How to Work on Social-Emotional Skills With Your Toddler

Toddlers…they have BIG feelings that come with BIG emotions. Tantrums, meltdowns, and tears are sometimes just part of a normal day for little ones! Toddlers often have meltdowns and tantrums because they don’t have the appropriate language to express how they’re feeling, or because they don’t quite understand the uncomfortable feelings that they’re experiencing. Doing activities with your toddler that focus on social-emotional skills helps them learn how to deal with these new, big, uncomfortable feelings – and working on these skills with your kiddo helps you (eventually) have a calmer home! Teaching social-emotional skills at home can be simple and fun! Here are some fun activities that you can do with your little one to promote social-emotional development:

• Read!
  • There are a variety of books that address feelings and emotions that you can read with your child. Some of my favorites are:
    • Boo Who? by Ben Clanton
    • Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfeister
    • What Does It Mean to Be Kind? by Rana DiOrio
    • The Big Umbrella by Amy June Bates
    • The Feelings Book by Todd Parr
    • When Sophie Gets Angry – Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang
    • I Walk With Vanessa: A Story About A Simple Act of Kindness by Kerascoet
    • Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats
    • Lots of Feelings by Shelley Rotner
    • B is for Breathe: The ABCs of Coping with Fussy and Frustrating Feelings
      by Dr. Melissa Munro Boyd
    • The Pout-Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen
  • All of these books are excellent, but you can talk about social-emotional skills with any book – ask your child about how the character might feel, tell him/her how situations in stories might make you feel, talk about expressions on the character’s faces, etc.
• Talk to your child about identifying emotions
  • You can do this by practicing with clay or playdough, drawing pictures, or looking at pictures in magazines!
• Make “emotions masks” out of paper plates
• Check in each morning about how each other is feeling
• Play games related to emotions
• Make your own “calm-down kit” for your family! Some ideas of what you can include are:
  • Putty
  • Water sensory bottles
  • Emotions flashcards
  • Breathing exercises
• Play a sharing game
  • Turn-taking games are excellent for working on social-emotional skills; see my post about self-regulation skills for some suggestions of age-appropriate games for toddlers
• Model appropriate social-emotional skills for your children – they’re always watching you!

The last bullet, in my opinion, is the most important point in this whole article – YOU are your child’s best teacher. They learn how to express themselves by watching you, so do your best to model appropriate social-emotional skills for your children and talk to them about uncomfortable feelings! Most of all, remember to always validate their feelings, especially the tough ones; validating our toddler’s feelings helps them grow into adults who are compassionate and caring.