Dealing with feelings: How children negotiate the worlds of emotions and social relationships.

ABSTRACT This review details the developmental progression of emotional from preschool age through middle childhood, and provides extant evidence for its relation to social competence, mental health, and academic success. Intra- and interpersonal contributors to emotional are then detailed. Within interpersonal contributors, the relational context in which socialization takes place - whether parent-child, teacher-child, peer group, or friendship dyad - is first considered. Finally, extant information is detailed on the modeling, contingency, and teaching mechanisms of socialization of emotions within these relationships. The review ends with a discussion of hoped-for continued advances in research and applications of this vital set of abilities. KEYWORDS: emotional competence, social competence, relationships, early childhood, middle childhood. Children's need to master emotional and social developmental tasks, in order to succeed in school, has been highlighted recently by both researchers and policy analysts (Huffman, Mehlinger, & Kerivan, 2000). In this article I seek to elucidate the key elements of emotional competence, it relation to social and academic success, and the ways in which adults and peers contribute to its development, from theoretical, research, and applied perspectives. To begin, I offer a preliminary definition of emotional competence: Emotional competence includes expressing emotions that are, or are not, experienced, regulating emotions in ways that are age and socially appropriate, and decoding these processes in self and others (Halberstadt, Denham, & Dunsmore, 2001). Importantly, these skills and attributes play a central role in the development of pathways to mental health and risk, as well as social and academic success, from foundations laid during preschool and gradeschool. To understand these connections, one need only consider the key social developmental tasks of each age period. One of preschool-aged children's most important developmental tasks is achieving sustained positive engagement with peers, while managing emotional arousal within interaction and beginning to meet the social expectations by persons other than one's parents (e.g., teachers' evaluations, peer status; Gottman & Mettetal, 1986; Parker & Gottman, 1989). Arguments must be resolved so that play can continue; enjoying one another's company greases the cogs of sustained interaction. The processes inherent in succeeding at these social tasks call repeatedly for skills of emotional competence. Coordination of play is the preschool child's overriding goal. Serving this goal are social processes of common-ground activity, conflict management, creation of a me too climate, shared fantasy, and amity (i.e., achieving good will and harmony). The components of emotional help to ensure that such effective, successful social interactions are built upon specific skills such as listening, cooperating, appropriate help seeking, joining another child or small group, and negotiating. Young children must learn to avoid the disorganization of a tantrum, to think reflectively, rather than perseveratively, about a distressing situation, so emotion regulation is especially important. The young child who succeeds at these central developmental tasks is in a good position to continue thriving in a social world: Successful, independent interaction with agemates is a crucial predictor of later mental health and well-being, beginning during preschool, continuing during the grade school years when peer reputations solidify, and thereafter (Denham & Holt, 1993; Robins & Rutter, 1990) The goals, social processes, and emotional tasks central to social change radically from preschool to gradeschool (Gottman & Mettetal, 1986; Parker & Gottman, 1989); in fact, the very nature of adaptive social functioning changes as the child develops (Zeman & Shipman, 1996). …