Social and Emotional Development Podcast

0:00 MUSIC

0:07 ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

Hello, I'm Annmarie McMahill and this is a Tools for Your Child’s Success podcast.

In this podcast, we'll be learning from an expert in the field about social and emotional development, what it means, its importance and some examples of how to grow these skills for your child's success.

DR. MAURICE ELIAS:

We don't stop developing socially and emotionally, it starts when you're born, and it keeps going, because social and emotional development is really about how do we get along in life? How do we interact with other people? How do we organize ourselves to get things done?

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL

I'd like to introduce our guest for today's podcast, Dr. Maurice Elias is one of the pioneers of social and emotional development. He's a professor in the psychology department at Rutgers University, Director of the Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab, and Co-director of the Academy for SEL in Schools. He's also a pioneer and founding member of the leadership team for CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. He's written Emotionally Intelligent Parenting, Talking Treasure: Stories to Help Build Emotional Intelligence and Resilience in Young Children, The Joys & Oys of Parenting and Nurturing Students' Character: Everyday Teaching Activities for Social-Emotional Learning. He blogs on social and emotional development at edutopia.org, and he lectures nationally and internationally.

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

Well, let's start today by having you explain a little bit more of what is meant by social and emotional development.

DR. MAURICE ELIAS:

I should preface this by saying, I have a new granddaughter who is three months plus old, so this gives me a perspective on seeing how everything develops. You see her physical development, you see her social development and how she engages with her parents and with other people. You see her, you see her emotional development, how she is able to control herself, and, and so when you have the privilege of watching, uh, a newborn, especially as a grandparent, um, you just see everything develops, and of course that includes your social and emotional person.

Um, and, and of... and we don't stop developing socially and emotionally, i- it starts when you're born, and we... it keeps going, because social and emotional development is really about how do we get along in life? How do we interact with other people? How do we organize ourselves to get things done? Um, all of that depends on, on aspects of our social and emotional development, and so, uh, so these are, uh, skills that everybody, uh, starts with and... that we want to develop over time, so that people can handle situations, manage well, um, you know, live a productive and constructive life and deal with other people and know how to do that. So that's kind of, uh, you know, that's kind of what social and emotional development is about, it's, it's critically important to everybody.

ANNMARIE MCMAHILL:

What do you think some things, um, that parents might misunderstand about social and emotional development?

DR. MAURICE ELIAS:

Well, you know, I think sometimes, uh, people think in terms of character, and they think that certain things are inborn, that, you know, "My kid's a certain kind of kid," and, then that's just the way they are, but in reality, uh, we have... we, we come, we come out with like these different factory presets. You know, some kids are indeed calmer than others, and some kids are indeed more active than others, but all of these things can be modified over time by the way we treat kids and the way they interact with the world. So I think one, um, misconception that parents have, is the extent to which social and...