful behaviors. The variability of emotional maturity that is seen among children has been traced back to both environmental and genetic influences in which some characteristics pose as risk factors for vulnerability and others as resilience factors.

Environmental Influences Emotional Maturity

Hyperactivity and inattention are commonly seen during early childhood and are indicators of the level of emotional maturity. Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a developmental disorder which highlights poor emotional maturity and may be developed due to a variety of challenges. Children who are high in hyperactivity and inattention often have low self-regulation of their thoughts, behaviors, and emotions (Granziera et al., 2021). Self-regulation is an important attribute for prosocial behavior and academic achievement (Cho et al., 2016).

Bowen’s Family Systems Theory states that families consist of interconnected and interdependent individuals in which each member’s behavior influences and is influenced by other member’s behaviors (Cho et al., 2016). Perry et al.’s (2014, as cited in Cho et al., 2016) study showed the bidirectional influence between parents and their children by highlighting that children’s poor self-regulation resulted in parents being distressed which then led to harsher parenting practices (e.g., authoritarian-permissive parenting style). The development of self-regulation is highly influenced by parent’s modelling behaviors, practices, and emotional climate. Children can learn to respond better to their arousal through parental socialization that is warm, supportive, and they openly discuss emotions; Children can develop strategies to regulate their behavior more effectively from their parents’ guidance (Cho et al., 2016).

There is some support that the family environment and location a child grows up in could increase the risk for scoring low on emotional maturity. A study that focused on self-report measures of emotional maturity, found that low levels of emotional maturity is associated with children living in a nuclear family (i.e., family consisting of only children and parents), children being raised by a single parent, by no parents, or by non-working mothers, children with many siblings, and children who live in rural or semi urban areas (Rr & Raj, 2017).

Genetic Influences Emotional Maturity

Children may be predisposed with genes that increase the risk for having low emotional maturity. An aspect of emotional maturity that is highly influenced by genetics is emotional regulation (Wang & Saudino, 2013). There are age related changes that occur for temperamental traits throughout the developmental period, but genetically mediated influences are weaker during early infancy (Wang & Saudino, 2013). The dopamine D4 exon III repeat (D4DR) and the serotonin-transporter promoter region (5-HTTLPR) polymorphisms are associated with temperament in newborns (Auerbach et al., 1999). Auerbach et al. (1999) found that children with long (i.e., 7 or more allele repeats) D4DR alleles have significantly lower scores on negative emotionality than infants with short (i.e., 6 or less allele repeats) D4DR alleles, and children with short homozygous (short/short) 5-HTTLPR genotype scored higher on negative emotionality than children with 5-HTTLPR long/short or long/long genotypes. Epigenetic research (i.e., research focusing on how behaviors and environment can change an individual’s genes) suggests that exposure to environmental stresses during prepubertal brain maturation period, specifically the prefrontal cortex and connections with the limbic system are associated with cognitive and emotional problems such as attention deficit and hyperactivity (Bale, 2015), emotionally reactive temperament and behavioral problems (O’Connor, 2019).

How Environment AND Genetics Interact to Influence Emotional Maturity

Genetic and environmental influences operate bidirectionally as they both affect each other. Propper et al. (2007, as cited in Cho et al., 2016) found that African American children who carried at least one long DRD4 allele had low levels of externalizing behaviors (e.g., physical aggression or verbal bullying) when their parents were highly warm and responsive. Cho et al.’s (2016) study found that parents who are responsive and supportive is associated with self-regulation if the child had at least one long DRD4 allele.

Emotional Maturity in Context – Community of Horseshoe Bay, Lions Bay, and Bowen

HELP (2020) has collected EDI data of children in waves that are generally compiled every two to three years; Currently there are 7 waves of data from 2004 to 2019. This data over the years has provided important information about the trends of children’s development among the five domains. Horseshoe Bay, Lions Bay, and Bowen is a part of SD45 and there has been a consistent decline of scores on emotional maturity. As of 2019, this community has a total population of 85 children between the ages of 0 and 5 years old (HELP, 2020). Many of these children, 91%, live in families with two parents, whereas only 9.1% of these children live in families with a single parent (HELP, 2020). Given that children who grow up with a single parent is a risk factor and associated with lower scores of emotional maturity (Rr & Raj, 2017), it may be surprising when looking at the children’s developmental trends.

