Emotional development

[Confusedandworried321]

My DS 3.7 has been able to label emotions of eg characters in books for a while (before he turned 3 for sure, can't remember exactly when!), saying whether they are happy/sad/cross based on their expression.

He's recently (in the last month or so) started voluntarily telling us how he feels and why, eg "I'm sad mummy has gone out" or "I'm sad Nanny has gone home". This is quite new, he would have been able to answer "I'm happy/sad" when asked before, but he never would have voluntarily told us.

Is this on track for his age? I can't really find anything online...

Sounds about right yes...I've had two DC and it was around 3 that they shared their emotions. They can't always name them so I found it helpful to be a bit creative...one of mine had quite bad separation anxiety so I called it "The missing Mummy feeling" and they really liked having a name for it. Because it's not the same as just sad or worried is it.

Thank you that's helpful good idea with giving them special names. My eldest hasn't been too bad with separation anxiety but my DS2 who's only 5 months is already showing a clear preference for DH and I and no one else! So I'll file that away for when he's older.