## North Carolina Early Learning and Development Progressions: Birth to Five

#### Domain: NC Foundations for Early Learning: Emotional and Social Development (ESD)

#### Subdomain: Learning About Feelings

#### Goal: Children identify, manage, and express their feelings.

#### Skill Progression: Self-control

#### Age: 2-4 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 2-4 Months.

### Demonstrates self-calming by sucking on fist or thumb

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the infant during daily routines.

Elicitation Strategy

No elicitation needed.

Behavior Observed

The child finds his fist or thumb to suck on. The adult may also try guiding the infant’s fist to his mouth. Observe whether this is helpful for calming.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Sucking is not just for feeding. Sucking is also calming. Infants calm when they nurse, suck a bottle nipple or a pacifier. Fists and fingers are attached to the infant, so they allow the child to self-calm.

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2015

©2015 by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.