Research

That Matters

Emotional Literacy

“There are 1,825 days between the day a child is born and the day she turns five and enters kindergarten. During that time, the child is learning to be a social being,” says UW College of Education researcher Gail Joseph, who focuses on children’s social-emotional development. “Children can learn to be aggressive, or they can learn more peaceful ways to inhabit the world.” Preschools and childcare centers can be critical sites for that learning.

Across the country, early childhood educators and caregivers say behavior problems are the biggest challenge they face daily. mad boy Young children whine, spit, hit, scream and throw tantrums. Adults too often don’t know what to do, have inappropriate expectations, or use ineffective practices. Early childhood educators have told Joseph that they feel frustrated, irritated, guilty and unable to do their job. Many quit, sick of maximum stress on minimum wages, thus adding to already high staff turnover in the field.

“Is there anyone in any profession who can go to work feeling that way and do a great job?” asks Joseph.

The assistant professor, who served as a mental health program specialist in the Washington, D.C. Head Start bureau, surveyed early childhood caregivers and educators to see how they dealt with challenging behavior. The top disciplinary method was the time-out, which, in its traditional form, isolates the child and doesn’t expressly teach alternatives to the problem behavior.

Teachers in the survey resorted to time-outs almost twice as often as any other strategy. A few opted to deal with challenges by talking to parents, not kids. Some simply ignored bad behavior. At the very bottom of the go-to techniques were more effective options such as finding out why the child behaved that way, changing the environment to increase child engagement or change their own behavior, such as by giving time and attention to a child’s positive vs. challenging behavior.

“That concerned me. It suggests that the most prevalent practices are the least effective,” says Joseph. “There seems to be little focus on supporting, fostering and teaching children social-emotional skills.”

Preschoolers need to be taught not only ABCs and 1-2-3s, but the basics of what Joseph terms “emotional literacy” — how to express feelings, talk to peers, exercise self-control and generate solutions to problems. Many troubled teaching emotional literacy youngsters have a limited vocabulary of feeling words — “mad, happy, tired” — and hold few positive strategies in their behavioral tool kits.

Studies show that early intervention can build these skills, giving preschoolers new strategies for problem solving. Maybe they learn to say, “OK, it was an accident,” or make the fine distinction between “disappointed” and “sad.” Maybe they learn to see problems through others’ eyes or learn skills that help them stop and think before they act.

Joseph has studied some of the best social-emotional curricula on the market, evidence-based programs that use everything from puppetry to parent training to tackle anti-social behavior in preschool centers. The programs, she says, aren’t being used as often, or as effectively as they could be. “There is this misleading thought that it need only be taught a couple days a week, and that’s the time to focus. If you problem-solve and describe emotions only on Tuesday, that’s not very effective when social-emotional issues arise every day,” she says.

One barrier to widespread use of effective programs is accessibility. The programs can cost from hundreds to thousands of dollars — although some strategies are low-cost or free and can be downloaded proud girl from web sites (for example: www.vanderbilt.edu/csefel). Even if childcare centers adopt effective curricula, caregivers with limited background in early childhood education may be unsure how to use the programs. Only one-quarter of the states in the U.S. require any training for childcare teachers.

Another barrier is time. Early childhood educators are increasingly being asked to focus on more academically oriented curricula as the pressure of high-stakes testing drifts down to preschool. Parents may expect educators to prep kids for good test scores, not practice compassionate behavior.

“Tests measure what is easily measurable. Social-emotional development is not easily measurable, so it’s often off the radar,” says Joseph. “People say, ‘We need our kids ready for kindergarten.’ There is debate, however, about what getting ready for kindergarten looks like.”

Teachers across the country say that about 20 percent of children enter kindergarten today with inadequate social and emotional skills. That bodes ill for those children’s future. Evidence exists that children’s social and emotional competence is integrally linked to their cognitive and academic competencies, manifested by their ability to learn and to be successful at school. Evidence also suggests that without intervention, emotional and behavioral problems in young children may be less amenable to intervention after age 8, resulting in an escalation of academic problems and challenging behavior.

In fact, early behavior problems in preschool are the single best predictor of delinquency in adolescence, substance abuse, gang membership and adult incarceration, according to multiple studies. That’s a huge cost — to society and to the once-teachable child grown into an unreachable adult.

“We’re in a pay-now or pay-later situation in terms of supporting social-emotional development,” says Joseph, who developed a leadership program for early childcare administrators to examine the problem. In one workshop, she asked administrators to imagine what morning headlines would say if their biggest dream for early childhood education had been fulfilled. One answered, “Prisons to close.”

“That says it all,” concludes Joseph.

For more information about Joseph’s model for teaching social-emotional competence, see:

Fox, L., Dunlap, G., Hemmeter, M. L., Joseph, G. E., & Strain, P. S. (2003). The teaching pyramid: A model for supporting social competence and preventing challenging behavior in young children. Young Children.