Children's Negative Emotions Research Articles

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 unique contributions of paternal and maternal emotion dysregulation to children's emotion regulation and lability, and whether parental emotion dysregulation was transmitted to their children indirectly through their own and their spouses' reactions to children's negative emotions. Participants were 118 couples in families with at least one school-age child in Guangdong province, southern China. Fathers and mothers reported on difficulties in their emotion regulation, their reactions to children's negative emotions, and their perceptions of children's emotion regulation and lability. Results revealed that both paternal and maternal emotion dysregulation were uniquely associated with children's emotion regulation and lability. Furthermore, significant actor effects were found between paternal and maternal emotion dysregulation and their own reactions to children's negative emotions, whereas only one significant partner effect was found between maternal emotion dysregulation and paternal reactions to children's negative emotions. Additionally, the relationship between maternal emotion dysregulation and fathers' report of children's emotion regulation was mediated by maternal unsupportive reactions and paternal supportive reactions, and the relationship between paternal emotion dysregulation and fathers' report of children's emotion regulation was mediated by paternal supportive reactions. These findings illustrated the mechanism of intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation.

The Role of Teachers in Managing Negative Emotion (Aggressive) of Early Childhood

The current state of affairs in early childhood is the dominant type of aggressive emotion. Negative emotions (aggressive) can arise when the child is in school, so the teacher demands a role in managing the child's emotions. The purpose of writing this article is to find out the teacher's role in managing negative (aggressive) emotions in early childhood. The design of writing this article is a literature study. The teacher's role in managing negative emotions in children is to provide warmth to children, create comfort in school, reduce the level of frustration or pressure, use storytelling methods, role play, and sociodramas that use puppets in learning, give direction to aggressive children by speaking softly - slowly use positive sentences, and provide rewards for changing aggressive behavior.Keywords: Teacher's Role, Negative Emotions

A tale of two countries: Singaporean and Chinese parents' emotion socialisation during childhood and the relation to adolescents' emotion regulation.

This study examined the conceptualisation of Singaporean and Chinese parents' emotion socialisation in childhood and the relation to adolescents' emotion regulation with 601 adolescents aged 12-15. For both Singaporean and Chinese parents, we examined the factorial structure underlying six parental reactions to children's negative emotions, and the relations between the established factors with adolescents' cognitive reappraisal and response suppression. The findings revealed differences in the conceptualisation of parental reactions for Singaporean and Chinese parents, with the three- and four-factor models indicating good fit, respectively. For Singaporean parents, the factor comprising Expressive Encouragement, Emotion-Focused and Problem-Focused reactions was positively correlated with male adolescents' cognitive reappraisal, and the factor comprising Punitive and Distress Reactions was positively related to female adolescents' response suppression. For Chinese parents, the Expressive Encouragement factor was positively correlated with male adolescents' cognitive reappraisal. These findings on cultural differences in the factors underlying parental reactions and their relations with adolescents' emotion regulation support the emotion competency framework for understanding parents' emotion socialisation across cultures.

Cognitive Styles in Preschool-Age Children: Associations with Depression Risk and Evidence of Stability

Evidence suggests cognitive styles are associated with depression; however, little research has examined cognitive styles in early childhood. Using developmentally appropriate, stress-inducing laboratory paradigms to assess young children’s cognitive vulnerability, the current study assessed negative and positive cognitive styles, their concurrent associations with well-established risk factors for depression in early childhood, and their stability from early to middle childhood. Participants included 173 preschool-aged children and their parents. Cognitive styles were assessed by coding children’s negative and positive self-referent and non-self-referent verbalizations and assistance-seeking verbalizations during stress-inducing laboratory tasks during early childhood (Wave 1; ages 3–5) and middle childhood (Wave 2; ages 6–10). Children’s Wave 1 verbalizations were concurrently associated with exposure to maternal depression, child negative and positive temperamental emotionality, and child externalizing psychopathology. Assistance-seeking verbalizations demonstrated homotypic continuity from Wave 1 to Wave 2, and both assistance-seeking verbalizations and negative non-self-referent verbalizations at Wave 1 predicted increases in negative self-referent verbalizations from Wave 1 to Wave 2. Findings suggest that cognitive styles can be observed in young children when using an ecologically valid assessment and are linked to risk factors for depression. Further research is warranted to elucidate the development of cognitive vulnerability in young children, which may inform prevention and early interventions targeting cognitive risk for depression.

