Co-development of emotion regulation: shifting from self-focused to child-focused perezhivanie in everyday parent-toddler dramatic collisions

ABSTRACT

Early development of emotion regulation plays a vital role in children’s school readiness and later academic success. Most studies on toddlers’ emotion regulation are laboratory-based and correlational research. Little attention has been paid to their development of emotion regulation in daily parent-toddler interactions in naturalistic contexts. Inspired by Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, this study sought to examine how everyday parent-toddler interactions support toddlers’ development of emotion regulation. Participants were a Chinese family with a two-year-old toddler girl. The data collected by digital video observations and the mother’s diary over a year suggested that mother’s changing from the self-focused to the child-focused perezhivanie contributed to the co-development of emotion regulation in both the mother and the toddler. It is argued that adults’ child-focused perezhivanie in everyday dramatic collisions plays an essential role in the co-development of emotion regulation in both adults and toddlers. Practical recommendations are provided in the conclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion regulation
• toddlers
• perezhivanie
• cultural-historical
• everyday parent–child interactions
• dramatic collisions

Data availability statement

The author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. Further data that support the findings of the study are not publicly available due to their containing information that compromises the privacy of research participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Feiyan Chen

Dr. Feiyan Chen is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at California State University, Fresno, United States. Her research interests focus on early years learning and development, with special attention on social-emotional development, emotion regulation, play, and cultural-historical research.