Social-emotional learning in infant and toddler storytimes: Family-focused approaches and strategies

The first few years of a child’s life are a crucial time for developing initial social and emotional skills, with the parent/caregiver playing an important role in this development. However, many new parents/caregivers may not fully understand how to encourage positive social-emotional learning for their infants and toddlers. Given their recognition as an important out-of-school learning environment and their strong early childhood and family engagement services, public libraries could be an important environment for supporting SEL for children and their caregivers during the early years of a child’s life. This descriptive study used observations, interviews, and a survey to explore how public library storytimes are encouraging and supporting SEL for infants, toddlers, and their caregivers. The findings reveal that storytimes are supporting a variety of SEL skills and concepts but areas of growth exist in the SEL supports that are provided in storytimes. Some of these areas may be due to gaps in the library educators’ knowledge and self-efficacy related to supporting SEL for infants, toddlers, and their parents/caregivers. These findings point to a need for more resources and further professional development around supporting SEL for infants and toddlers as well as engaging and empowering their caregivers.