Mothers' Self-Reported Control of Their Preschool Children's Emotional Expressiveness: A Longitudinal Study of Associations with Infant–Mother Attachment and Children's Emotion Regulation

In the present longitudinal study we examined the associations between mothers’ self‐reported control of their preschoolers’ emotional expressiveness and two other key facets of early socioemotional development: the quality of the infant–mother attachment and children's emotion regulation. Seventy‐six white preschool‐aged children (46 boys and 30 girls) and their mothers participated. Principal assessments included the Parent Attitude Toward Child Expressiveness Scale (PACES; Saarni, 1985 ), the infant Strange Situation, and ‘Beat the Bell,’ a measure designed for this study to elicit children's emotional expression, sharing, and suppression in the presence of their mothers. Mothers’ control of their children's expressiveness was associated with both attachment and children's emotion regulation in theoretically predicted ways. First, mothers of children who had been classified insecure‐avoidant in the Strange Situation reported greater control of their children's negative expressiveness than other mothers, and mothers of children who had been classified insecure‐ambivalent reported less control of their children's negative expressiveness than other mothers. Second, mothers who reported greater control of their children's expressiveness had children who were less likely to express and share their feelings and more likely to suppress their anger in the ‘Beat the Bell’ emotion regulation assessment. Findings are discussed in terms of the role of maternal emotion socialization in children's early socioemotional development.     

A Three‐factor Structure of Emotion Understanding in Third‐grade Children

Theoretical conceptualizations of emotion understanding generally imply a two‐factor structure comprised of recognition of emotional expressions and understanding emotion‐eliciting situations. We tested this structure in middle childhood and then explored the unique predictive value of various facets of emotion understanding in explaining children's socioemotional competence. Participants were 201 third‐grade children and their mothers. Children completed five different measures, which provided eight distinct indices of emotion understanding. Mothers completed two questionnaires assessing children's socioemotional skills and problems. Results indicated that: (a) emotion understanding in third‐grade children was differentiated into three unique factors: Prototypical Emotion Recognition, Prototypical Emotion Knowledge, and Advanced Emotion Understanding, (b) skills within factors were modestly related, (c) factors varied in complexity, supporting theoretical and empirical models detailing developmental sequencing of skills, and (d) skills in Prototypical Emotion Knowledge were uniquely related to mothers’ reports of third‐grade children's socioemotional competence. Implications regarding elementary‐school‐age children's social cognitive development are discussed.     

Longitudinal dyadic analyses of emotion dysregulation and mother–child relationship quality in Chinese children with teacher‐reported oppositional defiant disorder

This study examined whether and how mothers' and children's perceptions of mother–child relationship quality mediated associations between mothers' and children's initial emotion dysregulation and children's emotion dysregulation and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms 2 years later. The participants were 155 Chinese children with teacher‐reported ODD and their mothers derived from a three‐wave (2 years apart) longitudinal study. A multiple‐informant approach and a dyadic analysis approach (i.e., actor–partner interdependent modeling) were used. The results revealed that (a) mothers' and children's emotion dysregulation was significantly related to their own and their partners’ concurrent perceptions of relationship quality; (b) mothers' and children's perceptions of relationship quality from Wave 1 to Wave 2 were stable but were also interdependent, such that one's own perception of relationship quality at Wave 1 related to the partner's perception at Wave 2; and (c) relationship quality at the two waves interdependently mediated the associations between mothers' and children's emotion dysregulation at Wave 1 and children's emotion dysregulation and ODD symptoms at Wave 3. Implications for family intervention programs targeting maternal and child emotion dysregulation and strengthening mother–child relationship quality for children with ODD were discussed.     

Children's awareness concerning emotion regulation strategies: Effects of attachment status

The current study evaluated the effects of preschoolers' attachment status on their awareness concerning emotion regulation strategies. A total of 212 children between 3 and 5 years participated in this study and completed two self‐report tasks. The first was the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), which assessed children's internal working models concerning parent–child attachment; the second evaluated children's ability to generate emotion regulation strategies in relation to three negative emotions (anger, sadness, and fear). Statistical analyses involved a mixed models multilinear regression approach controlling for age and gender. The results consistently revealed that the insecure avoidant group was significantly less likely than securely attached children to generate both comforting and self‐regulatory strategies. Surprisingly, the insecure ambivalent group showed no deficits across measured outcomes. When the analyses were conducted separately for each negative emotion, findings for co‐regulatory strategies for fear, and self‐regulatory strategies for anger also suggested that avoidantly attached children exhibited the lowest levels of awareness compared with children from the secure attachment group. These findings stress the importance of children's attachment status, and implicitly, the quality of the parent–child interactions for children's awareness of emotion regulation strategies related to negative emotions.     

