Maternal responses to negative emotions and child externalizing behavior: Different relations for 5‐, 6‐, and 7‐year‐olds

Abstract

Emotional and behavioral maturity expectations increase as children transition to primary school; thus, maternal responses that support and encourage children's expression of negative emotion may not benefit school-age children as much as preschoolers. The current study explored a change in the utility of these maternal responses among 187 families (62 5-year-olds, 75 6-year-olds, and 50 7-yearolds). Mothers reported on their responses to children's negative emotions and children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors at two time points over 1 year. Multiple group analysis within crosslagged path models revealed a positive association between nonsupportive maternal responses and later child externalizing behaviors among 5-year-olds. However, non-supportive responses were related to decreases in externalizing behaviors among the 7-year-olds. Discrepant findings between the 5-and 7-year-olds may represent a developmental shift in the function of mothers' emotion socialization practices. K E Y W O R D S behavior problems, emotion, middle childhood, mother-child relations, socialization

Mothers' interoceptive knowledge predicts children's emotion regulation and social skills in middle childhood

“…Collectively, mothers' reactions to and beliefs about children's emotions explained 9.5% of the variance in children's social affective skills. Consistent with prior findings in different samples (Dunsmore et al, ; Mirabile et al, ; Nelson & Boyer, ) and as reported elsewhere with this sample (Castro, Halberstadt, et al, ; Rogers et al, ), children of more supportive mothers had fewer social affective skills . Of note, mothers' unsupportive behaviors were not significant and remained so in all subsequent steps.…”

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

“…Both Mirabile et al () and Nelson and Boyer () present evidence for age‐related shifts in the utility of parents' reactions to children's negative emotions between early and middle childhood. Mirabile et al () show that supportive reactions are beneficial when children are young (ages 3–4) but not when children are older (ages 5–6).…”

“…In the second article of the Quartet, Nelson and Boyer () utilized a cross‐sequential design with 5‐, 6‐, and 7‐year‐old children to test the longitudinal associations between mothers' supportive and nonsupportive reactions and children's problem behaviors 1 year later. Results from multigroup cross‐lagged path models demonstrated a shift in the function of mothers' nonsupportive reactions in predicting children's problem behaviors 1 year later in older compared to younger children.…”

“…Mirabile et al () show that supportive reactions are beneficial when children are young (ages 3–4) but not when children are older (ages 5–6). Nelson and Boyer () additionally demonstrate the potential utility of parents' nonsupportive reactions for older children's socioemotional competence, and test these associations longitudinally to show changes in children's development. The remaining two articles in this Social Development Quartet extend these findings to consider the role that context may play in shaping the utility of supportive parental emotion socialization behaviors.…”

ParentSelf‐Compassionand Supportive Responses to Child Difficult Emotion: An Intergenerational Theoretical Model Rooted in Attachment

“…For example, evidence suggests that parenting responses vary by type of difficult emotion expressed (e.g., sadness vs. anger), as well as gender of parent and child (Sanders, Zeman, Poon, & Miller 2015). The child's developmental stage will also greatly influence the types of parenting responses considered to be supportive (Mirabile, Oertwig, & Halberstadt 2018; Nelson & Boyer, 2018). For example, in infancy and early childhood, proximity‐based soothing and co‐regulation would be considered supportive.…”