Abstract
Adequate emotion regulation in children is crucial for healthy development and is influenced by parent emotion socialization. The current pilot study aimed to test, for the first time in a Scandinavian population, whether an emotion-focused intervention, Tuning in to Kids (TIK), had positive effects on parent emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs), and children's self-regulation, anxiety, and externalizing behavior problems. We conducted a controlled trial of the 6-week evidence-based TIK parenting program with 20 parents of preschool children aged 5–6 years and 19 wait-list controls. Assessments at baseline and 6 months after the intervention included parent-report questionnaires on parent ERSBs and child adjustment, as well as aspects of children's self-regulation assessed with two behavioral tasks, the Emotional Go/No-Go task (EGNG) and the AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT). Results showed a significant increase in reported parent emotion coaching behavior and an uncorrected significant decrease in parents' report of child externalizing problems in intervention participants compared to controls. The behavioral data showed an uncorrected significant improvement in child emotion discrimination in the control condition compared to the intervention condition, while measures of children's executive control improved from baseline to follow-up for both conditions but were not significantly different between conditions. These findings suggest that this emotion-focused parenting intervention contributed to improvement in parents' emotion coaching and their appraisal of child externalizing problems, while children's self-regulation showed mainly normative developmental improvements. Further research with a larger sample will be the next step to determine if these pilot findings are seen in an adequately powered study.
Highlights
Starting school is a major emotional challenge for young children and adjustment during this transition is associated with school success (Margetts, 2005)
There was a significant interaction between time and condition, indicating that the intervention condition had greater increases in their self-reported emotion coaching abilities [d = 0.30, 1.20] compared to the control condition (Table 3)
In spite of the abovementioned limitations, results from the present pilot study found a medium to large effect of the TIK intervention on parental emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs), supporting the effectiveness of the TIK program
Summary
Starting school is a major emotional challenge for young children and adjustment during this transition is associated with school success (Margetts, 2005). Without the necessary skills in regulating emotion, cognition and behavior, and parental support to assist this, the transition can result in children displaying challenging behaviors which may inhibit their adjustment, wellbeing, and subsequent learning (Merrell and Tymms, 2001). How can we assist young children to develop emotional competence, and what factors may contribute to better self-regulation in preschool children?. Parents’ responses to, and coaching around, preschool children’s emotional learning, termed emotion-related socialization behaviors (ERSBs), have been found to be central for children to develop self-regulation skills (Eisenberg et al, 1998; Morris et al, 2007). Parents’ discussion of emotions with their children has been shown to be related to higher cognitive self-control in children over 1 year later, which is related to more socially acceptable child behavior (Curtis et al, 2020)
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