Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data.

Abstract

This article introduces the concepts of parental meta-emotion, which refers to parents' emotions about their own and their children's emotions, and meta-emotion philosophy, which refers to an organized set of thoughts and metaphors, a philosophy, and an approach to one's own emotions and to one's children's emotions. In the context of a longitudinal study beginning when the children were 5 years old and ending when they were 8 years old, a theoretical model and path analytic models are presented that relate parental meta-emotion philosophy to parenting, to child regulatory physiology, to emotion regulation abilities in the child, and to child outcomes in middle childhood.

Hope in the Face of Climate Change: Associations With Environmental Engagement and Student Perceptions of Teachers’ Emotion Communication Style and Future Orientation

“…It would also be interesting to conduct classroom studies in order to investigate how socialization processes around these issues take place in vivo. Since newer theories emphasize the bidirectional character of socialization (Gottman et al, 1996;Magnusson & Stattin, 1998), this would make it possible to study in more detail how students react to teacher-induced emotion norms and also whether and how they are influencing their…”

“…Thus, if teachers want to promote constructive hope concerning climate change, it is wise to take into account negative emotions evoked by information about this problem among the students, to take these emotions seriously, and to use them as -teachable moments‖ (see Ojala, 2013a;Pacifici & Garrison, 2004). This approach has been found to be important for constructive emotion regulation among children when it comes to more mundane everyday emotions (Eisenberg et al, 1998;Gottman et al, 1996;McElwain et al, 2007). However, the present study indicates that this is perhaps also true concerning larger societal issues.…”

Tuning in to Kids: An effectiveness trial of a parenting program targeting emotion socialization of preschoolers.

“…When parents are appropriately encouraging and supportive of their child's learning in this domain, children acquire increasingly sophisticated emotional literacy and emotion regulation skills. An "emotion coaching" approach (i.e., responding supportively, verbally labeling emotions, using empathy, and teaching children to understand and regulate their emotions) has been found to be closely related to optimal emotional competence in children (Eisenberg, Losoya, et al, 2001;Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996;Thompson, 2000). This developmental research provides support for prevention programs that target parenting with the specific intention of promoting children's emotional competence in the first five years of life to reduce the risk of emotional and behavioral problems.…”

Parents Dealing with the Expression of Sadness by their Children

“…Parents who behave in a more detached way and tend to ignore or ridicule the child's emotional responses, punishing them when they experience strong emotional reaction, undermine the emotional regulation of the child (Gottman et al, 1996). When parents are punitive they can teach the child to avoid their negative emotional expression, like sadness, which in turn makes possible the occurrence of inadequate expressions of emotion (Morris et al, 2007).…”

“…Responsiveness to the child's emotions is positively associated with good self-esteem index, good school results and cognitive development, and lower incidence of behavior problems (Sanders & Morawska, 2011). In turn, punitive parents can teach the child to avoid negative emotional demonstration, leading to inadequate expression of emotion (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996;Katz, Maliken, & Stettler, 2012;Morris et al, 2007). Ignoring the child's emotion is associated with poorer developmental outcome of emotion (Melo, 2005).…”