## 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 recognize and respond to the needs and feelings of others.

#### Skill Progression: Recognizes and responds to needs and feelings of others

#### Age: 8-10 Months

You may choose a different domain, go back, or click on a skill below for more information.

### Social referencing (checks adults cues) used to determine how he should respond to situations

Situations for Observation of Skill

As the baby begins exploring the environment with scooting and crawling, watch his reaction when he approaches a new item such as stairs.

Elicitation Strategy

If the infant does not independently move away from the adult, the adult can move the infant to a new area for exploration (stairs, a cupboard, on a sofa).

Behavior Observed

As the infant explores, he will look back at the adult’s face to see the adult’s emotional expression. If the adult is smiling he will continue exploration. If the adult looks angry or frustrated, the infant will stop and think before proceeding, and may move toward the adult.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Help early childhood educators and parents understand that children at this level are learning who they can trust, what is safe, and how adults feel about what they are doing by reading their facial expressions. Positive expression means keep going. Negative expression means what you are doing may not be good. Infants want to stay within eye contact. If adults are too wary infants do not explore as much.

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/.