## 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: 15-18 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 15-18 Months.

### Seeks out adult for comfort, but beginning to self-calm

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child during natural interactions. The child often needs comforting because of frustration.

Elicitation Strategy

If no opportunity presents itself, the adult can challenge the child by ending play with a preferred toy before the child is finished playing with it.

Behavior Observed

Watch what the child does to self-calm and how quickly the child turns to the adult for support. Some children may quickly shift their attention (diverting attention), others will sulk or cry, but quickly calm and find a new activity of interest. Other children will immediately seek adult support, indicating they haven’t yet started to develop self-regulation strategies.

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Encourage early childhood educators and parents to help children self-calm by re-directing their attention rather than offering physical comforting. This will encourage children to develop their own options for self-regulation when frustrated.

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/.