# CASEL for Toddlers: Breaking Down the 5 SEL Skills (Ages 2-6)
Source: Little Wheels Educational Research
URL: https://littlewheels.app/learn/research-insights/casel-framework-toddlers-five-sel-skills
Last Updated: November 2025

## What Is CASEL?

CASEL = Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
- Founded 1994 by researchers including Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence author)
- Leading organization defining research-based SEL competencies
- "Gold standard" for social-emotional learning frameworks
- Originally K-12 focused, but skills have developmental foundations in early childhood

## The 5 CASEL Competencies

### 1. Self-Awareness
"Understanding your own emotions, thoughts, and values"

**Ages 2-3**: Recognizing basic emotions (happy, sad, mad), using "I/me/mine", expressing preferences
**Ages 3-4**: Naming more emotions (frustrated, excited, scared), identifying triggers
**Ages 4-6**: Complex emotional awareness, understanding strengths/limitations, connecting emotions to body

**Support**: Emotion coaching, check-ins, read books about feelings, model self-awareness

### 2. Self-Management
"Regulating emotions and behaviors to reach goals"

**Ages 2-3**: Needs co-regulation, following simple routines, brief impulse control
**Ages 3-4**: Using words instead of actions (sometimes), waiting short periods, beginning coping strategies
**Ages 4-6**: Self-soothing strategies, delayed gratification, independent routine following

**Support**: Consistent routines, teach specific strategies, co-regulate first, visual schedules

**Important**: THE hardest competency for young children - executive function barely online at ages 2-6

### 3. Social Awareness
"Understanding and empathizing with others"

**Ages 2-3**: Noticing others' emotions, responding to distress, parallel play
**Ages 3-4**: Identifying emotions in others, beginning perspective-taking, empathic concern
**Ages 4-6**: Theory of mind emerging, reading social cues, fairness concerns

**Support**: Narrate others' emotions, ask perspective questions, read diverse books, model empathy

### 4. Relationship Skills
"Building and maintaining healthy relationships"

**Ages 2-3**: Parallel play, beginning peer interest, limited cooperation
**Ages 3-4**: Cooperative play begins, turn-taking, friendship emergence
**Ages 4-6**: Sustained cooperative play, negotiation, problem-solving conflicts

**Support**: Facilitate playdates, coach turn-taking, mediate conflicts, model communication

### 5. Responsible Decision-Making
"Making constructive choices based on ethics, safety, social norms"

**Ages 2-3**: Learning cause-effect, basic safety awareness, simple choices
**Ages 3-4**: Anticipating consequences, beginning problem-solving, understanding rules
**Ages 4-6**: Generating multiple solutions, considering others, moral reasoning emerging

**Support**: Offer choices, ask problem-solving questions, connect actions to consequences

## How Competencies Work Together

Example - Playground Conflict (two 4-year-olds want the slide):
1. Self-Awareness: "I'm frustrated because I want a turn"
2. Self-Management: Takes deep breath instead of pushing
3. Social Awareness: "She wants a turn too"
4. Relationship Skills: "Can we take turns?"
5. Responsible Decision-Making: "Taking turns is safer and fairer"

## CASEL-Aligned Programs
- Second Step (PreK-12 SEL curriculum)
- PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies)
- Tools of the Mind
- Conscious Discipline

## When to Seek Evaluation (by age 5-6)
- Cannot identify basic emotions even with support
- Shows no improvement in regulation over time
- Shows no awareness of others' emotions
- Unable to engage in any cooperative play
- No understanding of safety

## Key Takeaway
SEL is a marathon, not a sprint. For ages 2-6, focus on building foundations through co-regulation, emotion coaching, consistent routines, modeling, and patience.

## Professional Resources Referenced
- CASEL (2023) Fundamentals of SEL
- Durlak et al. (2011) meta-analysis on SEL interventions
- Jones & Doolittle (2017) on social-emotional learning
- Bierman & Motamedi (2015) on SEL programs for preschool
- Zero to Three