Multidimensional Emotion Regulation Moderates the Relation Between Behavioral Inhibition at Age 2 and Social Reticence with Unfamiliar Peers at Age 4.

Behavioral inhibition (BI), a temperament trait characterized by fear and wariness in novel situations, has been identified as a risk factor for later social reticence and avoidance of peer interactions. However, the ability to regulate fearful responses to novelty may disrupt the link between BI and socially reticent behavior. The present study examined how and whether both behaviorally-manifested and physiological indices of emotion regulation moderate the relation between BI and later social reticence. Participants in this study included 88 children followed longitudinally from ages 2 to 4. At age 2, children completed the BI Paradigm in which children's responses to novel objects and adults were observed. At age 4, children's baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was assessed and mothers reported on children's negative emotionality and soothability. Social reticence at age 4 was observed during a free play session with 3 unfamiliar peers. Results from saturated path models revealed a significant two-way interaction between BI and baseline RSA and a three-way interaction between BI, negative emotionality, and baseline RSA when predicting socially reticent behavior at age 4. At high levels of baseline RSA and high levels of negative emotionality, the association between BI and social reticence was negative. The relation between BI and later social reticence was only positive and significant at low levels of baseline RSA combined with high levels of negative emotionality. The results suggest that either strong physiological regulation or low negative emotionality seems sufficient to buffer inhibited young children against later social reticence.

Preschoolers' Self-Regulation in Context: Task Persistence Profiles with Mothers and Fathers and Later Attention Problems in Kindergarten.

Task persistence is related to attentional regulation and is needed for the successful transition to school. Understanding preschoolers' task persistence with caregivers could better inform the development and prevention of attention problems across this transition. Preschoolers' real-time task persistence profiles during problem-solving tasks with mothers (N=214) and fathers (N=117) were examined as antecedents of teacher-rated attention problems in kindergarten, accounting for child temperament, parenting, and preschool attention problems. Group-based trajectory modeling identified five profiles with mothers and four with fathers; more children showed high task persistence with mothers than fathers. With mothers, when persistence started low and increased over time, children had lower inhibitory control, higher verbal skills, and received more directives. This increasing profile had the highest-rated attention problems, followed by the stable low persistence profile; both groups showed higher attention problems than children who started high and declined slowly in persistence over time. Results implied children who start tasks low in persistence may require the most maternal effort to get on task, and whether those efforts are successful (increasing persistence) or not (stable low persistence), may be the same children teachers perceive as having the most attention problems. Profiles with fathers were not associated with attention problems but pointed to the importance of father-child affective processes (child negative emotion, paternal praise) in children's task persistence. Findings suggest mothers and fathers play different roles in regulatory development and that person-centered profiles of self-regulation in context may inform the prevention of children's regulatory problems.

The Effects of Gender, Temperament and Mother’s Reaction to Child Negative Emotions on Child Aggression

The Effects of Gender, Temperament and Mother’s Reaction to Child Negative Emotions on Child Aggression

Impact of a 3-Day High-Altitude Trek on Xue Mountain (3886 m), Taiwan, on the Emotional States of Children: A Prospective Observational Study.

Changes in emotions associated with mountain treks have rarely been reported. This study examined emotional state changes in sixth-grade elementary school students before and after a 3-day high-altitude mountain trek from the trailhead (2140 m) to Xue Mountain (3886 m) in Taiwan. In June 2011, 201 students participated in the trek. The round-trip distance was 21.8 km. The age, gender, blood group, and family configuration of the participants were documented before the trek. A 36-item short-form survey instrument, including the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale for Children, was used to evaluate the participants' emotional states (happiness, anticipation, sadness, and anger). The participants answered the questionnaires 1 month before and 1 week after the trek. A Likert scale was used to evaluate individual items (range 1-4; from strongly disagree to strongly agree). We calculated scores for each index before and after the trek. The incidence and presentation of acute mountain sickness (AMS) among the participants was also studied and published previously. In total, 187 (112 boys and 75 girls) participants (mean age 11.9 ± 0.4 years) completed the trek and the survey. The sadness and anger scores (negative emotions) were significantly lower after than before the trek (39.5 vs. 36.6; p < 0.01). The happiness and anticipation scores (positive emotions) before and after the trek did not differ significantly (49.9 vs. 48.9; p = 0.11). No participant used AMS prophylaxis, while 78 participants met the AMS criteria. Negative emotions decreased more in those with AMS than without AMS (-4.6 vs. -1.8; p = 0.04), and the use of medications or acetazolamide did not alter the emotions. A 3-day high-altitude mountain trek can reduce children's negative emotions. Negative emotions decreased more in those with AMS, whereas medications or acetazolamide did not alter their emotions.

