Friendship Skills and Emotional Literacy in Early Childhood

This assignment discusses the significance of friendship skills and emotional literacy in early childhood education. It highlights how group play activities encourage children to develop qualities like sharing, apologizing, and giving compliments. The importance of teaching emotional literacy through classroom discussions is also emphasized, enabling children to recognize, express, and regulate their emotions effectively.

Running head: COGNITIVE DELAY IN CHILDREN
Cognitive delay in children
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1COGNITIVE DELAY IN CHILDREN
Section 1
The Early Childhood Education and Care framework in Canada is designed to provide
care to children with special needs and understand their social, cognitive and emotional needs
(Harwood et al., 2013). As an Early Childhood Educator (ECE), one learns the knowledge and
skills that are required for program planning and execution optimizing proper children
development. While working in a preschool as an ECE teacher with 15 children and another
ECE, I observed that one child in the group had some sort of exceptionality. He was unable to
recognize red colour when the ball was brought near to him as per the cognitive milestone in
preschoolers of 3 to 4 years. At this age, children are able to name correctly the colours they are
familiar. Therefore, the following essay deals with the cognitive delay facts and strategies to
enhance a child’s social skills.
As the brain develops, children learn an astounding amount of things where they
recognize their parents, solve complex tasks like mathematics, language imaginative play. The
cognitive delay in children is compared against standards called developmental milestones. It is a
developmental timeframe where a child gains the abilities that are normal at that stage. Cognitive
delay in preschoolers hinders their thinking skills and ability to learn, think and solve problems
(Schlam et al., 2013). They face difficulty in naming colours, counting and in learning new
words. A normal developed child of three to four years is able to understand his or her name
when called. However, they cannot speak, write or read their name, but has the ability to
acknowledge. It affects awareness, intellectual functioning and as a result affects learning
difficulties in preschoolers. They also face difficulty in communication while playing with
others.

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The cause of cognitive delay in children can be due to one or more reasons like genetic
defects, medical problems or the child was exposed to any toxin in the environment before or
after birth. Genetic diseases like Down syndrome, autism can cause developmental delays or
mental retardation. Medical problems occurring in newborns or sometimes due to some unknown
cause can also result in cognitive delay in children (Bjorklund & Causey, 2017).
Parental stress also contributes to the cognitive delay in children when there is lack of
positive support giving rise to behavioural problems in them. If there is high level of stress
among the parents, it affects the internalizing behaviour of children especially mothers as they
spend most of their time with them. This gives rise to child neglect affecting their proper growth
and development. A language enriching environment is required that promote their proper
language, positive cognitive behaviour and proper neurodevelopment. Apart from inconsistent
parenting, low-stimulation environment affect language and intelligence in children as there is
lack of receptive vocabulary and syntactic ability (Neece, Green & Baker, 2012).
Cognitive delay affects the developmental domains of thinking and poses learning
challenges for the children in understanding, learning, and problem solving, remembering and
reasoning (Moreno-De-Luca et al., 2013). The learning ability of a child to solve problems and in
making reasonable decisions is impaired in cognitive delay and lack of growing competence.
Children find it difficult in memorizing things, lack of reasoning skills and poor learning level.
There is delay in motor development that reduces one’s opportunities to explore and learn about
the world and seriously have a negative impact on their language skill development. Cognitive
delay also gives rise to language delay, as language is the internalization of thinking, self-
organization and remembering. Two types of expressive difficulty that occurs in cognitive delay
are specific difficulties in the development of clear speech and delay in mastering grammar and

3COGNITIVE DELAY IN CHILDREN
sentence structures. Cognitive abilities also influenced by language delay as learning is acquired
through language being the medium of instruction (Temple, 2014).
According to Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, during the age of pre-
schooling, children develop cognitively and their play moves from simplest ones to complex
involving scenarios and characters (Modgil, Modgil & Brown, 2013). Play is not only about fun
rather an important part of brain development. Delay during this crucial period can give rise to
behavioural problems in children as they loses their thinking, judging and reasoning skills
challenging their learning abilities. All these above facts need to be taken into consideration for a
early childhood educator. According to this theory, every child is unique and they grow at their
own pace and way. There are various developmental milestones and children complete these
tasks accordingly. However, there are various developmental delays like cognitive delay where
the child fails to complete these major tasks. Therefore, as an early childhood educator, it is
important to know the facts about cognitive delay so that every child who experiences cognitive
delay can be handled in a unique way. Moreover, their challenges and developmental delays can
be identified, addressed and supported successfully by the early childhood educators (Demetriou,
Shayer & Efklides, 2016).
Section 2
It is important to involve parents in the early childhood education and activities
conducted at home as well in early childhood education as it supports child learning. At the
preschool, parents’ involvement has lifelong benefits like establishment of importance of
education and development of helpful social connections. At this critical point, early childhood
educators should be involved with child parents that provide tranquil transition to elementary

