Holistic Development: Emotional Health

Conventional education delivers us learning systems that abides the law of intellectual learning, but the disappointing
part is that intelligence quotient is slowly becoming the students' identification of how smart and how great they are as
individuals. However, this is misleading and a wrong concept of how our brain works. Aside from all the knowledge we
acquire from school, the most important thing we should achieve is the holistic growth. And beneath our holistic health
lies the emotions that we should cultivate and develop properly.
MEANING
Emotional Development Starts at Birth and Continues until Adulthood 
Infants and young children learn and develop holistically, which means that their physical and emotional
development occurs at the same time and interdependently on each other. For example, singing softly to a
crying infant is calming them and it is also beneficial for bonding and emotional soothing.
Emotional development is a complex task that begins from infancy to adulthood. The first emotions that can be
recognized by babies are joy, anger, sadness and fear. As children’s sense of self develops, more complex
emotions emerge like shyness, surprise, elation, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride and empathy. School aged
children and young people are still learning to identify emotions, to understand why they happen and how to
manage them appropriately (Beyond Blue, 2016).
Infancy
Smiles and other expressions of joy promote social interaction and healthy attachment relationships with
primary caregivers. The expression of sadness encourages empathy and helping behaviour, and the expression
of anger signals protest and discomfort. Infants’ unique tendency to experience and express particular emotions
and the threshold for expressing those emotions is usually referred to as their temperament or characteristic
emotionality (Trentacosta, n.d.).

The expression of emotions during infancy promotes the transition from complete dependency to autonomy. The
expression of interest promotes exploration and cognitive development. Social (intentional) smiles and other
expressions of joy promote social interaction and healthy attachment relationships with primary caregivers. The
expression of sadness encourages empathy and helping behaviour, and the expression of anger signals protest and
discomfort. Infants’ unique tendency to experience and express particular emotions and the threshold for expressing
those emotions is usually referred to as their temperament or characteristic emotionality.
 
Researchers generally agree that neonatal (nonintentional) smiles are present at birth and that social smiling and
emotional expressions of interest appear as early as six weeks of age. By four to five months of age, infants selectively
smile at familiar faces and at other infants, and their caregivers begin to share positive emotional exchanges with them.
Researchers disagree in their explanations of the development and time of emergence of discrete negative emotional
expressions. Consistently with the view that infants express negative emotions in early infancy, scientists have shown
that infants perceive and respond differentially to the negative emotional expressions (e.g., sadness, anger) of others by
the age of four months.
During the second six months of life, as infants gain rudimentary cognitive and memory capacities, they begin to express
particular emotions based on context. Emotions begin to emerge dynamically as the infant begins to take a more direct
role in emotional exchanges with caregivers. The emotional bond with the caregiver is increasingly important, as infants
seek support for exploration and look for signals of danger.

Toddlerhood and early childhood

During the toddler period, within the conjunction with rapid maturation of the frontal lobes and the limbic
circuit in the brain, recognition of the self emerges. As a result, the toddler strives to become more
independent, and the expression of anger and defiance increases in that struggle for autonomy. The ability to
differentiate the self from others also promotes basic empathetic behaviour and moral understanding
(Trentacosta, n.d.).
By the end of the second year of life, toddlers respond to negative signals from others, and they have specific emotional
responses to their own negative actions. The emotions that emerge with a rudimentary conception of the self are often
called self-conscious emotions and include shame, embarrassment, guilt, and pride. Some self-conscious emotions, such
as pride and guilt, do not emerge until toddlers and young children have learned to conceptualize internalized standards
of behaviour.
 
As children enter preschool, they begin to label their own emotions and rely on discourse about emotions within the
family to facilitate their understanding of basic emotions. Young children first distinguish happiness from negative
emotions and then begin to distinguish negative emotions such as sadness, anger, and fear from each other. They begin
to recognize these emotions in facial expressions, and then, as they enter middle childhood, they begin to understand
situational determinants of emotions. An understanding of emotional subjectivity also develops as children learn that
what makes one child happy may not make another child feel the same way.
 
