Kids who got two extra lessons a week on feelings and friendship in preschool were less lonely and less depressed at 21, a randomized trial found

In the early 2000s, preschool teachers in 44 Head Start programs in Pennsylvania started teaching some four-year-olds two extra lessons a week: how to share, take turns, name their feelings and calm down when upset. Other classrooms carried on as usual. Researchers at Penn State kept following those children. When they reached 21 and 22, the team asked how their lives were going.

The young adults who had the extra lessons were doing better. They reported fewer symptoms of depression, less loneliness and fewer conduct problems than those from regular Head Start classrooms. They also reported more empathy, more emotional support, more life satisfaction and more healthy days.

Of 11 measures of well-being the team checked, seven favored the children who had received the lessons. The other four, including hyperactivity, emotional symptoms, sociability and a sense of belonging, showed no difference.

“For example, young adults who participated in REDI as children reported almost two more healthy days per month on average compared to peers who did not participate in REDI,” co-author Damon Jones said in a statement. That adds up to more than 20 extra healthy days a year.

The program, called REDI, was developed at Penn State and added on top of standard Head Start, the US preschool program for children from low-income families. Lessons covered four areas: friendship skills such as sharing, emotional skills such as recognizing feelings, problem-solving skills such as staying calm when upset, and language skills that give children words for all of it. Teachers were also trained to use real classroom conflicts, like two children wanting the same toy, as moments to practice.

Because classrooms were randomly assigned to get the program or not, this was a randomized trial, the strongest test researchers have of cause and effect. The study compared 192 young adults who had been in REDI classrooms with 164 from standard Head Start classrooms.

The results extend earlier follow-ups of the same children. In a 2025 study in Child Development, the team reported that REDI children showed better behavior and peer relationships through elementary and high school. Decades of research on early childhood programs point the same way, though few have tracked emotional skills this far into adulthood.

“Despite all the different paths children’s lives can take, participation in REDI, a supplemental program delivered in Head Start classrooms, was still associated with a meaningfully better life when they reached adulthood,” said lead author Karen Bierman.

The second finding is a warning. Over the 18 years, the researchers also tracked difficult experiences in childhood, such as separation from parents and family instability. Whether children were in REDI or not, those who faced more of them had poorer well-being as adults.

“We need to do everything we can to protect children from harm while also helping them build skills to handle whatever they experience in life,” said co-author Janet Welsh.

For parents, the skills in the program are ordinary ones that can be practiced at home: naming feelings, taking turns, talking through a fight over a toy. What happens in the early years tends to echo, as research on warm parenting at age 3 also suggests.

There are limits to what this shows. The outcomes were self-reported by the young adults, and the study does not say how many of the original children took part in the follow-up, which matters if some groups dropped out more than others. All participants came from low-income families in three Pennsylvania counties, so the effects may differ elsewhere. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Source

Bierman K, et al. “Promoting Resilience With Social–Emotional Learning: Young Adult Follow-Up of a Preschool Randomized-Controlled Trial.” American Psychologist, 2026.
DOI: 10.1037/amp0001765

Also cited

Bierman K, et al. Child Development, 2025.
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.14235