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 recognize and respond to the needs and feelings of others.

Skill Progression: Recognizes and responds to needs and feelings of others

Age: 24-27 Months

Click here to go to all skills for ages 24-27 Months.

Asks about others’ feelings or states and the causes of their feelings

Situations for Observation of Skill

Observe the child during the daily routines and play activities.

Elicitation Strategy

When the child is not watching the adult, the adult can elicit a state or an emotion such as disgust, sadness, being hurt, etc. Don’t tell the child what you are reacting to, and see if the child asks.

Behavior Observed

The child asks questions like, “What’s that?” or asks about the emotion, “You sad?”

Routines-based Intervention (Embedded Instruction)

Asking children about their feelings encourages them to think about them and also ask others about theirs. Make it a family activity to talk about their day: “What made you happy?” “What made you sad?” “What made you mad?”

 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/.