The emergence of emotional self-regulation is particularly important during early childhood and occurs in the context of
family and peer relationships. Open expression of positive emotions and warm, supportive relationships between
parents and children promote effective emotional self-regulation. On the other hand, frequent expression of negative
emotions in the family and harsh, punitive disciplinary responses increase the experience of distressing and dysregulated
emotions that may lead to psychopathology. Appropriate peer relationships characterized by shared play activities are
also important for the development of emotional regulation during early childhood. Children gain emotional
understanding and the capacity for empathetic and helping behaviour from well-regulated emotional exchanges with
peers.

Middle and late childhood

During middle and late childhood, stable self-concepts based on the child’s typical emotional experiences
emerge. With the increased capacity for self-reflection, children gain an understanding of their self-conscious
emotions. As a result, the consistent experience of patterns of self-conscious emotions has an impact on the
child’s self-concept. For example, the tendency to experience shame rather than guilt in response to negative
transgressions affects the child’s emergent self-esteem and may encourage a tendency to respond with
aggression or violence (Trentacosta, n.d.).

During middle and late childhood, children begin to understand that a single situation or event can lead to the
experience of multiple, mixed emotions. For example, older children understand that a goodbye party for a sibling
who will leave for college is likely to be both a happy and a sad event for the child and his sibling. This capacity likely
emerges with the cognitive capacity to understand multiple aspects of a situation, called decentration.
 
Children also learn emotional display rules as they progress through middle and late childhood. For example, a child
learns to look happy even though she feels upset when a friend or family member gives her an undesirable gift. The
use of display rules tends to increase as children begin to consider what consequences their actions may have for
others. Display rules are used judiciously, and the likelihood of suppressing negative emotion depends on a number of
factors, including the child’s gender, the likely recipients of the expression, the specific context, and the child’s
cultural milieu.

Adolescence
With adolescence comes an additional struggle for autonomy and increased time spent with peers and less
time spent with the family. Adolescents become less emotionally dependent on their parents, but this
emotional autonomy often emerges after a period of conflict and increased experience of negative emotions.
Adolescents tend to experience more extreme emotions, both negative and positive, than their parents even
in response to the same event. 
Dating relationships also become prominent during adolescence, but young adolescents may still have
difficulty understanding that one person can evoke different and conflicting emotional responses. Therefore,
 dating during adolescence is often characterized by extreme emotional variability. Dating partners are also
prone to experiencing jealousy, particularly when they make errors in determining the intent of their
partner’s actions (Trentacosta, n.d.).

The rise in negative emotional experiences during early adolescence emerges in conjunction with the capacity for
abstract thinking. Adolescents often experience emotional distress in response to ambiguous and imagined romantic
exchanges, and their capacity to experience complex and diverse emotions further promotes the development of
abstract thinking. As adolescents grapple with increasingly abstract and complex social problems, they often seek a
stable peer group as the context for emotional management. Positive peer relationships emerge from the recognition
of equality and the tendency to offer emotional support. Adolescents who are not accepted by their peers face
numerous risks, including school dropout and delinquency. Even adolescents who are accepted by peers and have
close friends often show an increase in negative emotions such as anger and anxiety in the peer context during
adolescence. Overall, positive and supportive peer relations during adolescence promote healthy emotional
development and mental health as the adolescent enters adulthood. 
Identity development is important for adolescents as they approach adulthood. When adolescents or young adults
are exploring many identity options, they often have high levels of anxiety but show interest in exploring those
options. Adolescents who make an early commitment to a particular identity, usually an identity promoted by their
family, have low levels of anxiety and do not experience much conflict in their family relationships. Adolescents who
are not exploring identity options tend to have low levels of motivation and often appear bored or apathetic. They
have poorer peer relationships and are at greatest risk for mental-health problems during adulthood.

