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sadiechannerfmp · 3 years

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Development of social-emotional identity in children

My chosen subject area delves into the importance of the development of social and emotional identity in children. This stems from a combination of elements from the three initial ideas that I chose to potentially explore in the Final Major Project: child development, creative therapies and Visual Kei - all being topics that I am greatly interested in.

The first topic, child development theory is something I have wanted to explore further ever since being the basis of my first project on foundation course titled Body Shapes. As such a wide topic, with many different theories, domains (social, physical, emotional, social, cognitive and language development), age categories, etc, I wanted to narrow down the focus onto something I believed could potentially be greatly interesting. Previously, I had worked on making a garment which focused on cognitive development such as fine motor skills learnt at around the age of 2 years, and so I decided it would be a good idea to select a different area to explore. While researching my two other initial topic ideas, I discovered that an aspect of child development that linked best to those subjects was social-emotional development, therefore making that a key potential starting point.

Social emotional development builds the foundation in children to be able to engage in and tackle many tasks across life. While it includes many different skills such as self-esteem, self-awareness, friendship, theory of mind, two that particularly interest me are emotion regulation and identity development. This is mainly because in later adolescence, these became things which I, and many other young people really struggle with. Therefore, I am interested in how building a healthy social emotional identity from early childhood can help with developing the ability to understand, experience, express and manage emotions; to potentially help avoid or lessen the chances of a range of mental health disorders overly manifesting in adolescence. While observing the way in which my mum teaches the toddlers she childminders about identifying and expressing basic emotions, I wonder if I also had that level of understanding from early childhood as well as consistently while growing up whether managing emotions and mental health in my adolescence would have been easier. I do not believe I was absent from gaining a healthy development of social emotional skills in my childhood, but I wonder if something more is needed to be taught in earlier stages of life to help combat the huge rise in a range of mental health issues in adolescence at present.

Now for my second initial topic, creative therapies can tie in quite nicely being a method which helps many people who struggle to identity and express emotions learn to be able to do so through different creative methods. Although already familiar with the basis of art therapy, while trying to figure out how I could take that field and develop it into a larger idea for the final major project I found it quite challenging, leading me to do research into some other types of creative therapies which I have been aware of, but never fully versed in what they do, such as: drama, dance and music; looking tinto the different uses and who or what they benefit. From the start, in this investigation, I was more interested in how these therapies assist anxiety, depression, and how they can be used to help communicate emotions in ways which may be easier than formulating words. This is mainly due to having experienced the benefits of art therapy with help over anxiety, stress, identifying and expressing emotions. I especially found it interesting reading that music therapy can also often be used to help children develop their identities, improve communication skills, regulate emotions, self-reflect etc. It interests me how through the likes of analytical art or music therapy, which through certain activities can help to express your unconscious thoughts, which the therapist will discuss with you afterwards, one can communicate thoughts and feelings without having to go through the challenges to articulate them.

Linking those two ideas together, emotional development, which encompasses learning: showing affection to others, expressing awareness of feelings, forming healthy relationships, and other skills which are integral for the psychological development of children. While emotions are of course a huge and sometimes overwhelming part of us, hence why creative therapies are often used to assist when managing/identifying/expressing them is too challenging, developing a healthy emotional identity is something I think we should place more of an emphasis on so that less adolescents are struggling.

The main reason for connecting identity to social-emotional development stemmed from the third initial idea, Visual Kei - a movement and subculture amongst Japanese musicians originating in Japan in the 1980s. It has many roots in expressing identity in a way which countered the strongly conformist society within the country. It is about having freedom of expression. Social identity is very important as we learn about all the different components within our identity which make us different and unique to who we are, which I believe we should embrace rather than conform to certain “desirable” standards.

This idea links back to a series of lyrics which I analysed back in GCSE art, titled mirror, who and not. The songs explore what it is like growing up in a society which may try to teach you the importance of being unique and embracing your own identity, yet expecting you to fall into a series of boxes. My favourite line being “they say people are born different, but why does it feel like we’re all the same, us brainwashed into the same system, they expect perfection, so how can we be different?” And that is in essence, what many Visual Kei artists were striving to combat. These lyrics also explore the identity crisis of figuring out who you are, often faced in adolescence, and although often a whole part of developing your own identity, it can often be more manageable if social emotional skills such as self-esteem are solidified from a young age, and it appears that it is often not.

Overall, I believe social-emotional identity is very important to establish while growing up because it can influence how you manage with greater challenges which can impact us emotionally, making it easier to deal with trials we may face whether they are related to ourselves, in relationships with other people or tasks we may have to complete. I want to explore how we can help improve the development of social emotional identity in children in an age where young people are increasingly struggling with their social and emotional identities. I also want more people to break free from the rhythm of conforming to the society at hand and instead encourage a sense of individuality in future children/generations.

