Strengthening Families and The 5 Protective Factors Series: Social & Emotional Competence of Children

During the past four weeks, I have blogged about a collaboration between National Fatherhood Initiative^® and the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) to create a brief that raises awareness among states and others that use the Strengthening Families™ approach to increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect.

The approach is based on engaging families, programs, and communities in building five protective factors:

• Parental resilience
• Social connections
• Knowledge of parenting and child development
• Concrete support in times of need
• Social and emotional competence of children

This is the final post in a five-part series that highlights each factor and how NFI’s resources can help those who use the framework build the factors in their community through more effective engagement with fathers. (Click here for the post on parental resilience, here for social connections, here for knowledge of parenting and child development, and here for concrete support in times of need.)

Each post includes more detail on each factor than in the brief. 

Social and Emotional Competence of Children

About this factor, CSSP says, “The social and emotional development of young children plays a critical role in their cognitive skill building, social competence, mental health, and overall well-being. The nature of this development is deeply affected by the quality of a child’s relationships with his or her primary attachment figures, usually parents. Healthy development is threatened when families of young children face multiple problems and stressors.”

Father-specific resources highlight the unique contributions fathers make to children's social and emotional development. Fathers serve, for example, as role models for boys and relational models for girls. 

CSSP goes on to point out, “Social and emotional development [is] highly dependent on the quality of a young child’s primary relationships…it is increasingly common to encounter infants and young children whose attachment to a primary caregiver has been severely limited, disrupted, or arrested. These children are at risk for serious development problems…”

These facts are not lost on the thousands of practitioners that NFI has trained through the years. They include practitioners in corrections, education, military, workplace, government, and non-profit settings to name a few.

These facts are also not lost on researchers who have studied the negative impact of father absence and concluded that father involvement is critical to child well-being. NFI’s programs and resources combat father absence, pure and simple. In doing so they help children develop social and emotional competence through increased and competent father involvement, thus reducing children’s stressors and the risk of limited, disrupted, or arrested attachments to their primary caregivers that lead to short- and long-term developmental problems.

To further address this factor, NFI has created mother-specific resources that examine relationships between fathers and mothers. The most significant relationship in a child’s life is the relationship between his or her mother and father. This relationship is the blueprint a child follows for developing his or her own relationships. Improving this relationship is critical to prevent disruptions between children and their primary caregivers and to intervene to repair them. Because mothers are most often the primary caregivers of children—and certainly in cases where the parents are not romantically involved or living together—they need resources that help them better understand the importance of fathers' involvement in their children's lives and how to co-parent effectively.

NFI developed Understanding Dad™, a program that helps mothers address maternal gatekeeping behavior more comprehensively. The program also builds practical communication skills that mothers can use to improve their relationships with their children's fathers. 

NFI has also developed resources for mothers in the form of tip cards and “pocketbook” guides for mass distribution by organizations.

Does your work with dads include addressing maternal gatekeeping behavior?

Do you provide moms with resources to better understand and communicate with dads? 

Click here to view and download the brief from NFI's Free Resources section.