Pathways to behavior problems in Norwegian kindergarten children: The role of parent emotion socialization and child emotion understanding

Abstract

Pathways to behavior problems in Norwegian kindergarten children: The role of parent emotion socialization and child emotion understanding.

A Pilot Study of a Parent Emotion Socialization Intervention: Impact on Parent Behavior, Child Self-Regulation, and Adjustment

“…Nonsupportive parental behaviors predicted increasing externalizing problems, while supportive behaviors predicted a decrease in child externalizing. This is supported by a Norwegian study of the relation between parent emotion socialization and child emotion understanding and externalizing behavior, using baseline measures from the same sample as in the current study (Bjørk et al, 2020). They showed that higher levels of parental distress in response to children's negative emotion (i.e., non-supportive parenting) was associated with higher levels of externalizing child behavior and supportive parental responses were significantly correlated with child emotion understanding.…”

Creation of a Short-Form and Brief Short-Form Version of The Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale

“…Emotion coaching describes supportive responses to children's emotions, whereby parents believe emotions are desirable, have high emotion awareness and regulation, and validate, encourage, and accept children's emotion expression (Denham et al, 2007;Havighurst et al, 2013;Katz et al, 2012). Emotion coaching is associated with optimal child development, such as improved emotion competence (Bjørk et al, 2020;Buckholdt et al, 2016;Gottman et al, 1996).…”

“…Although the majority of items describe parents' comfort/soothing behaviors, most items also refer to parents distracting children from negative emotions (e.g., "…comfort my child and try to get him/her to think about something happy"). Gottman et al (1996), and other emotion socialization researchers (Bjørk et al, 2020;Denham & Burton, 2003;Eisenberg, 1996;Halberstadt et al, 2008;Magai & O'Neal, 1997), consider emotion distraction an emotion dismissing response that does not facilitate emotion competence, because emotion distraction does not provide children the opportunity to discuss and understand their emotions (Shenk & Fruzzetti, 2014).…”

“…Instead, our raters conceptualised the majority of these items as describing parents' attempts to distract children from their negative emotions. According to emotion socialization theory, emotion distraction is an emotion dismissing response (Bjørk et al, 2020;Denham & Burton, 2003;Halberstadt et al, 2008). Rather than remove these items, we created a new subscale to form a new construct of emotion distraction.…”

“…However, some argue it may not always be an effective strategy, depending on several factors, such as the intensity of the emotion and the situation (Davis et al, 2016;Masuda et al, 2010). Within the context of emotion socialization, it is typically argued that parents should avoid using emotion distraction as a strategy to help reduce their children's negative emotions, as it does not provide children the opportunity to discuss or understand their emotions, or become comfortable experiencing them (Bjørk et al, 2020;Denham & Burton, 2003;Halberstadt et al, 2008). Our results suggest value in retaining this scale in future research to provide further clarification of how these items might best be conceptualized theoretically, and in turn, provide greater clarification of the role of supportive distraction in parent emotion socialization processes.…”