Publication year
2011
Citation Title
The influence of mother-child emotion regulation strategies on children's expression of anger and sadness.
Journal Name
Developmental Psychology
Journal Volume
47
Issue Number
1
Page Numbers
213
DOI
10.1037/a0021021
Summary
Parents play an important role in helping children regulate their emotions. By observing mothers and children interacting when the children were disappointed, researchers examined the relation between maternal use of emotion regulation strategies and children’s expression of negative emotions. Results revealed that certain maternal strategies were useful in the socialization of children’s negative emotions.
Key Findings
Mothers’ use of attention refocusing (i.e., shift the child’s attention away from the emotion-provoking stimulus) was related to less anger and sadness expression by children.
The joint mother-child cognitive reframing (i.e., interpret the situation differently so that it’s no longer negative) can also help children manage the expression of negative emotions.
Maternal attention refocusing was more useful for younger children, and reframing was more effective for older children.
Implications for Military Professionals
Educate military parents on strategies to cope with children’s sadness and anger
Participate in professional trainings to learn more about emotion regulation strategies that can be used by parents, and how it is relevant in the military context
Implications for Program Leaders
Develop workshops for military parents to foster effective emotion regulation strategies with their children
Offer support groups for military parents to promote communication and peer support
Implications for Policy Makers
Continue to support parent education programs aimed at promoting optimal parenting practices in military families
Promote additional research on parental emotion regulation strategies, especially in military families
Methods
Participants were recruited from public elementary schools and daycares via newspaper ads and flyers.
Data were collected during home visits through questionnaires and a three-minute observational task; in the observational task, children were intentionally disappointed in the presence of the mother.
Children’s anger and sadness intensity and mothers’ emotion regulation strategy attempts were coded during the observational task.
Participants
Participants were 153 mother-child pairs with 67 female and 86 male children.
The children were in preschool, first grade, or second grade; the average age of the children was 6.17 years.
Most of the children were Black (48%), followed by White (43%), Latino (3%), and other (5%).
Limitations
The disappointment induction task used in the study was only mildly stressful for most children according to the authors, so it is not clear whether the mothers’ emotion regulation attempts and the children’s responses would be different in more stressful situation.
The observational task was only three minutes long, so it may be hard to capture all the strategies mothers could use in real life.
The cross-sectional design of the study limited the ability to draw causal conclusions regarding the parent-child effects.
Avenues for Future Research
Examine the associations between fathers’ use of emotion regulation strategies and children’s expression of negative emotions
Increase the number and length of the observational tasks so that the results are more comprehensive
Explore how other parent emotion regulation strategies (e.g., acceptance of emotions) reduce children’s negative emotions
Focus
Civilian
Target Population
Population Focus
Abstract
In a sample of 153 children from preschool through second grade, relations between the use of emotion regulation strategy and children's expression of anger and sadness were coded during an observational task in which children were intentionally disappointed in the presence of the mother. Multilevel modeling was used to examine strategy use and current and subsequent expressions of anger and sadness. Results indicate that mothers' use of attention refocusing and joint mother–child cognitive reframing lead to lower intensity of expressed anger and sadness. Younger children expressed more sadness than older children, and maternal attention refocusing was less successful among older children than younger ones. Implications of these results for assessing the socialization of emotion regulation in preschool and school-age children are discussed.
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