Linguistic diversity and social-emotional development in Finnish early childhood education and care: a comparative study of monolingual and multilingual children

Early social-emotional development is crucial for children's well-being and future outcomes. Although previous work suggests that multilingual children may have advantages in social-emotional development compared to monolingual children, the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) environment may not adequately respond to the needs of multilingual children in Finland. This study examined the association between language status and social-emotional development among 149 children aged 3–6 years in Finnish ECEC settings. Children's social-emotional development and loneliness were assessed using educator-reported measures. In addition, direct assessments were conducted for the theory of mind (ToM), receptive vocabulary, and verbal fluency. The results revealed no significant differences in social-emotional development when comparing monolingual Finnish speakers to multilingual children with or without Finnish as their strongest language, apart from the finding that multilingual children with Finnish as their strongest language were reported to be more lonely than Finnish monolingual children. When accounting for Finnish language skills, no differences remained significant. However, stronger Finnish language skills were associated with better ToM performance in all children. This study underlines the importance of supporting multilingual pedagogy and the inclusion of multilingual children in the Finnish ECEC environments.