Maternal Emotion Socialization Mediates the Relationship between Maternal and Adolescent Negative Emotionality.

Parents and children with high negative emotionality may be more likely to provide and receive non-supportive contingencies, respectively. However, no study has examined child and parent negative emotionality in the same study and explored whether the link between child and parent negative emotionality may exist in part because of parental emotion socialization. The present study was designed to explore the link between the negative emotionality of mothers and their adolescent children and the potential mechanisms for this similarity. Maternal emotion socialization was explored as a mediator between maternal and adolescent negative emotionality, and between maternal negative emotionality and adolescent internalizing symptoms. Participants were mothers (M age = 30.47) with their children at two time points: preschool (Time 1; M age = 4.55 years old) and adolescence (Time 2; M = 13.73), with 81 boys and 94 girls. Negative emotionality was measured using a questionnaire, with mothers reporting for herself and her child. Maternal emotion socialization was measured by mothers' self-report of their contingencies to their adolescent child's negative emotions: 1) Punish; 2) magnify; 3) ignore; 4) override; and 5) support. The results revealed that the maternal punishing of the adolescent's negative emotions was a mediator between concurrent mother negative emotionality and adolescent negative emotionality, such that higher mother negative emotionality was associated with more punishing, and more punishing was associated with higher adolescent negative emotionality, controlling for previous levels of maternal and child negative emotionality. Furthermore, being supportive of a child's negative emotions was negatively associated with concurrent levels of adolescent internalizing symptoms, while magnifying a child's emotions held a marginal positive association, controlling for previous levels of internalizing symptoms. The results highlight the importance of considering maternal emotion socialization strategies, even into adolescence, for a more comprehensive understanding of children's emotional well-being. The findings have implications for developing and implementing emotion-based parenting interventions.

Conceptualization and Measurement of Parent Emotion Socialization among Mothers in Substance Abuse Treatment.

The current study examined emotion socialization behaviors within a clinical sample of substance-dependent mothers. Interviews were conducted with N=74 mothers in substance abuse treatment (outpatient and residential with or without opiate agonist medication). Each mother had a biological child between the ages of 3-8 years. We examined the factor structure of a widely-used emotion socialization measure (Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale) and included a novel subscale to capture the level of consistency of maternal reactions to children's emotions as a unique and salient component of emotion socialization. We found that, overall, mothers reported engaging in "emotion-coaching" styles of socialization, involving more consistent and supportive than non-supportive reactions to children's negative emotions, consistent with general population studies. However, compared to community sample mothers, substance-dependent mothers reported significantly greater levels of both supportive and non-supportive reactions to children's negative emotions, perhaps reflecting over-involved emotion socialization behaviors. The context of maternal drug use negatively impacted how well mothers balanced these types of reactions, such that mothers engaged in significantly higher levels of non-supportive and inconsistent reactions during periods of problematic drug use compared to periods of sobriety. These findings underscore the need to consider contextual risk as a predictor of emotion socialization and suggest that emotion socialization behaviors vary both within and across such contexts. Implications of this work highlight the importance of examining consistency as a characteristic of emotion socialization in its own right, particularly within families impacted by parental drug use and related contexts of high risk.

Mothers' depressive symptoms and responses to preschoolers' emotions: moderated by child expression

This study examined a model of children's emotion expression as a moderator of the links between mothers' depressive symptoms and their responses to children's negative emotions. Participants were 127 mother-preschooler dyads. Children's emotion expressions were assessed both by maternal report and through observational tasks when children were three. Mothers were assessed for their depressive symptoms when children were three, and their responses to their children's negative emotions, when children were four. Results revealed that when children's reported submissive emotion expression was low, maternal depressive symptoms were related to lower maternal support; whereas, when children's reported submissive emotion was high, maternal depressive symptoms were associated with higher support. Moreover, when children's observed disharmonious emotion expression was low, maternal depressive symptoms were associated with lower maternal magnifying responses. This study enhances our understanding of the interaction between maternal depressive symptoms and child emotional characteristics in contributing to maternal emotion socialization practices.

