Emotional development?

Question

At what age do children first start to show emotions and how do we know?

Answer 1

I think from birth they have some varying level of emotion. Newborns automatically turn towards dad's voice, or calm when they hear it. As they get older, they smile for mom and dad at about 4-8 weeks. After that they develop stranger anxiety. I think emotions are something we are born with, but learn to turn off through life's trials and tribulations. A heart break at 14 feels like the end of the world, where at 25, we are more apt to say, that was a waste of time.

Answer 2

U will be surprised to know that emotional development takes place right in the womb. The mothers feelings during pregnancy have a great influence on the fetus. When the baby is born she may cry when wet , hungry or any kind of discomfor. pl read a book named CHILD DEVELOPMENT by ELIZABETH HURLOCK

Answer 3

When a hug calms their crying, I don't know if that's an emotional thing but needing a hug sounds pretty emotional to me. And the first time they get scared of some random thing!

My little girl recently learned the phrase "love you, mummy". I don't know if she knows what it means but it's so sweet and I'd like to think she's saying that because she loves her mummy!

Answer 4

Interesting question as new born babies haven't the skills to convey emotion other than crying. As babies can experience fear and distress, I would say straight away.
There is anecdotal evidence from people who had a twin die in utero that when they discover the fact, it validates a feeling that something or someone is missing many of them had in childhood.
A friend's child had a fear of hospitals which dates from a distressing stay in hospital when newborn.
I'll be interested in seeing other answers

Answer 5

Erikson's stages of psychosocial development describe eight developmental stages through which a healthily developing human should pass from infancy to late adulthood. In each stage the person confronts, and hopefully masters, new challenges. Each stage builds on the successful completion of earlier stages. The challenges of stages not successfully completed may be expected to reappear as problems in the future.

Erik Erikson developed the theory in the 1950s as an improvement on Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages. Erikson accepted many of Freud's theories (including the id, ego, and superego, and Freud's infantile sexuality represented in psychosexual development), but rejected Freud's attempt to describe personality solely on the basis of sexuality. Erikson believed that childhood is very important in personality development and, unlike Freud, felt that personality continued to develop beyond five years of age. In his most influential work, Childhood and Society (1950), he divided the human life cycle into eight psychosocial stages of development.

Infancy (Birth-12 Months)
Psychosocial Crisis: Trust vs. Mistrust
Developing trust is the first task of the ego, and it is never complete. The child will let mother out of sight without anxiety and rage because she has become an inner certainty as well as an outer predictability. The balance of trust with mistrust depends largely on the quality of maternal relationship.

Main question asked: Is my environment trustworthy or not?
Central Task: Receiving care
Positive Outcome: Trust in people and the environment
Ego Quality: Hope!
Definition: Enduring belief that one can attain one’s deep and essential wishes
Developmental Task: Social attachment; Maturation of sensory, perceptual, and motor functions; Primitive causality.
Significant Relations: Maternal parent
Erikson proposed that the concept of trust versus mistrust is present throughout an individual’s entire life. Therefore if the concept is not addressed, taught and handled properly during infancy (when it is first introduced), an individual may be negatively affected and never fully immerse themselves in the world. For example, a person may hide themselves from the outside world and be unable to form healthy and long-lasting relationships with others, or even themselves. If an individual does not learn to trust themselves, others and the world they may lose the virtue of hope, which is directly linked to this concept. If a person loses their belief in hope they will struggle with overcoming hard times and failures in their lives, and may never fully recover from them. This would prevent them from learning and maturing into a fully-developed person if the concept of trust versus mistrust was properly learned, understood and used in all aspects of their lives.

Answer 6

From the first time they shed a tear.