Maternal and paternal reactions to child sadness predict children's psychosocial outcomes: A family‐centered approach

Parents' reactions to children's emotions shape their psychosocial outcomes. Extant research on emotion socialization primarily uses variable‐centered approaches. This study explores family patterns of maternal and paternal responses to children's sadness in relation to psychosocial outcomes in middle childhood. Fifty‐one families with 8‐ to 12‐year‐old children participated. Mothers and fathers reported their reactions to children's sadness and children's social competence and psychological adjustment. Cluster analyses revealed three family patterns: Supportive (high supportive and low non‐supportive reactions from both parents), Not Supportive (low supportive reactions from both parents), and Father Dominant (high paternal supportive and non‐supportive reactions, low maternal supportive and non‐supportive reactions). Supportive families had children with higher social competence and more internalizing symptoms whereas Father Dominant families had children with lower social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Not Supportive families had children with average social competence and fewer internalizing symptoms. Findings are discussed in relation to the “divergence model” which proposes that a diverse range of parental responses to children's sadness, rather than a uniformly supportive approach, may facilitate children's psychosocial adjustment.     

Investing in the relationship: practitioners’ relationships with looked‐after children and care leavers in Social Work Practices

Providing more consistent and continuous relationships for looked‐after children and care leavers is a current preoccupation in social work in light of many criticisms of the quality of such relationships. Recommendations for more direct work have spurred new models of service delivery in children's services aimed at improving individual outcomes. Independent Social Work Practices (SWPs), a new organizational model piloted in some areas of England between 2009 and 2012, were established to enable social workers and other practitioners to spend more time in direct work and thus to improve the practitioner/child/young person relationship. This paper uses findings from interviews with 169 children and young people across 11 local authorities and 5 SWPs, undertaken as part of a 3‐year national matched control evaluation of pilot SWPs, to identify key elements of good quality practitioner relationships with children or young people. Focusing on children's and young people's perspectives and experiences, the study demonstrates that more direct work and consistent relationships are valued. The paper deploys Recognition Theory to further understanding of effective practice as defined by children and young people.     

Mothers' Regulation Strategies in Response to Toddlers' Affect: Links to Later Emotion Self-Regulation

Recently, there has been a great deal of research on the socialization of children's emotions and self‐regulation. In the present study, the specific strategies that mothers use to help their young children regulate their emotional responses were examined using a longitudinal design. Forty‐three mother–toddler pairs were observed when toddlers were both 18 and 30 months of age, and mothers’ attempts to regulate their toddlers’ emotions during several emotion‐eliciting tasks were transcribed from videotape. When the children were 5 years old, their responses to a disappointment task were observed. Results indicated a relation between mothers’ regulation strategies in toddlerhood and children's facial and behavioral responses to the disappointment task measured at 5 years of age. Specifically, mothers’ use of regulation strategies at 30 months, but not at 18 months, was positively related to children's appropriate emotional displays in response to disappointment. Moreover, the specific types of strategies that mothers used had differential associations to children's responses to disappointment. Findings are discussed in terms of the potentially important role of mothers’ behaviors in the development of children's emotion self‐regulation.     

Children's agency in interprofessional collaborative meetings in child welfare work

The concept of children's agency can be used to understand how children actively shape their lives. While in social work there is a growing body of research on how children experience meetings that involve collaborating professionals, little is known about the ways in which they exert an influence. The purpose of the study is, in a Swedish context, to investigate children's perceptions of their agentic capacity in regulating participation and exerting an influence on outcomes in interprofessional collaborative meetings. Interviews were carried out with 28 children in receipt of social services support. Findings revealed that children perceive professionals' talk as restricting opportunities for input. They also perceive that they have the capacity to exercise agency by (i) conforming to expectations by feigning boredom and seeming disengaged, but at the same time paying close attention; (ii) by using exit strategies; and (iii) by developing ‘in‐situ’ strategies to end meetings. Rather than, as previously suggested, being powerless in such circumstances, the children tell how they carefully assess situations, and, from a position of apparent subordination, talk of ways of acting that reveal their agentic capacity. These insights are of importance for practitioners who are encouraged to look beyond behaviours that first meet the eye.     

Inter‐agency joint protocols for safeguarding children in social care and adult mental‐health agencies: a cross‐sectional survey of practitioner experiences

Parental mental illness, substance misuse and domestic violence are common risk factors for the maltreatment and neglect of children. Safeguarding children is everyone's responsibility, including professionals working primarily with adults. In the UK, Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) were established to ensure that all agencies work together to safeguard children. Many LSCBs developed multi‐agency joint protocols to enhance collaboration, but there is limited evidence of their effectiveness. This paper reports findings from a cross‐sectional survey of practitioner self‐reported experiences of joint protocols, which was conducted in one inner London borough, to evaluate their impact on professional practice. A self‐complete questionnaire administered to all professionals in adult mental‐health and children's social care services in the borough yielded a response from 119 practitioners. The survey found that the protocols had been widely disseminated and provided clear guidance to practitioners. Practitioners perceived that they had increased awareness of the risk factors for safeguarding children and some had used the protocols to help them gain access to services for their clients. Practitioners also perceived that they had improved inter‐agency working between children's social care and adult mental‐health services. However, respondents indicated that positive interpersonal contact with practitioners from other agencies was equally important in promoting joint working and inter‐agency collaboration.     

