The concept of parental meta‐emotion philosophy (PMEP)—the idea that parents have an organized set of beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about their own and their children's emotions—was introduced in 1996. Since then, empirical studies have examined the validity of the PMEP construct in relation to children's psychosocial adjustment and parent and child characteristics. This article reviews the current state of knowledge regarding PMEP, summarizing what the field has learned, and identifying critical directions for future research.

Parenting interventions, particularly those categorized as parent management training (PMT), have a large evidence base supporting their effectiveness with most families who present for treatment of childhood behavior problems. However, data suggest that PMTs are not effective at treating all families who seek services. Parental psychopathology has been identified as one important factor moderating their effectiveness, yet few PMTs pay explicit attention to the role of parental psychopathology in treatment. Given growing support for a transdiagnostic model of psychopathology, which posits that disruptions in emotions and emotion regulation (ER) may underlie various forms of psychopathology, one way to address the impact of parental psychopathology on PMT may be by targeting parental ER. This paper will review the available literature on PMT and parental psychopathology, as well as existing evidence on relations between ER and both parental psychopathology and parenting behaviors. The limited research on PMTs that include explicitly parent-focused components will be reviewed, and suggestions for augmenting existing PMT curricula by including intervention around parental ER will be presented.

The current study describes a promising new emotion coaching (EC) parenting intervention for survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) targeting emotion regulation (ER) and parent–child relationships. We discuss the development of an EC parenting intervention, outline its key elements, and use preliminary pilot data to illustrate how such a behavioral intervention can yield improvements in behavioral and physiological indices of ER (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA]) and parent–child relationships and reductions in mental health difficulties in IPV-exposed mothers and their children. A 12-week skills-based EC parenting program was developed and administered in groups. Fifty mothers were assigned to intervention or waitlist groups. Physiological, observational, and questionnaire data were obtained pre- and postintervention. Because of the small sample size, effect sizes were examined for illustrative purposes of potential effects of the EC intervention. Relative to mothers in waitlist group, mothers in the intervention group showed (a) improvements in emotion awareness and coaching, (b) increases in ER as assessed by baseline RSA, (c) increased use of validation and decreased use of sermonizing/lecturing/scolding during parent–child interaction, and (d) increased sense of parenting competence. Relative to children of mothers in the waitlist group, children of mothers in the intervention group showed (a) increases in ER as measured by parent-report and baseline RSA, (b) decreases in negativity during parent–child interaction, and (c) decreases in depressive symptoms. Discussion highlights potential usefulness of an EC parenting intervention for populations at risk for ER and parenting difficulties.