Parental Emotion Coaching: Associations With Self-Regulation in Aggressive/Rejected and Low Aggressive/Popular Children

Abstract

This study investigated associations between maternal and paternal emotion coaching and the self-regulation skills of kindergarten and first-grade children. Participants were 54 children categorized as either aggressive/rejected or low aggressive/popular by peer reports. Findings indicated a statistical trend for fathers of low aggressive/popular children to engage in more emotion coaching than fathers of aggressive/rejected children. Paternal emotion coaching accounted for significant variance in children's regulation of attention. Maternal emotion coaching moderated the relation between children's status and regulation of emotion. Findings suggest that interventions focused on parental emotion coaching may prove beneficial for increasing the self-regulation and attention skills of children with social and conduct problems.

KEYWORDS:

• aggressive/rejected children
• attention skills
• behavior regulation
• emotion coaching
• emotion regulation
• meta-emotion

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank the parents and children who participated in this project. The authors would also like to thank the school principals and teachers for their support and assistance in collecting these data. The authors are also indebted to Jeffrey Stover who assisted with coding the meta-emotion data and a number of undergraduate students who assisted in data collection.

Notes

Note. LA/P = low aggressive/popular; A/R = aggressive/rejected; Parent = parent report; Parent & teacher = composite of parent and teacher report; Child = child performance measure. Maternal (n = 52) and paternal (n = 44) emotion coaching = composite scores of parental coaching of sadness, anger, and fear; higher emotion coaching scores indicate higher levels of emotion coaching; higher scores for behavior, emotion, and attention regulation refer to greater ability to regulate behavior, emotion and attention.

n = 54 for self-regulation measures.

+p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Note. Parent = parent report; Parent and teacher = composite of parent and teacher report; Child = child performance measure.

+p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Note. Adj R ² = adjusted R ²; Δ R ² = change in R ²; β = unstandardized regression coefficients; β = standardized regression coefficients; Status = aggressive/rejected or low aggressive/popular, Coach-M = maternal emotion coaching; CoachMXStatus = interaction of maternal coaching and child status.

†p < .10. *p < .05, **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Note. Adj R ² = adjusted R ²; Δ R ² = change in R ²; β = unstandardized regression coefficients; β = standardized regression coefficients; Status = children's social status = aggressive/rejected or low aggressive/popular; Coach-P = paternal emotion coaching; CoachPXStatus = interaction of paternal coaching and child status.

+p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jenna Yun

Jenna Yun, PhD, is now at Ryther in Seattle, Washington. Kathleen King, PhD, is now in private practice in Seattle, Washington.