› Social awareness › Relationship skills › Responsible decision making
Skills that support social and emotional development and self-advocacy can be part of an intentional curriculum in preschool and early elementary settings. Self-advocacy is essential to social and emotional development. While not one of the five components of social and emotional development according to CASEL, self-advocacy skills are related and aligned with social and emotional learning. A child with strong self-advocacy skills knows their own strengths, needs, preferences, and interests. They recognize when to share this information, and they know how to communicate their needs effectively in a way that supports themselves and those around them.
But children need time, opportunities, and support to develop self-advocacy skills. While all children and adults need these skills, self-advocacy is especially necessary for individuals with disabilities. Children with disabilities may have differences in the ways they communicate and learn. When they get older, these children will be a vital part of their own transition process from school and other educational spaces to advocating for accessibility in the workplace.
I am an autistic self-advocate. I was a special education teacher in both early childhood and middle-grade settings before starting to work in higher education as a special education teacher educator. While working with children with disabilities, I taught them many strategies that were useful in my own journey. I eventually developed these skills into a curriculum called Self-Advocacy in Action. Initially created for middle school students on the autism spectrum, this curriculum was later adapted for all ages of children.
In this article, I describe how educators can help children with disabilities use self-advocacy to support each component of social and emotional development. The following vignette is based on my experiences in the early childhood classroom. Each of the five components of social and emotional learning is aligned to self-advocacy skills as represented in the vignette, providing examples of how educators can support preschoolers and kindergartners in this area.
Educators can incorporate these skills into other activities already happening in their groups or classrooms, such as during read alouds, pretend play, and social studies or community education. No matter how they do this, educators consider children’ s individuality when supporting social and emotional development. Some children may develop these skills rapidly and more independently; other children may need more explicit teaching.
Summer 2026 Educating Young Children 53