Intergenerational links between parental trauma-related distress and child maladaptive emotion regulation: The role of emotion socialization.

Intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation through parents' reactions to children's negative emotions: Tests of unique, actor, partner, and mediating effects

This study examined the relation between parents' reactions to children's negative emotions and social competence. Additionally, the role of parental emotional distress in children's emotional socialization was examined. The emotional reactions of 57 preschoolers (33 girls, 24 boys; M age = 59.2 months) were observed during their free-play interactions. Parents (mostly mothers) completed questionnaires about their reactions to children's negative emotions. An index of children's social competence was obtained from teachers. Results indicated that the relation between harsh parental coping strategies and children's emotional responding was moderated by parental distress. In addition, the relation of the interaction of parental coping and distress to children's social competence was mediated by children's level of emotional intensity. It was concluded that distressed parents who use harsh coping strategies in response to children's negative emotions have children who express emotion in relatively intense ways. In turn, these children find it relatively difficult to behave in a socially competent manner.

Moderating effects of screen time on the relationship between family functioning and negative emotions in Chinese children with cancer.

This study aims at exploring Korean mothers' beliefs on the development of emotion of their children. In specific, sensitivity and maternal reactions to their children's both negative and positive emotion expressions were explored. Further, associations among maternal sensitivity, maternal reactions and child emotion regulation were examined. A total of 100 Korean mothers whose children were between 6 and 7 years old participated in the study. In order to assess mothers' beliefs about sensitivity, vignettes in a forced-choice format were presented through individual interviews. Mothers' self reported reactions to their children's negative emotions and positive emotions and mothers' perceptions of children's emotion regulation were assessed using questionnaires. Results revealed that Korean mothers endorsed both proactive and reactive sensitivity. However, their sensitivity differed depending on the situation. Mothers tended to endorse either Emotion Focused or Problem Focused reactions to their children's negative emotions. Mothers reported that they were most likely to restrict their child positive emotional expression with explanation in supportive way followed by invalidating through reprimanding it. Mothers' reported Distress Reactions and Punitive Reactions to children's expression of negative emotion were associated with children's liability whereas Emotion-Focused Reaction and Problem-Focused Reaction were associated with children's functional emotion regulation. The results are discussed within a theoretical framework of socialization of emotions.

This study examined the effects of children's negative emotionality, emotional regulation, and maternal parenting behaviors on their relational and overt aggression. The participants were 355 children(174 boys, 181 girls; aged 4-5 years old) and their mothers. The teachers completed rating scales to measure the children's aggression and emotion regulation. The children's negative emotionality and maternal parenting behaviors were assessed by a mother reported questionnaire. The collected data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-tests, correlations, and hierarchical multiple regressions. Results showed that Children's negative emotionality was positively related to their relational and overt aggression. Children's emotional regulation had a negative relation to their relational and overt aggression. Mother's limit-setting and rejection-neglect was significantly related to children's relational aggression, whereas mother's warmth-encouragement and rejection-neglect was negatively related to children's overt aggression. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that the interaction of children's negative emotionality and mother's overprotection-permission predicted children's overt aggression. Children's negative emotionality, whose mothers demonstrated middle and high level of overprotection-permission, was associated significantly with overt aggression. In addition, the association between mother's parenting behaviors and children's aggressions were mediated by their emotion regulation. The findings point to similarities and differences between relational and overt aggression in relation to children's negative emotionality, emotional regulation and maternal parenting behaviors.

Parental reactions to children's negative emotions: Relationships with emotion regulation in children with an anxiety disorder

This study aimed to investigate the mediating effects of caregiver responses to a child's negative emotions on the associations between infant temperament and emotional overeating in preschool children. A sample of 358 children and their caregivers enrolled in the STRONG Kids 2 (SK2) birth cohort study (N = 468) provided data for this analysis. Caregivers completed questionnaires assessing child temperament at 3 months, caregiver response to negative emotions at 18 months, and child emotional overeating at 36 months. Structural Equation Modeling was conducted using the lavaan package in RStudio to test hypothesized models examining whether the relations between early temperament and subsequent emotional eating were mediated by caregiver responses to a child's emotions. Findings revealed that infant temperamental orienting/regulation predicted the later development of emotional overeating through supportive caregiver responses to a child's negative emotions. Lower levels of orienting/regulation were associated with greater emotional overeating, explained by less supportive caregiver responses to the child's emotions. Moreover, infant surgency had a positive direct influence on emotional overeating at 36 months. Both supportive and non-supportive caregiver responses to a child's negative emotions had significant direct influences on emotional overeating. The results highlight the importance of caregiver response to a child's negative emotions as a mediator between infant temperament and emotional overeating in preschool children. Intervention strategies can be implemented to support caregivers in adopting supportive responses to their child's negative emotions to promote healthy eating behaviors from early childhood. Future studies are needed to explore these pathways of influences throughout child development.

The current study examined the moderating effect of children's cardiac vagal suppression on the association between maternal socialization of negative emotions (supportive and nonsupportive responses) and children's emotion regulation behaviors. One hundred and ninety-seven 4-year-olds and their mothers participated. Mothers reported on their reactions to children's negative emotions and children's regulatory behaviors. Observed distraction, an adaptive self-regulatory strategy, and vagal suppression were assessed during a laboratory task designed to elicit frustration. Results indicated that children's vagal suppression moderated the association between mothers' nonsupportive emotion socialization and children's emotion regulation behaviors such that nonsupportive reactions to negative emotions predicted lower observed distraction and lower reported emotion regulation behaviors when children displayed lower levels of vagal suppression. No interaction was found between supportive maternal emotion socialization and vagal suppression for children's emotion regulation behaviors. Results suggest physiological regulation may serve as a buffer against nonsupportive emotion socialization.