Visual, cultural and historical references found within visual kei are very prominent. Being a music/fashion based subculture. The style of the artists is often characterised by the elaborate and flamboyant makeup, hair and costume as well as placing an emphasis on androgynous styles and rejecting heteronormativity. While many of the dark themes of the styling wont be appropriate for my FMP, it may be interesting to carry through a few related visuals such as bright colours often found in their hair. While the visual alignment is narrow, I would like to maintain some of the cultural or historical references into the project, especially the original aims of the subculture to encourage freedom of expression and to reject strict conformity. I believe it is important for children to be able to express themselves freely without judgment or repression and to learn to embrace their unique identities, hence why I think it is important to incorporate these concepts into my designs.

Two exhibitions which I have visited in the past that strongly relate back to emotions were On Edge: Living in an Age of Anxiety, at Kings College London in 2019. The exhibition draws research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, using art and design to start a conversation surrounding the cause and response of anxiety in our current society. It uses different perspectives and experiences from people and what I found interesting was the way it explored a range of tools for living with anxiety. It was interesting to see how artists and designers visually portrayed their experiences with anxiety.

The second exhibition was titled Joy at the Wellcome Collection as part of the On Happiness series, which I visited this February. This exhibition explores the other end of the spectrum from anxiety and shares a wide range of experiences which display the positive effects of good emotion on us as individuals as well as together as communities. I found the exhibition interesting because of the way it explored all of the smallest and most mundane stuff that give us joy in life and also the way it explored the importance of community for good wellbeing.

Since the core idea behind this project is mainly related to early childhood development, I would like to extract visuals from the picture books my mum reads to the children in order to incorporate social emotional learning into her childminding practice. As well as going to libraries to find more visuals from books, I would like to explore what toys are often used to assisting in teaching these skills to toddlers and young children. As well as looking at images and visuals, I will also take into consideration common colours and textures which will be important in order to engage young children in the learning and development.

As previously mentioned, the topic of childhood development is a concept which I have previously explored in Body Shapes. Observing the development of infants and toddlers is something that has constantly been around me in my life. Growing up I hated constantly being surrounded by babies and my parents would laugh at the way I would avoid any interaction with them, such as when my mum would ask if I could help by reading a picture book to them. However as I got older I suddenly became more fascinated in how we develop to become the people we are. It is not as simple as just one day you learn to walk and then one day you learn to talk, but in small increments young children usually learn new skills to pass many milestones. My mum’s knowledge on the topic, having been a childminder for many years, has been helpful for my research, when struggling to understand certain theories and needing an explanation, as she has taken part in lots of courses throughout her career, even recently at the Childcare Expo at London Olympia. In addition, she owns a collection of books on the subject, which I have been able to delve into as a core method of research.

It is also important to acknowledge that while the milestones are formulated based on the average child, there are a huge range of reasons why social emotional development is not the same for every child, ranging from external environmental factors such as the parenting, as well as others for example, many core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder show difficulties in developing social emotional skills - which has been interesting to observe through seeing the differences in my autistic younger sister’s development compared to her neurotypical peers.

Although very brief, I have also occasionally touched on elements of Visual Kei in my past projects on the foundation course, especially within my research. In the Museums project in which the documentary I used was one called We Are X, a documentary which explores the life of the hugely successful Japanese Visual Kei band X Japan. The project developed further as I analysed a song by the band which is my all time favourite - Art of Life, a 29 minute track which was written and composed by band leader Yoshiki. Listening to the song was always the calm of the storm when coping with anxiety became too challenging. Yoshiki himself wrote that “I think I tried to convince myself not to die. Try to keep going. It’s a very positive message I think. Because [...] I was very suicidal. [...] I just hated life a lot of times. That’s also the message for people, also myself as well. I had to convince myself to keep going. Then I wrote this song.” Music as a creative outlet to tap into emotions is something I often utilise, as well as many other people, and I often like to incorporate it into my research. While I personally use music as an emotional outlet, it may be interesting to explore what other people utilise, as a way to think of a range of methods that could be used to help children to understand how to identify and express emotions.

Something that I would like to utilise in the FMP, which has been a core part of most of my projects, is my use of colour. Using a range of bright and bold colours has been something I have come to naturally incorporate into a lot of my work. I believe especially, that when creating something for young children, bright colours, which often feature in a lot of children’s toys and clothes are important for the child to remain engaged.

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