Abstract
Children's emotional and external eating are linked to overweight. Both eating patterns can be conceptualized as regulation problems. In one case, the child is not regulating emotions so turns to food for comfort; in the other, children are not regulating eating according to hunger/satiety. Children's emotion regulation is a key component of socioemotional competence. However, research has not yet examined whether children's emotion regulation ability relates to their eating patterns. The objective of the current study is to examine associations between (a) emotion regulation (inhibition, dysregulation, and coping; Children's Emotion Management Scales); and (b) emotional and external eating (Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire‐rev) among 953 rural 2nd graders interviewed at school (49% girls, 17% Native‐American). Preliminary correlational analyses (with 1/2 sample) revealed several trends: External eating was related to inhibition of worry (r = −.08, p = .05) and coping with worry (r = −.07, p = .09), while emotional eating was related to dysregulation of anger (r = .06, p = .10) and coping with worry (r = −.06, p = .08). Findings suggest minimal association between emotion regulation and eating. If total sample analyses reveal stronger associations, interventions with overweight children might include teaching emotion‐regulation skills. Funding was provided by USDA‐CSREES Grant 05545.
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