A study of childrens emotion regulation, coping and self-efficacy beliefs

The successful management of emotions, defined as 'emotion regulation' is a fundamental skill that has an impact on multiple outcomes later in life from social skills to academic success. The development of emotion regulation is influenced by a range of environmental factors such as maternal health, caregiving practices and also individual differences such as resiliency and temperament. Recent evidence suggests that emotional self-efficacy (the belief in one's ability to manage emotions) plays a role in developing successful emotion regulation skills. This study aims to investigate the relationship between children's emotion regulation skills (as rated by themselves, teachers and others) and their emotional self-efficacy beliefs. Exploring children's own understanding of their emotion regulation skills has been championed by some as a much needed area for further research. This study explored the views of children towards their emotion regulation skills and the extent to which these related to teacher and parent perceptions. The findings indicate that children have a good awareness of their emotions, which corresponded to teacher and parent perspectives in unique ways suggesting that context plays and important role in the children's levels of emotional awareness. Differences were found in coping strategies and skills when comparing children with behaviour and emotional difficulties to the main sample of children. In general, children tended to use distraction and avoidance techniques in order to help them cope with their feelings of anger and sadness and within this age group parents and caregivers are still perceived by the children as their main provider of emotional support. The implications for further actions to elicit and engage the child in emotional dialogue alongside the formation of effective classroom interventions and strategies for the successful development of emotion regulation are also discussed