The development of emotional competence begins in infancy and continues until adolescence, with children increasingly obtaining the ability to detect and regulate their own emotions, as well as respond to the emotions of others. Adult support is required during early childhood since the parts of the brain responsible for self-regulation and self-management are still developing. Children’s emotional competences might fluctuate from day to day before they can reliably regulate their own feelings and behavior, and they may deteriorate as a result of fatigue, stress, or anxiety.

 Parents and teachers also have influence in terms of how they talk about and teach children about emotions, this involves:

• Acknowledging, affirming and empathising with all emotions as natural. Be available to help children to notice and understand their emotions as they occur, and use emotions as learning opportunities to discuss feelings, intentions, and the impact that behaviors have on peers, which is associated with children’s understanding of emotion and ability to imagine how other people are thinking and feeling.
• Deliberately using and encouraging emotion-related language to label and explain feelings. Offer prompts such as “It looked like you were feeling disappointed”, and talk about your own feelings and responses – for example, “That is frustrating. Hmm, I’ll have to take a deep breath and figure out what to try next”. Learn words for emotions in children’s home languages. Teachers and caregivers’ use of emotion language is found to predict children’s emotional regulatory competence.
• Intentional, well-informed teaching about emotion. Create a list of the emotion words you want children to learn. Teach children how their brains and bodies react to particular emotions, such as increased heart rate or a fluttery feeling in the stomach. Use resources such as visuals and picture cards that show emotions. Sing songs (try using a range of emotion words in ‘If you’re happy and you know it…’) or play musical emotions (demonstrating a specific emotion when the music stops) and emotion charades.
• Encouraging children to try to read the emotions of their peers, and think about what they could do to support their peer when they are sad or lonely, for example.
• Using stories, particularly fairy stories (which have particularly exaggerated emotions) to discuss how characters may be feeling and what they may be thinking.  Puppets or small figures can be useful to explore the stories and reflect on the feelings of the characters without actually taking on the emotions.