Family child care providers' responsiveness toward children: The role of professional support and perceived stress

Approximately 7 million 0- to 5-year-old children attend family child care, which is a non-parental, paid care provided in a child care provider's home in the U.S. Despite the importance of family child care providers' role in supporting young children's development, studies on family child care providers' responsiveness for children in their care are lacking. This study investigates whether family child care providers' perceived professional support (i.e., professional resources and connectedness with children's families) and perceived personal stress are independently and jointly associated with their responsiveness toward children's emotional and social challenges. Survey data were collected from 888 family child care providers in 40 states in the U.S. We found that when family child care providers have more professional resources, they utilize less negative guidance. Further, when family child care providers have more positive connectedness with children's families, they utilize more positive guidance. Family child care providers' perceived personal stress was significantly associated with their responsiveness toward children's negative emotions. Examining interactions between perceived professional support and personal stress, we found that perceived professional support was positively associated with family child care providers' responsiveness only when their stress level was low. The study emphasizes a need for providing targeted interventions for family child care providers to support their professional development as well as psychological wellbeing.

The Contribution of Childhood Negative Emotionality and Cognitive Control to Anxiety-Linked Neural Dysregulation of Emotion in Adolescence.

Adolescence is a period of heightened emotional reactivity, which is reflected in greater activation in emotion-processing regions of the brain in adolescents relative to children and adults. While elevated emotional reactivity and poor emotion regulation are thought to contribute to the rise in rates of internalizing psychopathology, including anxiety, during adolescence, little research has examined factors predicting individual differences in the neural regulation of emotion that can explain why only some adolescents experience anxiety. To address this gap, the present study examined the contribution of childhood negative emotionality (NE) and cognitive control (CC) to neural processing of emotion in adolescence. A sample of 44 girls (M age = 15.5, SD = 0.35) was selected from a longitudinal study that included self, parent, and teacher report of NE and CC between 2nd and 7th grades. Following 9th grade, girls completed an emotion regulation task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Neural regulation of emotion was indexed by functional connectivity between the amygdala and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) during emotion regulation. Analyses revealed that NE predicted a less mature pattern of amygdala-rVLPFC connectivity while CC predicted a more mature pattern of amygdala-rVLPFC connectivity. Additionally, we found an interaction between NE and CC, such that NE predicted emotion dysregulation at low but not high levels of CC. Neural dysregulation of emotion was associated with anxiety symptoms across the following nine months. These findings identify important individual differences in the development of emotion dysregulation that contribute to risk for anxiety in adolescence.

Psychosocial Risk Factors and Negative Emotionality in Early Childhood: Mothers' Perspective

Psychosocial Risk Factors and Negative Emotionality in Early Childhood: Mothers' Perspective Based on a nationally representative study of parents, this study examines risk factors for mothers' perceptions of young children's negative emotionality, focusing the role of mothers' educational resources and related psychosocial risk factors. Participants were 7,311 mothers with children below age 48 month. Mothers' perception of child emotionality was assessed through two factors, irritability and defiance. Findings from regression analyses showed a stable negative relationship between maternal education and perceived defiance of the child. Although this effect was partly mediated by further psychosocial risk factors, lower education was consistently related with higher perceived defiance. Perceived irritability, in contrast, was not affected by mother's education. Further analyses showed age-specific effects (stronger effects for younger children) as well as a predictive value of mothers' perceptions regarding the occurrence of child abuse or neglect. The results are discussed in the context of early prevention programs in Germany, emphasizing the relevance of identifying risk-groups and offering early and multidimensional prevention.

Fathers with Childhood ADHD, Parenting, and Their Young Children's Behavior: Offspring of the Pittsburgh ADHD Longitudinal Study (PALS).

Despite high heritability, no research has followed children with ADHD to parenthood to study their offspring and parenting behaviors. Given greater prevalence of ADHD in males and lack of research involving fathers, this study evaluated offspring of fathers with and without ADHD histories for ADHD and disruptive behavior and compared fathers' parenting behaviors. Male fathers (N = 29) from the Pittsburgh ADHD Longitudinal Study (PALS) participated with their preschool-aged offspring. Fathers completed self-reported measures, and father-child dyads completed an interaction task. ADHD offspring had elevated ADHD symptoms and behavior dysregulation. All fathers displayed positive parenting. ADHD fathers reported lower supportive responses to their child's negative emotions than comparison fathers, yet rated their parenting as more efficacious. ADHD offspring were distinguishable as early as age 3; thus, earlier diagnosis and intervention may be feasible for this at-risk population. Future research should investigate the acceptability and efficacy of parent training for fathers with ADHD.

