Twenty-four early childhood educators in an urban city in the United States completed a social-emotional learning course as part of an intervention to explore how teachers learn to value and practice positive guidance principles. Affection between 124 teacher-child dyads was tracked weekly to measure change in teacher-child relationships. Phenomenological collaborative inquiry and inferential statistics were used. Findings: (1) positive relational principles (e.g. validate feelings; provide choices; demonstrate love, and others) succeeded in redirecting child behaviour, solving inter-personal conflicts and improving teacher-child relationships, (2) the extent to which teachers valued and became proficient using 8 principles significantly increased (avg. ES = .35), (3) teacher-child affection significantly increased by the end of the course (ES = .91-2.18). Providing competency-based coursework in social-emotional learning with ample opportunities for educators to practice positive guidance approaches can improve the extent to which loving relationships are experienced. Recommendations for practice, policy and research are shared. (author abstract)