Now more than ever, as educators and as a society, we are seeing an alarming rise in behavioral problems, bullying, stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, and lack of empathy. How we learn to express our emotions, manage our feelings, and deal with the emotions of others are key factors in learning, success, our growth as individuals, and the impact we have on others.”

It is hard to believe that we are now entering the third year of the global pandemic. We have all been through so very much, and we are now faced with another pandemic: one of mental health. The anxiety, upheaval and uncertainty of challenging times impacts us all—adults and children alike.

When we envision stress, worry, and anxiety, we usually think of adults as the ones who are dealing with it. If we have learned anything throughout this time, however, it is that our children, from the earliest years, are clearly impacted by what they experience and what the significant adults in their world are experiencing. It is hard to believe that children under five have spent most of their lives in the throes of this pandemic. So concerning is the problem that late last year the United States’ Surgeon General, as well as key mental health and pediatric organizations, declared a national emergency on children’s mental health. Young children are watching and absorbing how we, as their key socializers, are acting, reacting, responding, and expressing ourselves, as they are impacted by the same uncertainties and upheaval.

What can we do to address this crisis? How can we move the needle and mitigate the impact of this relentless storm? What can we do to help children understand and deal with their emotions, big and small, not just in this moment, but for their whole life? How can we come through this having built a foundation of emotional well-being for every child … and for ourselves? We are at a pivotal point in early childhood education, faced with unprecedented challenges and with an opportunity to fundamentally change our approach to early childhood education.

There has been so much conversation about learning loss, but what all those conversations are missing is the importance of social and emotional skills: managing one’s own emotions and those of others. Emotions are at the core of all we do, impacting not only our emotional health and behavior, but also our physical well-being. For both children and adults, the ability to manage and regulate emotion is critical to every aspect of our lives. When feelings are not managed or regulated well, they hijack our brain and interrupt our ability to move forward. When the brain is dealing with unregulated emotions, we cannot focus, think, or problem-solve, and we cannot persist in the face of frustration. These are the executive functioning skills necessary for learning and relationships.

What do we need to develop and these executive functioning skills? The answer is self-regulation. Self-regulation is our ability to manage and regulate our thinking, feelings, and behavior, so that we are ready to learn, build relationships, persevere in the face of frustration, and manage our fear, stress, and anxiety before they hijack our functioning. In fact, neuroscience describes the development of self-regulation as the very growth of executive functioning. And it is the complex integration of these interrelated skillsets—self-regulation, executive functioning, emotional competence—that are necessary to learning, relating, and relationships.

But here is the BIG question: when do children start laying the foundation for these skills? It happens from birth.

Children are born with one million new neural connections forming every second, a wealth of wiring to build the brain’s architecture. The first years of a child’s life presents the single most critical window of opportunity to promote the ability to think, learn, reason, and succeed—providing a foundation for all future learning, behavior, relationships, and health. In fact, the brain is growing so rapidly during this time that 90 percent of the brain is already developed before a child begins pre-K.

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What Shapes Brain Development?

The brain develops through the experiences it is “fed” on a daily basis: environment, experiences, and relationships determine what genetics are expressed, and what neurons are stimulated. The ones that are stimulated grow the neural pathways; the ones that do not get pruned (we lose them). The brain’s wiring is growing so fast, it is like a relay race from one stage to the next; it is critical that all the batons be passed along. Emotional and cognitive circuitry is interrelated—the more we strengthen our emotional skills, the more that cognition is strengthened. How do we ensure that these critical skills are developed, and that we are building a solid foundation for lifelong emotional well-being for our children?

The key that unlocks everything is found through positive, consistent, responsive relationships. Beginning at birth, the presence or absence of responsive relationships help to determine who we become, how we learn to deal with and manage our emotions and those of others, and how we learn to regulate our thinking, feelings, and behavior. Healthy brain development is all about positive, consistent, responsive relationships, starting from birth.

Children are truly emotional detectives. They are reading, detecting, and absorbing our emotions. Children learn through imitation, observation, guidance, modeling, and contingent reactions within responsive relationships with trusted adults. This is why our own ability to understand and manage our own emotions is so critical; we are the key socializers in a child’s world.

Children are born ready to learn. They are also born ready to read our emotions. Emotion is every child’s first language, universally across cultures, and helping them to develop their emotional literacy and build emotional competence begins at the start. To ensure that children can recognize, identify, understand, express, and regulate their emotions is foundational to all that they will do throughout their lives. It is critical that we help them build their emotional toolbox for life, as early as possible. We do this through positive responsive relationships, by ensuring children feel safe, valued, and heard, and that they understand that their emotions matter and are validated. We know that when these skills are not sufficiently taught and modeled for young children, there can be serious consequences—from difficulty learning, to behavioral problems, to ongoing mental and physical health issues. Children need to know that all emotions are important, that everyone experiences emotions, and that it is what we do with those emotions that is important. We need to put emotions at the center of their learning, and guide them through their emotional experiences in the heat of the moment. The more we do this, the stronger that self-regulation muscle becomes, and the easier it will be for them to reach for their emotional skills on their own to move forward.

We are at a key juncture within early childhood education. We have an opportunity to change course and focus on how best to help our children learn and thrive, not just in this moment but throughout their lives. Providing children with an emotional toolkit for life can literally change their trajectory—closing gaps and opening doors to lifelong learning, mental health, well-being, and success for every child.