Emotion regulation during conflict interaction after a systemic music intervention: Understanding changes for parents with a trauma history and their adolescent

ABSTRACT

Introduction: For parents who have experienced childhood maltreatment, parenting an adolescent may trigger memories of abuse or neglect, intensifying parent-adolescent conflict. This paper extends an earlier report of outcomes from a pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT) of Tuning Relationships with Music™, an intervention for parent-adolescent dyads where parents have a trauma history and dyads are experiencing conflict, in order to look systemically at dyads’ emotion regulation during their musical representation of nonverbal conflict interaction (NCI).

Method: The RCT randomly allocated 26 parent-adolescent dyads into intervention or control conditions, and analysed dyads’ self-report and observation measures completed at baseline and 4-month post-baseline follow-up. Aims of the current paper were (1) to examine relationships between parents’ trauma history, parent-adolescent conflict, parents’ reactivity and responsiveness, and dyads’ emotion regulation, consistency and predictability during NCI; and (2) whether a systemic music intervention focused on nonverbal communication (NVC) and emotion regulation would change the dynamics of dyads’ relational conflict.

Results: Higher parents’ childhood betrayal trauma and adolescent-reported conflict scores were correlated with predictable NVC sequences whilst dyads were emotionally dysregulated, and parents’ reactivity was correlated with dyads’ inconsistent NVC during NCI. Post-intervention dyads were more emotionally regulated, consistent and predictable during NCI, reported lower levels of conflict and showed increased parent emotional responsiveness and reduced reactivity.

Discussion: Findings indicate that where parents have experienced childhood maltreatment, conflictual parent-adolescent dyads may benefit from intervention focusing on skills that promote emotionally regulated, predictable and consistent NVC during conflict interactions. Trials with a larger sample are warranted.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpersonal trauma
• parent-adolescent intervention
• emotion regulation
• nonverbal communication
• systemic music intervention

Acknowledgments

Ms. Colegrove received financial support through an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. The authors are grateful to participating families and referring services, and to Tom Hollenstein for his support with using the GridWare 1.15a software program.

Disclosure statement

The first author declares a conflict of interest in that as the creator of Tuning Relationships with Music™, she may benefit from positive reports of the intervention.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vivienne M. Colegrove

Vivienne M. Colegrove is a family/music therapist specialising in working with families where relationships have been impacted by trauma. She recently completed her PhD, which was an RCT of “Tuning Relationships with Music”™, an intervention she developed for parents with a trauma history and their adolescent who are experiencing relational conflict.

Sophie S. Havighurst

Sophie S. Havighurst is the Principal Researcher at Melbourne University with a team of staff and students who are involved in the development, research and dissemination of Tuning in to Kids (TIK), a parenting program that targets parents’ emotion socialisation practices. She is based at the University of Oslo in 2018–2019.

Christiane E. Kehoe

Christiane E. Kehoe is co-author and Project Manager for TIK programs at Melbourne University. Christiane has significant experience in assessment of child emotional competence and parenting, project management, statistical analyses, and parent education in both clinical and community settings. She has also implemented emotion coaching as a whole school initiative.