Understanding and Supporting Your Child’s Emotion Regulation

As parents, we often witness our children navigating through a wide range of emotions. Anger and sadness, in particular, can be challenging for both children and parents to manage. Understanding how children regulate these emotions and the implications for their behavior and mental health is crucial. This article aims to equip you with the knowledge and strategies to support your children in developing healthy emotion regulation skills, based on insights from research.

What is Emotion Regulation?

Emotion regulation refers to the processes through which individuals influence their emotions, how they experience them, and how they express them. Effective emotion regulation is essential for psychological well-being and involves three key components:

1. Emotional Awareness: The ability to recognize and understand one’s own emotions.
2. Expression Management: The ability to control how emotions are expressed.
3. Emotion Coping: Strategies used to manage and mitigate negative emotions.

Internalizing vs. Externalizing Symptoms

Children who struggle with emotion regulation may exhibit internalizing or externalizing symptoms. Internalizing symptoms include anxiety, depression, and social withdrawal, often resulting from suppressed or poorly understood emotions. Externalizing symptoms, such as aggression and oppositional behavior, are typically linked to dysregulated emotional expression.

Insights from Research

According to a study by Zeman, Shipman, and Suveg, poor emotion regulation is linked to psychological maladjustment. The study highlights how children who cannot effectively manage their anger and sadness are more likely to develop internalizing or externalizing symptoms. For example, a child who suppresses their anger may internalize their emotions, leading to anxiety or depression. Conversely, a child who expresses anger in a dysregulated manner may become aggressive or oppositional.

Strategies for Parents

1. Encourage Emotional Awareness: Help your child identify and label their emotions. You can do this by talking about feelings regularly and using examples from daily life. For instance, if your child seems upset after losing a game, you might say, “It looks like you’re feeling frustrated because you didn’t win. It’s okay to feel that way.”
2. Promote Healthy Expression: Teach your child appropriate ways to express their emotions. Encourage them to use words to describe their feelings instead of acting out. For example, instead of throwing a toy when angry, they could say, “I’m really mad right now!”
3. Teach Coping Strategies: Provide your child with tools to manage their emotions. Techniques such as deep breathing, counting to ten, or talking to a trusted adult can be very helpful. For example, if your child is sad because they can’t go to a friend’s house, you might suggest, “Let’s take some deep breaths together and think about something fun we can do at home.”

Supporting Research

In addition to Zeman et al.’s findings, other studies support the importance of emotion regulation. A study by Eisenberg et al. (2001) found that children who developed effective emotion regulation strategies were better adjusted socially and academically. Another study by Morris et al. (2007) emphasized the role of parental emotion socialization in helping children learn to regulate their emotions.

Anger can be Easier to Display than Sadness

In both children and in adults, it can be easier and less uncomfortable to display anger over sadness. being mindful of this can help us show others (our partner, colleague or child) more compassion when they often express anger (which doesn’t give anyone the right to disrespect you or make you feel unsafe). In this episode of the Curious Neuron Podcast (here), Cindy Hovington, Ph.D., host of the podcast and founder of Curious Neuron explains how you can notice this and how you can approach this with people you love.

By understanding and supporting your child’s emotion regulation, you can help them navigate their feelings more effectively, leading to better emotional and behavioral outcomes. Remember, teaching emotion regulation is an ongoing process that involves patience, practice, and positive reinforcement. By encouraging emotional awareness, promoting healthy expression, and teaching coping strategies, you can equip your child with the tools they need to manage their emotions and thrive.

References:

1. Zeman, J., Shipman, K., & Suveg, C. (2002). Anger and Sadness Regulation: Predictions to Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Children.
2. Eisenberg, N., et al. (2001). The relations of regulation and emotionality to children’s externalizing and internalizing problem behavior.
3. Morris, A. S., et al. (2007). The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation.