Children’s emotional development: Challenges in their relationships to parents, peers, and friends

Abstract

This literature review outlines the challenges and constraints which relationships to parents, peers, and friends offer for children’s emotional development, including the development of appraisal, experience, expression, and regulation of emotion. Parents are important for their children’s emotional development not only because they are attachment figures but also because of their cognitive and emotional expertise who instruct their offspring on the use of emotion labels, appraisals, expressions, and regulation strategies. In addition, parents introduce their children to cultural and subcultural rules on emotions. Yet parents’ understanding of their children’s emotions may be constrained by their social role as parents. Converging evidence suggests that display rules among peers promote the dampening of many emotions in many situations, especially those of vulnerability and anger. School-age children’s increasing use of distancing strategies may help them achieve this “cool” public self-presentation. Intimate friendship’s which permit (and may even require) the disclosure of private emotional experiences challenge preadolescents to learn how to be supportive to the friend in need and how to manage anger and contempt in these close relationships. Handling issues of trust and exposure, jealousy, and envy are related challenges for friendships.