Implementing relationships-based pedagogies in infant and toddler settings might assume that teachers' experiences of emotional labour will be acknowledged. This assumption may be complicated by assessment practices that both rely on and detract from relationship-building opportunities with infants and toddlers. Assessment also relies on reciprocal relationships between teachers, and between teachers and families. Drawing on sociocultural theoretical perspectives, this article illustrates how one team of infant-toddler teachers in Aotearoa-New Zealand reframed their assessment understandings and practices to acknowledge their experiences of emotional labour with infants and toddlers. Consequently, positive changes in the teachers' relationships with children, with families and with each other eventuated. The author argues that reconceptualising relationships in infant-toddler settings requires an understanding of assessment as a reflexive, relational process that can occur during everyday interactions, and emotional labour as central to relationship-building. Implications include teachers' need for time, reflective dialogue and support to address tensions between assessment and relational pedagogy, so that relationships might be reconceptualised and the importance of emotional labour acknowledged.