Take A Moment to Reflect on ... Social

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The Council is excited to announce the 2013 release of Essentials for Child Development Associates: Working with Young Children. The newly-revised textbook will be organized around each of the thirteen Functional Areas and other key topics of interest to contemporary teachers and caregivers.

Here is an advanced sneak peek of “Chapter 9: Social” for you to reflect on…

Part of growing up healthy is having a well-developed sense of self.  At the same time that children are feeling good about themselves and competent about their capabilities, we want them to feel good about being with, learning from and helping others. As much as we need self-esteem, we also need others in order to live a fulfilling life.

Learning to be social involves being comfortable with others and enjoying their company. Another part of being social involves building the skills necessary to engage with others. Both are needed for effective socialization.

Early childhood educators have a large role to play in facilitating children's social development. They do this by planning activities that put children together, arranging the room to promote social activities, working with children to promote play, friendship and conflict resolution and facilitating what are called “prosocial” behaviors; behaviors intended to benefit one another, such as helping, sharing, and comforting.

There are five basic tasks involved in helping children develop social skills.  These include:

  1. Helping each child feel a valued member of the group
  2. Supporting children's play
  3. Helping children make friends
  4. Helping children develop conflict resolution strategies
  5. Promoting kindness and respectful social skills in young children.

Please take a moment to reflect on your own teaching practices.  What else might you add to the above list?  What do you think are the most important goals to remember in supporting young children’s social development?  What tips and strategies would you share with others?

Send your thoughts, along with your first name, last initial, city and state, to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  Next month, we’ll share with you all of the wise responses we received from across the national CDA community.  In addition, we may also print your name and reflection in the new Essentials textbook and share your great ideas with all of the CDA-seeking community college students around the country who use Essentials as their primary textbook!

CDA Community Reflections on our last topic… “Self”

Last month, we asked the CDA community to send us their thoughts about the topic of the last article, “Self,” to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .  Thank you to everyone who responded.  Here are a few very wise responses we received:

“I really agree about assisting children in expressing their feelings.  It’s important that they use their words instead of their hands when they have strong feelings.  We have a poster up in our room that shows different feelings and we walk our toddlers over to it and say “point to how you are feeling” and then we name it for them.”

                - Tamara T.
                   Brooklyn, NY

“It’s really important to accept each child and their family for who they are, no matter what.  I have a family in my class with two moms and I want to make sure that the child always feels like her family is just as good as any other family and that her moms feel the same way.”

                - Mariah S.
                  Lexington, KY

“In my classroom, the kids take turns each week being featured in the Me Museum.  The Me Museum is a shelf that the Child of the Week can display family pictures, baby shoes, a favorite stuffed animal or whatever they’d like.  Each child feels very proud when they are in the spotlight.”

                - Susan B.
                  Viroqua, WI