What is Social-Emotional Readiness & Why is it Important?

ANTHONY L. ROSTAIN, MD, MA

Co-author of The Stressed Years of Their Lives: Helping Your Kid Survive and Thrive During Their College Years (St. Martin’s Press, 2019).

College students are arriving at American campuses with excellent academic training, but they are often underprepared to handle the complex demands of living on their own and coping with the challenges of being away from home. As it turns out, “social-emotional readiness skills” (often referred to as maturity or resiliency) are extremely important predictors of college success. These skills can best be acquired through practice, reflection and ongoing dialogue with parents, teachers and other important adults in an adolescent’s life. They include:

Conscientiousness is the ability to “own” one’s actions and to take responsibility for their behavior. Conscientious individuals say what they mean, mean what they say, admit their mistakes and face the consequences accordingly. Reliability, predictability, honesty, integrity and trustworthiness are all vital aspects of conscientiousness.

Self-Management is the ability to take care of day-to-day activities on one’s own. This means being able to wake up on time, prepare for the day, remember tasks and carry them out, develop routines, adjust one’s schedule as needed, and fall asleep at a reasonable time each night. It also includes carrying out mundane chores like washing up, preparing meals, doing laundry and straightening things out.

Interpersonal

Skills form the basis for getting along with others such as working in teams, making and keeping friends, maintaining good communication with classmates, handling conflicts appropriately, and participating in the social events at school. Forging close and intimate relationships also requires an ability to share one’s feelings and to show empathy for others.

Risk Management involves the ability to have fun and experiment with risky behaviors without taking foolish or dangerous chances. Many college students engage in mildto-moderate amounts of drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, and sexual encounters. The critical issue to decide is at what point do these behaviors move into the realm of serious risk taking.

Self-Acceptance (or “self-compassion”) is the ability to accept one’s faults, tolerate one’s mistakes, and deal with one’s shortcomings without excessive amounts of guilt and shame. It is a cornerstone of mental health and has been found to be highly protective against anxiety disorders and depression in college students.

Self-Control (or “willpower”) is the ability to set limits on oneself and to resist urges/desires when necessary. It results from the interaction of two sets of forces – those that trigger us to seek rewards and those that help us to hold back as needed. The tension between drives/desires/cravings and the ability to exert self-control/will power is a consistent feature of young people’s mental landscape.

Grit is the ability to cope with frustration, disappointment and failure, and to persist in the face of setbacks and obstacles to success. The ability to keep going in the face of delayed gratification or of unexpected hardship is highly predictive of success in later life.

Open Mindset/Help-Seeking

involves the ability to recognize when things aren’t going well and to ask for help when problems appear to be impossible to solve. It involves a willingness to overcome “denial” that anything could be wrong, and to accept the idea that “tincture of time” isn’t always the best way to approach potential problems.

Taken together, social-emotional readiness skills prepare individuals to become more self-sufficient and resilient. Parents and kids need to look over these issues and discuss skill areas that are lagging. It’s never too late to begin practicing these skills, but as with many things, the sooner the better.