Emotion socialization, child emotion understanding and regulation, and adjustment in urban African American families: Differential associations across child gender

Abstract

The prospective relation of maternal emotion philosophy to children's emotion understanding and regulation and positive and negative adjustment was investigated. Sixty-nine African American youth (50% male; M age = 11.29 years) and their maternal caregivers living in high violence areas of a midsized city participated in this interview study. Caregivers' meta-emotion philosophy predicted child emotion understanding and emotion regulation, which also were associated with Time 2 grades, internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, and social skills after controlling for Time 1 adjustment. Emotional understanding mediated the relationship between caregivers' emotional socialization and boys' internalizing behaviors and between caregivers' emotional socialization and girls' social skills. In addition, emotion regulation mediated the relationships between emotional socialization and all four outcomes for boys. Implications for future work on emotion socialization and clinical intervention, particularly related to emotion regulation, are discussed.

Positive Teacher Affect and Maternal Support Facilitate Adjustment After the Transition to First Grade

“…Parental support or affection (e.g., responsiveness, involvement, and supportiveness) refers to parents' connectedness to the child and the interactional warmth between parent(s) and child (Aunola & Nurmi, 20015;Galambos, Barker, & Almeida, 2003;Wood, McLeod, Sigman, Hwang, & Chu, 2003). Whereas parental support has been suggested to facilitate children's adjustment (Gray & Steinberg, 1999;Siequeland, Kendall, & Steinberg, 1996), parenting characterized by low warmth and support has been shown to undermine the development of children's self-regulation and social skills (e.g., Cunningham, Kliewer, & Garner, 2009;Eisenberg et al, 2001;Hart, Newell, & Olsen, 2003). Overall, a supportive and affective relationship with both teachers and parents seems to be important for school adjustment.…”

Emotion Coaching - A Strategy for Promoting Behavioural Self-Regulation in Children/Young People In Schools: A Pilot Study

“…Randomised Control Trials in America have demonstrated that emotion coaching enables children to have better emotional regulation, more competent problem-solving, higher selfesteem, better academic success, more positive peer relations and fewer behavioural problems (Gottman et al, 1997). Emotion coaching has been used to support children with conduct behavioral difficulties ( Havighurst et al 2013;Katz & Windecker-Nelson, 2004), depression (Katz & Hunter, 2007) and those exposed to violent environments, including inter-parental violence, maltreatment and community violence (Shipman et al, 2007, Katz et al, 2008Cunningham et al, 2009). Emotion coaching has also been positively correlated with secure attachments (Chen et al, 2011), and used effectively to improve the psychological functioning of children who have experienced complex trauma (Murphy et al, forthcoming), as well as reduce the externalising behaviours of children with ASD .…”

The Role of Mothers' Parenting Attitudes and Child's Perceived Parenting Attitudes on Children's Emotion Recognition

“…Mevcut çalışmada da değişkenler arası anlamlı ilişkilerin bulunmasını annelerin duygu sosyalizasyonu ile açıklayabilir. Çünkü, çocuğa bakım veren kişinin duyguları ifade etme konusundaki benimsediği felsefe, çocuğun duyguları tanıma kabiliyetini ve duygu düzenlemesini yordamaktadır (Cunningham, Cliewer ve Garner, 2009). Duygusal sıcaklığı yüksek olan annelerin duygu sosyalizasyonunun da iyi olduğunu yapılan araştırmalar göstermektedir (Williams ve Woodruff-Borden, 2014).…”