ABSTRACTAggression in early childhood has been found to predict future psychopathology, academic problems, and delinquency. In a sample of 136 mother–child pairs (Mage = 4 years, 11 months, SD = 11 months, 58% boys) associations among mothers’ responding with distress to children's negative emotions, children's emotional control, and children's physically aggressive behaviours were explored. Children's emotional control problems mediated the relation between mothers’ distress responses and children's physical aggression – higher levels of distress responses by mothers to children's negative emotions were associated with increases in emotional control problems in children, which in turn were associated with higher levels of children's physical aggression. Contrary to expectations, children's negative emotionality (i.e. temperament) did not significantly moderate the association between mothers’ responding with distress to children's negative emotions and children's emotional control problems. Results emphasize the importance of focusing on children's emotional control skills and adaptive maternal responses to children's negative emotions.

Parents' supportive emotion socialization behaviors promote children's socioemotional competence in early childhood, but the nature of parents' supportiveness may change over time, as children continue to develop their emotion‐related abilities and enter contexts that require more complex and nuanced social skills and greater autonomy. To test whether associations between parents' supportiveness of children's negative emotions and children's socioemotional adjustment vary with child age, 81 parents of 3‐ to 6‐year‐old children completed questionnaires assessing their responses to children's negative emotions and their children's emotion regulation, lability, social competence, and behavioral adjustment. As predicted, child age moderated the associations between parents' supportiveness and children's socioemotional adjustment. For younger children, parents' supportiveness predicted better emotion regulation and less anxiety/internalizing and anger/externalizing problems. However, for older children, these associations were reversed, suggesting that socialization strategies which were supportive for younger children may fail to foster socioemotional competence among 5‐ to 6‐year‐old children. These results suggest the importance of considering emotion socialization as a dynamic, developmental process, and that parents' socialization of children's emotions might need to change in response to children's developing emotional competencies and social demands.

A fundamental question in developmental science is how parental emotion socialization processes are associated with children's subsequent adaptation. Few extant studies have examined this question across multiple developmental periods and levels of analysis. Here, we tested whether mothers' supportive and nonsupportive reactions to their 5-year-old children's negative emotions were associated with teacher and adolescent self-reported adjustment at age 15 via children's physiological and behavioral emotion regulation at age 10 (N = 404). Results showed that maternal supportive reactions to their children's negative emotions were associated with children's greater emotion regulation in a laboratory task and also a composite of mother and teacher reports of emotion regulation at age 10. Maternal nonsupportive reactions to their children's negative emotions were uncorrelated with supportive reactions, but were associated with poorer child physiological regulation and also poorer mother- and teacher-reported emotion regulation at age 10. In turn, better physiological regulation at age 10 was associated with more adolescent-reported social competence at age 15. Furthermore, teacher and mother reports of emotion regulation at age 10 were associated with increased adolescent adjustment across all domains. Mediational effects from nonsupportive and supportive reactions to adolescent adjustment tested via bootstrapping were significant. Our findings suggest that mothers' reactions to their children's negative emotions in early childhood may play a role in their children's ability to regulate their arousal both physiologically and behaviorally in middle childhood, which in turn may play a role in their ability to manage their emotions and behaviors and to navigate increasingly complex social contexts in adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

PreschoolTeachers’ Emotional Awareness Levels and Their Responses to Children's Negative Emotions

Stress in parents has a significant impact on parenting and infant's development. However, few studies have examined cross-sectional and longitudinal links on risk and resilience of burdened families. Thus, this study aimed to investigate subjective risk and resilience factors on family well-being. Data stem from the 2015 nationwide study "Children in Germany" ("Kinder in Deutschland" - KiD 0-3). Parents of children aged zero to 3years (N=8.063) were recruited from random probability-sampled paediatric clinics (n=271) across Germany. Risk and resilience variables such as parents' perceived stress (PSS-4), competence, isolation and attachment (PSI), as well as parental inner anger (items from CAP), relationship quality (DAS-4) and the child's negative emotionality (items from SGKS) were assessed at baseline in addition to demographic variables to predict parents' mental health (PHQ-4) and negative emotionality of the child at baseline (T1) and in the 2-year follow-up (T2) using linear regression models. At baseline, parents' mental health was predicted by inner anger, the child's negative emotionality and being a single parent (R2=45.1%) at baseline, but only by parenting competence at the two-year-follow-up (R2=25.1%). The child's negative emotionality was predicted (R2=27.5%) by the child's age, and parental inner anger and competence, attachment, perceived stress, mental health as well as education background. At two-year-follow-up, the child's age, single parenthood, social welfare benefit, child's negative emotionality at baseline, relationship quality and competence were significant predictor variables (R2=22.8%). This study highlights the impact of specific risk and resilience factors not only on parents' mental health but also the child's negative emotionality in the short and long-term in early childhood. Universal, but also selective prevention programs should increase parents' resilience (e.g., focusing on self-efficacy, competence, coping strategies).

Antecedents of Preschool Children's Internalizing Problems: A Longitudinal Study of Low-Income Families

Profiles of parent emotion socialization: Longitudinal associations with child emotional outcomes