The development of young children's emotion regulation and their mothers' coping strategies

This study sought to establish correlations between maternal emotion regulation strategies and children’s emotion regulation understanding. Ninety-seven children three-to-six years old, together with their mothers, participated. Mothers completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and Vignette and Strategy Questionnaire (VSQ) to report on their use of six emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal, suppression, passive, expressing, problem-solving, and seeking). Children participated in a puppet task designed to measure the child’s ability to identify healthy emotion regulation strategies. A multiple linear regression using the child’s age, the six maternal emotion regulation strategies, and the child’s performance on the puppet task revealed that only the child’s age significantly predicted performance. Positive correlations were found between reappraisal use and expressing, problem-solving, and seeking strategies. Suppression was negatively correlated with expressing. Contrary to expectations, passive strategy use did not correlate to either reappraisal or suppression. The findings suggest that mothers' coping strategies do not seem to impact young children's emotion regulation. Rather, young children's knowledge of healthy ways to control emotions appears to develop with age. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries