The longitudinal relations between disciplinary practices and emotion regulation in early years

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the reciprocal relationships between parental disciplinary practices and child emotion regulation in the first 3 years of life. Using three‐wave cross‐lagged panel models, more salient effects are found from parent to child than from child to parent at the very first stage. The stronger parent–child effects hold for both corrective and harsh disciplinary practices. Furthermore, the results indicate significant gender differences in the bidirectionality across time: for girls a parent–child–parent association is found in which corrective discipline significantly predicts child emotion regulation and child emotion regulation in turn predicts corrective discipline, whereas for boys, only a child–parent link emerges such that emotion regulation at time 2 is associated with corrective discipline at time 3. These findings portray the early transactional characteristics of parental disciplinary action and child emotion development as well as the gender‐differentiated effects in reciprocity.