The double-edged sword: Emotional regulation for children at risk

Abstract

The capacity to manage emotion is based on the growth of self-regulatory capacities in the early years, but is also affected by situational demands, influences from other people, and the child's goals for regulating emotion in a particular setting. For most children growing up in supportive contexts, the growth of emotional regulation is associated with enhanced psychosocial well-being and socioemotional competence. But for children who are at risk for the development of psychopathology owing to environmental stresses or intrinsic vulnerability (or their interaction), emotional regulation often entails inherent trade-offs that make nonoptimal strategics of managing emotion expectable, perhaps inevitable, in a context of difficult environmental demands and conflicting emotional goals. This analysis discusses how emotional regulation in children at risk may simultaneously foster both resiliency and vulnerability by considering how emotion is managed when children (a) are living with a parent who is depressed, (b) witness or experience domestic violence, or (c) are temperamentally inhibited when encountering novel challenges. In each case, the child's efforts to manage emotion may simultaneously buffer against certain stresses while also enhancing the child's vulnerability to other risks and demands. This double-edged sword of emotional regulation in conditions of risk for children cautions against using “optimal” emotional regulation as an evaluative standard for such children or assuming that emotional regulation necessarily improves psychosocial well-being. It also suggests how the study of emotional regulation must consider the goals for regulating emotion and the contexts in which those goals are sought.

Aggressive marital conflict, maternal harsh punishment, and child aggressive-disruptive behavior: Evidence for direct and mediated relations.

“…Nonetheless, as illustrated in Figure 3, only at the high end of aggressive marital conflict would the level of child aggressive-disruptive behavior in the context of low marital disagreement reach the level These results do, however, suggest that elevated rates of marital disagreement do not exacerbate the negative effects of aggressive marital conflict on child aggressive-disruptive behavior and that aggressive marital conflict is less predictive of child aggressive-disruptive behavior at high rates of marital disagreement than at low rates. This finding appears somewhat counterintuitive and inconsistent with evidence for cumulative stress (e.g., Margolin & Gordis, 2003) and sensitization (Cummings & Davies, 1994;Thompson & Calkins, 1996) hypotheses. However, as an opposing force to the potential negative implications of cumulative stress and sensitization mechanisms, it is possible that high marital disagreement in combination with high aggressive marital conflict reflects some amount of constructive as well as destructive interpersonal problem-solving strategies for children to observe.…”

“…This finding appears somewhat counterintuitive and inconsistent with evidence for cumulative stress (e.g., Margolin & Gordis, 2003) and sensitization (Cummings & Davies, 1994;Thompson & Calkins, 1996) hypotheses. However, as an opposing force to the potential negative implications of cumulative stress and sensitization mechanisms, it is possible that high marital disagreement in combination with high aggressive marital conflict reflects some amount of constructive as well as destructive interpersonal problem-solving strategies for children to observe.…”

“…According to social learning theory, exposure to aggressive marital conflict provides children with a model for aggressive responding that children imitate and generalize to interpersonal conflict situations at home and school (Bandura, 1977;Cummings & Davies, 1994). Repeated exposure to aggressive marital conflict may also sensitize children to the cues of impending conflict, such that even harmless disagreements between peers are interpreted as signs of impending conflict, which, in turn, heightens distress and triggers aggressive reactions (Thompson & Calkins, 1996). In addition, the emotional security and cognitive-contextual frameworks suggest that negative emotional reactivity and negative interparental representations in response to repeated marital conflict may begin to generalize across time and settings (Davies et al, 2002;Grych & Fincham, 1990).…”

“…Potentially, frequent marital disagreements serve a source of stress and accentuate the degree to which aggressive marital conflict spills over and disrupts parenting. In addition, in the context of high levels of aggressive marital conflict, children may interpret even mild-mannered marital disagreements as precursors of threatening interparental conflict, inducing heightened distress and impeding effective coping, thus increasing child negative reactions and behavior problems (Cummings & Davies, 1994;Thompson & Calkins, 1996).In contrast, it is possible that aggressive marital conflicts are less distressing to children when they occur in the context of frequent marital disagreements, when the destructive conflict children observe on occasion is "buffered" by more frequent observations of constructive marital conflict, in which marital disagreements are resolved peacefully. The context of more frequent marital disagreements may expose children to a range of marital conflict strategies, including both destructive strategies linked with negative effects on parenting and child behavior and constructive strategies that may enhance child social problem-solving skills (Cummings et al, 2004;Goeke-Morey et al, 2003;Goodman et al, 1999).…”

Challenging behaviour in an adult male with congenital deaf-blindness: analysis and intervention

“…But the theoretical framework must also reflect emotions, emotion-regulation and the human need to regulate the social environment (Campos et al 1994;Damasio 1996;Thomson and Calkins 1996).…”