Emotional, Social Readiness Aid School Success

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It doesn't matter whether you're five or 55, being able to handle yourself socially and emotionally is important to doing well in life. Yet many kids enter school without the social and emotional readiness to succeed, says Dr. Rebecca Novick at the Northwest Education Laboratory. Reading and discussing emotions can begin as early as preschool, says this author of Many Paths to Literacy: Language, Literature, and Learning in the Primary Classroom.

Pointing to A Good Beginning, a report from the Child Mental Health Foundation and Agencies Network, Novick says the report emphasizes that social and emotional readiness is critical to a successful transition to kindergarten, early school success, and even later accomplishments in the workplace. Novick has some tips on how parents and other adults can help prepare their kids to succeed. By helping your children express their thoughts, feelings, and opinions verbally and in writing, she says, you can give them a better start toward emotional stability and a foundation to succeed in school.

"Research has shown that many children--particularly boys--go into the adolescent years with a restricted language for expressing emotions. This 'emotional literacy,' as psychologist James Garbarino describes it, keeps some boys locked up, unable to talk about their experiences, and sometimes ashamed that they can't," she says. "But the beginnings of emotional illiteracy start much earlier, and often affect girls as well as boys. While girls are frequently encouraged to express their emotions more openly than boys, the absence of support from adults can put many children of both sexes at risk for behavioral, emotional, academic, and social problems.

"In preschool years, you can help your children express their thoughts and feelings by writing their words for them. In stories, poems, or letters, their language can become a way to support their ability to deal with a peer, with conflict, with sad or scary feelings. The words can help your children sort out their feelings, and come to terms with their own behavior," says Novick.

As kids grow older, Novick suggests helping them develop language they can use to deal with their emotions and behavior. "One of the best activities," she says, "is reading stories aloud, particularly stories that offer rich opportunities to discuss emotions. And by helping your children relate the emotions in a story to their lives and experiences, you help nurture their understanding of concepts of emotion, as well as their vocabulary."

Using writing and reading helps diffuse and bring into perspective emotions such as anger, disappointment, hurt feelings, and confusion. The activities not only help in fostering kids' understanding of what they're thinking and feeling, but also how others think and feel. And reading and writing activities bolster reading and writing literacy as well as emotional literacy, both a fundamental key to success in school and thereafter.

This column by Karen Lytle Blaha is provided as a public service by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, a nonprofit institution working with schools and communities in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.