Early Childhood Mental Health Treatment: Training Reference Guide

Strategies
Early Childhood Development
Strategies to support emotional development will focus on:
Parents recognizing an infant’s cues and responding appropriately
Soothing and comforting an unsettled infant
Providing predictable routines
Talking about feelings, elaborating on the child’s emotional experiences as well as
those around them
Helping children to understand that how they feel may not be the same as how their
friends or others are feeling and why
Helping children find the strategies to deal with challenging emotions
Providing children the opportunity to explore different emotions through pretend
play, puppetry, drawing or stories
Strategies to promote a child’s language development include:
Talking to the baby before the child can speak
Paying close attention when an infant, toddler or preschooler is talking to the parent
Following the child’s lead and going with the flow of his/her ideas and statements
Being patient and understanding that finding words and using correct pronunciation
takes time
Being comfortable with silences knowing that the child may be thinking or working
on a skill in another area
Reading to children and talking about what has been read
Modelling reading variety of texts
Strategies to promote reasoning and problem-solving include:
Encouraging curiosity during naturally occuring play situations
Having lots of conversations with children throughout the day
Being available to interact even when a child is playing independently
Being aware that a child’s temperament, level of development, interests, preferences
and moods all influence his/her ability to learn from the experiences being
offered
cont’d...
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