Finally, in the research from Trentacosta (n.d.), young adults who have achieved a stable sense of identity tend to be
more empathetic and are more successful at managing their emotions.
But why is Emotional Development Important?
Emotional Competence (Saarni, 2011)
1. Awareness of one’s emotional state, including the possibility that one is experiencing multiple emotions, and
at even more mature levels, awareness that one might also not be consciously aware of one’s feelings due to
unconscious dynamics or selective inattention.
2. Skills in discerning and understanding others’ emotions, based on situational and expressive cues that have
some degree of consensus as to their emotional meaning.
3. Skill in using the vocabulary of emotion and expression in terms commonly available in one’s subculture and
at more mature levels to acquire cultural scripts that link emotion with social roles.
4. Capacity for empathic and sympathetic involvement in others’ emotional experiences.
5. Skill in realizing that inner emotional state need not correspond to outer expression, both in oneself and in
others, and at more mature levels the ability to understand that one’s emotional-expressive behavior may
impact on another and take this into account in one’s self-presentation strategies.
6. Capacity for adaptive coping with aversive or distressing emotions by using self-regulatory strategies that
ameliorate the intensity or temporal duration of such emotional states (e.g., “stress hardiness”).
7. Awareness that the structure or nature of relationships is in part defined by both the degree of emotional
immediacy or genuineness of expressive display and by the degree of reciprocity or symmetry within the
relationship; e.g., mature intimacy is in part defined by mutual or reciprocal sharing of genuine emotions,
whereas a parent-child relationship may have asymmetric sharing of genuine emotions.
8. Capacity for emotional self-efficacy: The individual views her- or himself as feeling, overall, the way he or
she wants to feel. That is, emotional self-efficacy means that one accepts one's emotional experience,
whether unique and eccentric or culturally conventional, and this acceptance is in alignment with the
individual’s beliefs about what constitutes desirable emotional “balance.” In essence, one is living in accord
 with one's personal theory of emotion when one demonstrates emotional self-efficacy that is integrated with
one's moral sense.
Our emotional health often gets overlooked to be “just as fine” as our physical health and doesn’t get the priority it
deserves. But we should understand that when it comes to a wrecked emotion, the physical well-being follows its
downfall; that is why it is really important that we give value to our emotional state.
Emotional development is vital in helping children grow into well-adjusted adults. Being able to identify different
feelings, express them (through words/pictures) and process the difficult emotions enables children to be healthy
emotionally and psychologically.
Helping children find their voice and being able to have a conversation about how they are feeling with a safe adult
means that they will feel happier, safer and more confident (Allen, 2019).

Lopez
Holistic Development: Emotional Health
Emotional Development Starts at Birth and Continues until Adulthood 
Gomez
Infancy
Toddlerhood and early childhood
Perang
Middle and late childhood
Adolescence
Lopez
Finally,
But why is Emotional Development Important?
Emotional Competence
1. Awareness of one’s emotional state
Gomez
2. Skills in discerning and understanding others’ emotions
3. Skill in using the vocabulary of emotion and expression 
4. Capacity for empathic and sympathetic involvement in others’ emotional experiences.
5. Skill in realizing that inner emotional state need not correspond to outer expression
Perang
6. Capacity for adaptive coping with aversive or distressing emotions
7. Awareness that the structure or nature of relationships is in part defined by both the degree of emotional
immediacy 
8. Capacity for emotional self-efficacy:
Gomez
Our emotional health…
Perang
Emotional development is vital…
Lopez
 Helping children…

References:

Allen, S. (2019). Why is emotional development important with children? Lefika La Phodiso.

https://lefikalaphodiso.co.za/why-is-emotional-development-important-with-children/

Beyond Blue. (2016). What’s emotional development? Be You. https://beyou.edu.au/fact-sheets/social-and-

emotional-learning/emotional-development

Saarni, C. (2011, September). Emotional Development in Childhood. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood

Development. https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/emotions/according-experts/emotional-

development-childhood

Trentacosta, C. (n.d.). Emotional development. Britannica. Retrieved September 26, 2021, from

https://www.britannica.com/science/emotional-development/Adolescence