The Role of Caregivers in Promoting Children’s Well-being in Early Childhood

Caregivers’ relationships and interactions with children have a significant impact on children’s well-being, especially in early childhood. Children’s well-being is multi-dimensional and inter-connected to these developmental domains: Physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional and cultural. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2021) defined “well-being” as “having the support, confidence and resources to thrive in contexts of secure, healthy relationships and realize one’s full potential and rights” (p. viii). Therefore, the chapter aims to conceptually explore the role of caregivers such as parents and teachers in the provision of support and resources that contribute to children’s well-being in the relational domain, where parent-child and teacher-child interactions and relationships help to realize children’s full potential and rights (OECD, 2021). In this chapter, we explore the factors of children’s well-being, review previous studies and ongoing studies on children’s well-being in general, and in the Singapore context. Finally, we provide some recommendations to help caregivers to promote children’s well-being in the teaching and learning contexts.