Effects of Children's Negative Emotionality and Maternal Parenting Behaviors on Adaptation to Early Childhood Programs: Focusing on Mediation Effects of Effortful Control

Effects of Children's Negative Emotionality and Maternal Parenting Behaviors on Adaptation to Early Childhood Programs: Focusing on Mediation Effects of Effortful Control

Social development quartet: When is parental supportiveness a good thing? The dynamic value of parents' supportive emotion socialization across childhood

AbstractThis introduction to the Social Development Quartet summarizes four articles that examine age‐related and contextual shifts in the utility of parents' emotion socialization responses for children's social‐emotional development. The first two articles present evidence for age‐related changes in the benefits of parents' supportive responses and consequences of parents' nonsupportive responses to children's negative emotions between early and middle childhood. The next two articles consider contextual variations in this developmental shift by examining teacher reports of children's competence and family patterns of response among mothers and fathers. Together, these studies question the unilateral assumption that parental support of children's negative emotions is always a good thing, and provide a more nuanced understanding of when and in what contexts parents' responses are adaptive for children.

Marital Conflict Behaviors and Parenting: Dyadic Links Over Time

To assess the effects of marital conflict on parenting practices for mothers and fathers and to examine whether these effects differ for within-person and cross-person links in parental dyads. Existing findings are mixed regarding the nature and magnitude of the association between marital conflict and childrearing behaviors. Little is known about parental role differences in this regard between fathers and mothers and the mutual influence on the other's responding. A sample of 235 families (fathers, mothers, and their kindergarten children) participated in the study over a 2-year period. Fathers and mothers independently reported on constructive and destructive marital conflict tactics, as well as on their parenting behaviors in scenarios of children experiencing negative emotions. Results indicated cross-person and within-person relations. For example, fathers' destructive conflict predicted mothers' distress reactions to children's negative emotions, supporting a spillover hypothesis. Mothers' destructive conflict behaviors predicted less unsupportive maternal parenting, supporting a compensatory hypothesis. Fathers' and mothers' marital conflict behaviors may have different implications for their own and their spouse' parenting. Intervention and prevention programs that target improving marital conflict interactions may also help promote positive parenting. The findings also support that both fathers and mothers should be included in these programs to increase the beneficial effects on parenting practices.

Sibling relationships and mothers’ and fathers’ emotion socialization practices: a within-family perspective

ABSTRACTThis study examined the links between mothers’ and fathers’ emotion socialization practices and social behaviour between siblings. We utilized parent reports from 57 two-parent families with preschool- and toddler-aged siblings to assess parental responses to children's negative emotions, as well as siblings’ engagement in positive involvement, conflict, and avoidance. Findings indicated that fathers’, but not mothers’, supportive and non-supportive emotion socialization strategies with the older sibling accounted for a significant amount of variance in older siblings’ rivalry, aggression, and avoidance. Additionally, older siblings’ rivalry/aggression and avoidance were positively linked to fathers’ non-supportive reactions to both the older and younger siblings’ negative emotions, highlighting the importance of a within-family approach to emotion socialization to elucidate effects across parents and siblings. Further research is needed to disentangle cause and effect relations among siblings’ socio-emotional development and parents’ emotion socialization practices.

In the spirit of full disclosure: Maternal distress, emotion validation, and adolescent disclosure of distressing experiences.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the dynamic process of disclosure within the adolescent-mother relationship by examining how maternal personal distress and validation of adolescent negative affect would be related to adolescent disclosure of a distressing experience for the first time. A community sample of 66 mothers and their adolescent children (M = 14.31 years, 58% female) participated. The adolescents disclosed an emotionally distressing experience to their mothers for the first time. Mothers' validating behaviors and personal distress in response to their adolescents' expressions of negative emotion were predictive of adolescent disclosure. Adolescents made less detailed or substantive disclosures to their mothers when adolescents perceived their mothers as less validating of their negative emotions and when mothers were more likely to become distressed themselves. Neither adolescent-perceived maternal invalidation nor observed maternal validating or invalidating behaviors were related to adolescent disclosure. Maternal personal distress was further indirectly associated with less substantive disclosures through less maternal validation of negative emotion. These findings provide the foundation for future research evaluating clinical interventions targeted at increasing mothers' emotion regulation skills and validation of children's negative emotions. Such interventions may provide an effective way to promote better mother-adolescent communication, especially in regard to distressing experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record