Social and emotional development is essential for child’s overall development. By creating culturally and socially accepted relationships with others, the child becomes acquainted with social norms, and social development is important for learning social norms. Social and emotional learning is the process by which knowledge, skills, and attitudes that encompass social and emotional development are acquired and applied. Parental involvement is important for achieving social and emotional learning, which improves the child's social skills and positive behaviors, as well as parental social skills. In the Republic of Croatia, despite the existence of a platform for integration into obligatory education, social and emotional learning has not been implemented in practice. Research on the social and emotional learning program PATHS has proven improvement in social and emotional skills, which allow children to acquire the ability for self-control and selfregulation. In order to minimize variation of social and emotional skills, socio-emotional programs are used to adopt and develop the skills of perceiving and managing emotions, making responsible decisions and coping with interpersonal relationships. Involving parents as equal partners and involving the community, the application of learned skills in a context outside the educational institution is enabled, which is crucial for their adoption. In addition to the social and emotional learning program PATHS, there are other programs such as First step to success, Incredible years: child training, Al's Pals, HighScope educational approach for preschool and RULER, which are intended for children of early and preschool age and their families.