Early childhood is one of the most important stages in the development of emotional intelligence skills. Goleman (2019) defines emotional intelligence as the ability to get to know one's own emotions, recognize one's own and others' feelings, self-motivate, manage inner emotions and manage relationships. Emotions play an active role in our daily lives and strongly determine our behavior and often overpower our reason and logic. By learning and developing emotional skills, fostering the ability to identify, observing and regulating children’s own emotions, we become a model. Awareness of emotional states and emotions, perception of other people's emotions, empathy and empathy with other people's emotional experiences, application of vocabulary of emotional skills are emotional competencies. This paper describes children's emotional development, the concept of emotional intelligence and the importance and strategies for the development of emotional intelligence. Educators' perception of the importance of emotional intelligence in early and preschool education was examined using a questionnaire to find out the knowledge of educators about the characteristics of emotional competence, their role and strategies used to encourage the development of EQ in the educational process. The results of the survey show that educators recognize all the essential features of emotional intelligence, put themselves in the roles of educators and create an environment in which they offer activities that encourage the development of emotional intelligence.