Caregiver behaviors associated with emotion regulation in high-risk preschoolers

Area of Science:

• Child Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Family Studies

Background:

• Children witnessing violence face developmental risks, including emotion regulation deficits.
• Adaptive emotion regulation is crucial for children's mental health and competence.
• Parenting's role in fostering emotion regulation in at-risk youth is understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

• Identify specific parenting practices linked to adaptive emotion regulation in at-risk preschoolers.
• Investigate how parental behaviors moderate the impact of interparental aggression on children's emotion regulation.

Main Methods:

• Utilized multimethod, multi-informant data collection.
• Included 124 caregiver-child dyads from Head Start programs.
• Assessed interparental aggression, caregiver behaviors, and child emotion regulation.

Main Results:

• Interparental aggression negatively correlated with caregiver and child emotion regulation.
• Caregiver sensitivity, effective listening to sadness, and caregiver's own emotion regulation buffered this negative association.
• Specific parenting practices mitigate the adverse effects of witnessing violence.

Conclusions:

• Parenting practices can foster resilience in children exposed to violence.
• Targeted parental support can enhance children's emotion regulation despite adverse environments.
• Findings offer practical strategies for parents to promote healthy emotional development.