4COGNITIVE DELAY IN CHILDREN
school. Various strategies are employed by ECE to involve parents so that they take an active
participation in their child education.
Inquiry into engaging child parents in their education is important as parent-child
relationship and their participation in child-centred activities have positive outcomes. It helps in
enhancing social competence, cognitive development, and ability to establish relationships,
communication skills enhancement, vocabulary growth and comprehensive skills and positive
engagement and learning. In early childhood education, it is important to inquire parents so that
their support and involvement is encouraged for the child learning. ECE encourage them to
nurture their children so that they grow up and experience success to become healthy individuals.
For this, ECEs need to support families in child nurturing by working in partnerships based on
shared understanding, mutual respect and cooperative decision-making (Essa, 2012).
The first step in inquiring parents is to build a supportive relationship with them. For
this, it is important to understand them, their feelings and concerns. Personal contact is required
to know about the parents and helps to alleviate apprehension, as it is a new experience for them.
Personal information is required about parents through questionnaire that highlight their
concerns, interests and needs. It is important to understand individual families so that it is easy to
understand and respond to their needs. Family configuration, challenges and background
information is required that would help teachers to capitalize on the parents strengths. Parents
who genuinely cares for their child and want them to be successful in their life would willingly
help and share their information (Gordon & Browne, 2013).
The second area of inquiry is the consideration of practical needs of the parents. The
flexibility in the scheduling of school events, conferences and other participation opportunities

5COGNITIVE DELAY IN CHILDREN
increases the parents’ involvement in their child learning. This is a tough job for the ECE, as it
requires special efforts to be in contact with parents. Open dialogue between parents and ECE is
important that would be helpful in knowing about the parents’ involvement in child learning.
The third inquiry about parents is their perspectives about importance of child learning
at school and home. The involvement of parents in early childhood learning provides one-to-one
attention for every individual child while parents and ECE work in partnerships with each other.
It is also important to know the kind of learning environment provided by parents at home like
play learning or verbal communication with their children. This is crucial as sharing expertise
and views on topics and themes regarding enriching environment help in supporting child proper
growth and development. This is vital, as parents are the ones who can help early childhood
educators to support and work in providing the best learning experiences for their child
(Morrison, 2013).
To build a strong relationship with parents, ECEs communicate in an efficient and
transparent manner. The open-ended questions answering the concerns of parents and bring
about their intention where a parent cares about the future of their child. One-way
communication where the parents need to be informed in the form of newsletters, handbooks or
take-away notes. Two-way communication is also important where there would be sharing of
information, feelings, concerns between ECE and parents. It is essential for building rapport,
understanding, trust and mutual respect that would provide a sense of collaboration between
them. This can be done through phone calls, home visits, brief conversations, conferences during
pick-up or drop-off times (Allen & Cowdery, 2014).

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To foster child’s social skills, ECEs employ evidence-based tips for the social
development in children. Friendship skills are a way to make children value friends and learn a
lifelong social skill. When children play in small groups, they are able to offer suggestions, ideas
and exchange ideas. Sharing is caring and when they work in groups, children learn many
qualities like how to apologize, give compliments and know about each other. Another strategy
is to inculcate emotional literacy in them by talking about emotions in classrooms. In this
manner, they are able to recognize their emotions and others and develop ability to express and
regulate their emotions (Jones, Bouffard & Weissbourd, 2013).

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References
Allen, E. K., & Cowdery, G. E. (2014). The exceptional child: Inclusion in early childhood
education. Nelson Education.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Causey, K. B. (2017). Children's thinking: Cognitive development and
individual differences. SAGE Publications.
Demetriou, A., Shayer, M., & Efklides, A. (Eds.). (2016). Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive
development: Implications and applications for education. Routledge.
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Harwood, D., Klopper, A., Osanyin, A., & Vanderlee, M. L. (2013). ‘It’s more than care’: early
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Neece, C. L., Green, S. A., & Baker, B. L. (2012). Parenting stress and child behavior problems:
A transactional relationship across time. American Journal on Intellectual and
Developmental Disabilities, 117(1), 48-66.
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