by Tina Behin

What is emotional development?

Emotions are a complex, yet natural conscious response that allows people to express themselves and understand the world around them. A questionnaire called the Early Development Instrument (EDI) has emerged to examine the emotional maturity of children in specific neighbourhoods. The scale of emotional maturity refers to the child’s ability to recognize and control how they respond to a stimulus. It is a phenomenon that communicates how an individual acts in response to challenges, how they build relationships, and how their overall behaviour.  Researchers have been examining these emotional responses of children to better interpret the variability between individuals and to further improve their understanding on emotional maturity.

What factors influence emotional maturity and plays as risk factors?

Two factors that significantly influence a child’s emotional maturity involve their genes and their environment. People are a product of both their genetic makeup and the environment, thus due to the differences between people, children’s emotional responses to stimuli differ greatly. As children grow older, their emotional responses may develop or get modified both with time and new experiences. A unit of heredity that takes part in the development of emotional maturity among children involves genes, which are a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that encodes a trait. The differences in gene expression give rise to the diversity among people and throughout an individual’s life, and as their epigenome changes, so does their emotional maturity. Children vulnerable to emotional maturity may not be able to regulate their emotions or they may find it difficult to control negative behaviours, such as aggression or anger. This can be a risk factor to a child’s resilience, which is the act of successfully adapting to challenges that may harm the development and success of an individual (Masten & Barnes, 2018).

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory states that child development is affected by several environmental factors (Berk, 2020), such as an individual’s family values, or school. His theory further explains how five structures of the environment concern the child’s development: the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem (Berk, 2020). Ultimately, understanding the effects of the environment on child development is crucial when determining children’s behaviour. For example, a child who was brought up in a disordered household with marital conflicts or stressors may show negative emotional responses to a stimulus when compared to a child who was raised in a loving and supportive household.

Parent-child conflicts are another factor to consider when determining the cause of emotional maturity as a child’s emotional response is greatly influenced by their parents’ expressions. When parent-child conflicts become frequent, long-term behavioural disturbances or threats to the internalizing and externalizing emotions of the child occur (Ferrar et al., 2020). At a young age, children are navigating through their emotions, and loss of control can be easy, however, if the child can control their temper and push down negative feelings, they will have a higher chance of successfully adapting to future threats to their development.

Emotional Maturity from the Ambleside-Dundarave Neighbourhood

The EDI data gathered from the Ambleside-Dundarave neighbourhood in West Vancouver (SD45) showed a high rate of vulnerability for emotional maturity when compared to its neighbours. The vulnerability levels for emotional maturity for children living in the Ambleside-Dundarave neighbourhood in West Vancouver marks at 17% (or 70 children). Unfortunately, there has been a significant increase in the rate of vulnerability, thus we can assume that children are finding more difficulties in trying to regulate their emotions and they seem to respond negatively in tough situations. Thus, parents and scholars must use early interventions to help reduce emotional vulnerability among children.

How can we decrease vulnerability of emotional maturity?

Vulnerable behaviours for emotional maturity include scores that are high in aggressive behaviour, hyperactive and inattentive behaviour, and anxious and fearful behaviour, but low on the prosocial and helping behaviour scale. The social learning theory emphasized how moral behaviour is learned through modeling and reinforcement. Thus, having a warm, giving, moral, and consistent parent, caregiver, or adult figure in the child’s life will help discipline the child and affect change in their behaviour (Berk, 2020). Furthermore, children who show signs of aggressive behaviours can participate in organized sports, such as soccer or kickboxing, to reduce the behavioural problems at a young age and learn the art of patience. In participating in these activities, children will learn how to regulate their emotions and channel their negative feelings in a more positive and socially acceptable manner. As children learn to control their emotions through these interventions, vulnerability levels will decrease, and they will behave in a more positive manner when faced with a challenging situation in the future.

References

Berk, L. E. (2020). Infants and Children (9th Edition). Pearson Education (US).

Census (National Household), 2016 Human Early Learning Partnership. EDI (Early Years Development Instrument) report. Wave 6 Community Profile, 2016. West Vancouver (SD45). Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, School of Population and Public Health; October 2016

Ferrar, S. J., Stack, D. M., Dickson, D. J., & Serbin, L. A. (2020). Conflict Resolution and Emotional Expression in Mother-Preadolescent Dyads: Longitudinal Associations with Children’s Socioemotional Development. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49(11), 2388. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01312-z

Human Early Learning Partnership. Early Development Instrument [EDI] report. Wave 7 Community Profile, 2019. West Vancouver School District (SD45). Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine, School of Population and Public Health; February 2020. Available from: http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/media/edi_w7_communityprofiles/edi_w7_communityprofile_sd_45.pdf

Masten, A. S., & Barnes, A. J. (2018). Resilience in children: Developmental perspectives. Children, 5(7), 98. https://doi.org/10.3390/children5070098