The first three years of a child’s life are one of the most critical phases of brain development. In these early years, infants’ brains are developing more than one million neural connections every second. Parents and caregivers play a key role in creating the foundation for a young child’s social and emotional development.

The Issue

In the first three years of life, children achieve remarkable advances in social and emotional development (SED) that establish a foundation for later competencies. Yet even in the first three years, these achievements can be threatened by exposure to elevated stresses of many kinds. Family poverty, marital conflict, parental emotional problems, experiences of trauma, neglect, or abuse and other adversities cause some infants and toddlers to experience anxious fearfulness, overwhelming sadness, disorganized attachment, or serious problems managing behavior and impulses. This brief surveys a range of strategies to strengthen adult caregiving and improve young children’s socioemotional development, with the goal of supporting the latter by strengthening the former.