Sense of Self and Others

After the age of 3 years, children have developed a way to persuade their adults to meet their needs. We often relate this to the individual child’s attachment style and their personality, as the adult and the child develop their unique relationship, alongside each other. Children in this phase of emotional development are starting to gain a sense of who they are, what they are like, and how to relate to people around them. This ‘sense of self’ will be based on their experiences of the relationships they have built so far and the care they have received from others. This prior experience, shapes children’s behaviours, and their expectations of how other people will respond to them now, and in the future. We offer the practitioner a broad perspective of the term ‘self-regulation’ and extend far beyond the widely promulgated Ofsted viewpoint and set out in the Early Learning Goals within the EYFS (Early Years Foundation Stage) framework, that self-regulation is concerned only with a child’s ability to manage their own behaviour in line with a narrow view of adult expectations. We suggest ways to develop the physical and emotional environments, so that children feel empowered to make decisions and achieve a level of personal autonomy, which promotes positive self-esteem and reduces incidents of conflict. We continue to discuss the adult’s wellbeing and how our ability to ‘self-regulate’ impacts on the children we’re supporting. We offer further suggestions to help us recognise and address our own feelings of dysregulation. As children move into this phase of emotional development, they begin to develop ‘theory of mind’, and develop a sense of empathy towards the wishes, thoughts and needs of others. They begin to understand that other people have thoughts of their own and might not be thinking the same thing as they are. This knowledge then leads to the acquisition of some of the behaviours known as ‘pro-social’, such as sharing, helping and comforting others. The development of these behaviours is strongly influenced by children’s personal experiences acquired through their own relationships with other children and with adults. We use the PACE model here to demonstrate how we can support empathy, promote positive relationships and enable self-regulation.