How Does Social Development Affect Child Development

Social Development is our need and ability to interact and build trusting relationships with others. Children learn a lot from social interaction. This can be through their relationships with parents, teachers and friends. For a child a major part of social development is the skills they learn in order to adapt to their social environment, such as toilet training and washing, dressing and feeding themselves.

Emotional Development is when we have an understanding of our feelings and those of the people around us. Although emotional development in children is extremely important it can be harder to detect changes than other areas of child development. Emotional development is also about learning how to control and express emotions, such as when

Knowing how the different areas of development are dependent on each other helps us to better understand the holistic development of the child.

Some of the ways which social and emotional development affect other areas of development are:

Having strong gross motor and fine motor skills can help a child to interact and build relationships. Children build relationships and start friendships through play. Some of the skills that can help a child in these situations are running and jumping. Children also need certain skills to adapt to their social environment. This could be dressing and feeding themselves. To be able to do this they must have good fine motor skills.

A lot of what children learn comes from the environment they are in. Participating in group activities and story time can help a child with their intellectual

Family life - this can affect a child’s social and emotional development. If they see their parents fighting all the time they will be angry in school and this will affect their learning. If they come from a happy household they will most likely be happy and positive in their learning.

Educational Experiences – Good or bad can affect and impact future learning – Being rewarded with stars to help them achieve more. Being bullied will affect them.

Disability – Learning disabilities can hugely affect children. If they have problems with reading, writing or concentrating in class it will hold them back and also affect the class. Their self-esteem will be affected and they will be frustrated while trying to learn.

A healthy social development can help a child make good physical relationships.

Good social skills can help children interact with others.

Certain family situations or changes to family life and coming from a disadvantaged area can affect a child’s social and emotional development.

Being social and interacting with others helps a child learn new words and communicate better.

A child with good social skills is usually happy which makes them emotionally healthy.

Being emotionally happy helps a child think positive thoughts and they will have a good attitude to