From the most current data, wave 7 (2016-2019), there is a high number of vulnerable children with low scores of emotional maturity; 27% (23 children) of the children in Horseshoe Bay, Lions Bay, and Bowen are vulnerable for emotional maturity (HELP, 2020). To put this number into perspective, 17% of children in the school district (SD45) are vulnerable to the effects of low emotional maturity. Another community in the school district, Caulfield and West Bay, have 12% of children vulnerable to emotional maturity which is much lower than Horseshoe Bay, Lions Bay, and Bowen. A plausible explanation would be that Horseshoe Bay, Lions Bay, and Bowen may be a primary contributor to the school district’s vulnerability numbers.

When looking at both short-term trends (waves 6-7) and long-term trends (waves 2-7) there has been a meaningful increase in emotional maturity vulnerability (HELP, 2020). This indicates that kindergarten-aged children are doing worse, regarding both statistic and practical significance overall, in emotional maturity. All aspects of emotional maturity (i.e., aggressive, anxious and fearful, hyperactive and inattentive, and prosocial and helping) has shown a significant decline between the 6^th and 7^th wave (between 2013 and 2019) (HELP, 2020). Aggressiveness is the only component of emotional maturity that has had no significant change of scores between wave 2 and wave 7 (between 2004 and 2019), whereas anxious and fearful, hyperactive and inattentive, and prosocial and helping scores has declined (HELP, 2020).

In comparison, the neighbouring community of Caulfield and West Bay has shown kindergarten students getting worse between wave 2 and wave 7 (between 2004 and 2019) but remained stable in the short-term (between wave 6 and 7; 2013 and 2019) (HELP, 2019).

How we can Reduce Vulnerability to Emotional Maturity?

The profile of vulnerable children are the ones who score high on the EDI subscales of aggressive behaviors, anxious and fearful behaviors, and hyperactive and inattention behaviors, but score low on the EDI subscale of prosocial and helping behaviors. Scoring high on these items without intervention may result in the child developing a variety of neurological disorders. For example, a child who scores high on the anxious and fearful subscale without intervention is vulnerable to developing an anxiety disorder, and a child scoring high on hyperactivity and inattention is vulnerable to developing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Although many of these behaviors are age-appropriate and shown in early childhood, vulnerable behaviors would be those that are scores much higher than the typical child for their age.

Overall, the development of high emotional maturity for children is greatly dependent on the environment they are raised in, rather than the genes they are predisposed with. Protective factors for risk behaviors that impact children’s development of emotional maturity are parent’s caregiving practices; Evidence of the importance of parental practices are provided by a study of African American children from a rural area who have poor means of education, transportation, recreational facilities, and mental and physical health care which isolates the parenting variable (Cho et al., 2016). Children whose parents are supportive and responsive to their needs are resilience factors that help protect against aversity. Several protective factors that help protect against adversities are to maintain a family environment that consists of characteristics such as a joint family, raised by two parents, mother who works, being a single child, and living in an urban area (Rr & Raj, 2017).

MOM can Help!

An intervention strategy that would improve a child’s hyperactivity and inattention is Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM). Without an effective intervention, children are highly vulnerable to developing ADHD. ADHD is one of the most common developmental disorders, with a high prevalence rate of 5%, that persists into adulthood (Meppelink et al., 2016). Currently, psychostimulant medications (e.g., Methylphenidate) is the most common treatment for ADHD and has high efficacy rate of 70% (Meppelink et al., 2016). Although methylphenidate is quite effective, about one third of patients show no relief of symptoms which gives rise to the need for a different intervention treatment, such as MOM.

MOM is an exercise used to improve attentional and behavioral problems by participating in self-regulatory training and to reduce automatic responding which is related to attentional regulation (Santonastaso et al., 2020). Mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve executive functioning deficits that are associated with ADHD, such as inattention, hyperactivity, and on-task behavior (Bigelow et al., 2021). Bigelow et al (2021) found significant gain in inhibitory control after a single mindfulness meditation session. Similarly, Santonastaso et al (2020) study showed a decline in inattention, hyperactivity, restlessness, and impulsive behaviors after 8 weeks of meditation sessions. Many of the improvements due to MOM training are also behaviors that make up the hyperactivity and inattentive behavior subscale of emotional maturity (i.e., impulsive, inattentive, and restless) and have been proven to decrease children’s vulnerability to the adverse effects they may face if they continue without intervention.

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