Many factors affect the social and emotional growth of children.  Parents are the most significant influence on children’s feelings about themselves.  Kids who feel liked and accepted by their parents have a strong foundation for successful social and emotional development.

     1.  the effect of personality and behavior on how kids are perceived by others

     2.  moral development as it relates to family and friends

     3.  children’s fears, which can both hamper their emotional growth and protect them

     4.  friendship, which children often identify as the most important part of their lives.  

The suggestions offer ways for parents to foster healthy social and emotional growth in children.

Controversy continues as to how much of a child’s personality is determined by heredity, and how much by environmental influences.  Watching new-born infants, one quickly becomes aware of the temperamental variations among children.  From the beginning of life, the infants’ varying energy levels and abilities to respond to sound, touch, and visual stimuli offer clues to their emerging personality growth.

Parents are the most important influence on a child’s emerging social and emotional personality.  A young child’s primary growth with the world is through the family.   Kids learn to view themselves through their parents’ reactions to their behavior.

Children always test out different kinds of behavior on the people close to them.  Their social growth starts in imitating other children, adults, and characters they see on TV or read about in books.  How parents respond to these behavioral experiments within a supportive environment can help children to learn socially acceptable standards of behavior.

Social and emotional growth of children differs in many ways. Each child has a unique way of interacting in the world.  It is important to observe a child in many different situations.  A child’s reaction in one setting might differ from the same child’s reaction in another setting.  It is the child’s typical conduct that helps us understand his or her developing personality.

For example, if a child whines a few times a week to get a desired response, the whining is probably no cause for concern; but if a child whines a number of times every day, he or she might have learned that whining causes adults to give in to his or her wishes. 

Social and emotional growth of children is predictable in many situations.   People begin to describe the children’s personality in terms of their displayed behavior.  If parents can recognize an unwanted form of behavior in their early stages, they can redirect or alter it before it becomes a personality characteristic.

Some potentially annoying forms of behaviour are described in many ways.  Without parental intervention, the social and emotional growth of children could become their personality traits.  Offer a variety of ways to intervene and attempt to alter any child’s bad behaviour.  The goal is to help children develop personality characteristics that will make them feel worthwhile.