Emotional Development

Back to: School Age Children – Addressing the Impact of Trauma – Online Training

EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

We’ll begin this section on Emotional Development discussing normal or typical emotional development for school age children – about 6 to 12 years old.

This is a period of slow and steady emotional growth.  Many systems are involved in emotional development, including the brain, cognitive development, and physical maturity. It’s a period of increasing independence and identity formation as latency age children establish a broader sense of self, develop relationships and friendships outside of the home, and home in on their capacity to be as competent as possible.

We’ll then move on to the effects of trauma on emotional development and the resulting impact on relationships and social behavior. We will follow these introductory sections with a discussion on ways to promote emotional development with traumatized kids, beginning with the use of physicality, then thinking, relationships, and lastly, feelings, discussing ways to provide relationship based practices for trauma informed care.