by Zu Lin

What is emotional development?

The EDI that I have focused on through the term projects has been emotional development, as I have found this scale to be very important when it comes to children. Emotional development can be described as an individual’s basic emotions and how well they understand the emotions of others and how capable they are of responding to them. It is also the instrument of how well children can regulate their own emotions in a healthy manner. With all of this said, we can see that having good emotional development and maturity can shape children into well-adjusted mature adults who are able to regulate their emotions and thoughts appropriately. Therefore, it is important that their emotional development is well adjusted at a young age. 

The risks factor

 For children to have good emotional development it is important that we know the environmental and gene factors that contribute to risk factors in order to reduce them. It is also very crucial that parents and guardians know the right steps to take to build their resilience factors, which is what helps them deal with risk factors and other vulnerable matters healthily without succumbing to them. What I have managed to gather was that psychological functions are very much regulated by epigenetics, and that environmental factors amongst genetic liabilities determine the way you regulate your emotions. To not my surprise, research states that a chaotic environment surrounding a child leads to poor self-regulation. Ways to reduce problematic behavior that may occur due to poor emotional development is to build good community resources. This means making sure accessible health care, good education and social services are available as it would strengthen resilience factors. It Is also important to build a strong bond between children and their paternal figures, while monitoring their behaviour without excessively.

Why worry?

What I discovered from looking at EDI data for emotional vulnerability, my respective neighborhood, Lynn-Valley, seems to be in the middle compared to other neighborhoods in British Columbia. However, sadly the vulnerability rates seem to be increasing each year, meaning the conditions might worsen. Compared to Upper Lonsdale’s 13%, Lynn-Valley’s vulnerable level is 15%. In the wave 7 vulnerability, out of 168 children, 37 kids happened to be vulnerable which is 22%. All these numbers indicate that with a neighborhood like Lynn Valley, it is important parents and guardians should work on lowering these levels.

What we can do to help

The vulnerable behaviors children with vulnerable behaviors might exude may be violence tendencies like engaging in physical fights with others, and other unadmirable traits like bullying. They will have problems with regulating their emotions, and will display signs of disobedience with adults, along with inattentiveness and impulsivity. Other vulnerable signs to look out for that’s attached to this EDI is if the child cries a large amount and is often seen looking sad, fearful, or depressed. Another trait they might exhibit is the inability to make decisions. None of these behaviors will do any child a favor in life as they get older, so it is crucial that adults in their life consider options and interventions to lower these vulnerable traits.

The intervention that I encourage for children would be karate as I believe play and physical activity strengthens children’s emotional development, and it also helps young kids to understand rules and discipline, as well as to see the perspective of others. This combat sport advocates children working together with others and to learn from each other, and it will also assist with their disobedience issues. The strict and rigid environment will demand their attention problems, which would then lessen their problems with inattentiveness. Their bottled-up anger and frustrations can be let out because of the physicality of this sport, which I believe is good in the future for better self-regulation.

References

Barrett, K. C. (2020). Emotional development is complicated. Developmental Psychology, 56(4), 833–836. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000882

Berk, L. E. (2012). Infants and children: Prenatal through early childhood. Pearson.

Human Early Learning Partnership. EDI BC. Early Development Instrument British Columbia, 2016-2019 Wave 7 provincial report. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine, School of Population and Public

Human Early Learning Partnership. EDI (Early Years Development Instrument) W7 EDI Subscales Community Profile, 2020. Peace River South (SD59). Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, School of Population and Public Health; January 2021

Human Early Learning Partnership. Early Development Instrument [EDI] report. Wave 7 Community Profile, 2019. North Vancouver School District (SD44). Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine, School of Population and Public Health; February 2020.

Pishva, E., Drukker, M., Viechtbauer, W., Decoster, J., Collip, D., van Winkel, R., Wichers, M., Jacobs, N., Thiery, E., Derom, C., Geschwind, N., van den Hove, D., Lataster, T.,