Linguistic indirectness in parent–preschooler reminiscing about emotion‐related events: Links with emotion regulation and psychosocial adjustment

The concept of linguistic indirectness is well established within the field of pragmatics, in which it has been observed that speakers express ideas directly and indirectly. We integrated the analysis of linguistic directness and indirectness with the examination of two established measures of parental emotion socialization through reminiscing: elaboration and emotion explanations. We examined the unique associations of parents’ direct and indirect elaboration and emotion explanations with preschoolers’ emotion regulation and psychosocial adjustment. Participants were 55 parent–preschooler dyads (31 girls, 24 boys). The dyads reminisced about positive and negative events. Conversations were coded for parental elaboration, parental use of emotion explanations, and parental linguistic directness and indirectness. Children's emotion regulation was observed during standard tasks, and teachers reported on children's psychosocial adjustment. Multivariate regressions including direct elaboration and direct emotion explanations indicated that parents who engaged in more indirect elaboration when discussing positive events had children with worse emotion regulation. Parents who used indirect emotion explanations when discussing positive events had children with better psychosocial adjustment. Parents’ indirect speech during negative event discussions was not related to child outcomes. The results suggest differential functions for indirect elaboration and indirect emotion explanations in relation to children's social outcomes, and support the utility of examining linguistic indirectness.     

Putting the child at the centre of inter‐professional cooperation in out‐of‐home care

A large part of most children's childhood is about taking part in educational and leisure‐time activities together with other children across various contexts. However, children in out‐of‐home care do not always have easy access to these possibilities for participation. In general, parents coordinate their children's everyday lives, but in the case of children in out‐of‐home care, the responsibility of care is distributed between several professionals and institutions. Research often recommends that inter‐professional cooperation should put the child at the centre and be more child focused. But what does that mean? The paper investigates theoretical understandings of ‘child centredness’ in inter‐professional cooperation. It also includes an empirical example taken from a research project that followed four children in their everyday lives in two residential homes in Denmark. The research explored how professionals work together across contexts in order to support children to take part in school and leisure‐time activities. The overall reasoning leads to the point that for children in out‐of‐home care, the possibility of exercising personal agency in their everyday life constitutes a difficult but vital issue. How children in out‐of‐home care learn how to conduct their everyday lives, is closely related to the ways professionals cooperate across contexts. It points to the need for close inter‐professional cooperation in order to encourage and support children's initiatives and engagements in activities in communities with other children.     

A comparison of systems and outcomes for safeguarding children in Australia and Norway

Using aggregated national data, this paper compares outcomes of Australian ‘child protection’ (CP) and Norwegian ‘child welfare services’ (CWS). We highlight each nation's context and key elements of their CP/CWS organizations, with emphasis on policy and programme orientation. System outcomes are examined along with the implications of their different approaches. The main policy focus in Australia is protection and risk, while Norway's systemic approach stresses prevention, early intervention and support. These differences influence practitioner's intervention strategies and how the needs of children and parents are met. In Norway, approximately 80% of the children in the CWS receive some sort of supportive services. In contrast, Australian services for supporting families are narrowly targeted. Both countries share the ‘best interest of the child’ principle and an increased focus on children's rights, and have experienced increased service demands and rates of children in out‐of‐home care. The paper explores the relative merits of these systems.     

Changing tides: Mothers’ supportive emotion socialization relates negatively to third‐grade children's social adjustment in school

Parents’ supportive reactions to children's negative emotions are thought to promote children's social adjustment. Research heretofore has implicitly assumed that such reactions are equally supportive of children's adjustment across ages. Recent findings challenge this assumption, suggesting that during middle childhood, socialization practices previously understood as supportive may in fact impede children's social adjustment. We explored this possibility in a sample of 203 third‐grade children and their mothers. Using structural equation modeling, we tested associations between mothers’ supportive (i.e., problem‐ and emotion‐focused) reactions to children's negative emotions and children's social skills and problems as reported by mothers and teachers. Mothers’ supportive reactions predicted greater social adjustment in children as reported by mothers. Inverse associations, however, were found with teachers’ reports of children's social adjustment: mothers’ supportive reactions predicted fewer socioemotional skills and more problem behaviors. These contrasting patterns suggest potential unperceived costs associated with mothers’ supportiveness of children's negative emotions for third‐grade children's social adjustment in school and highlight the importance of considering associations between socialization practices and children's various social contexts. The findings also highlight a need for greater consideration of what supportiveness means across different developmental periods.     

Family functioning and emotion socialization in Chinese two-parent households: A person-centered approach

The current study adopted cluster analysis as a person-centered approach to identify patterns of Chinese families’ functioning and parents’ emotion socialization responses and investigate their associations with children's emotion regulation and behavioral outcomes. Both parents residing in the same family were included to explore joint contributions of mothers and fathers within the family system. Participants were 204 Chinese two-parent (mother and father) households of 5- to 10-year-old children (M_age = 7.43 years, SD = .81; 98 girls). Both parents filled out online questionnaires about their perceptions of family functioning (cohesion, adaptability) and endorsement of responses to children's negative emotions (supportive, nonsupportive). Mothers also reported children's lability/negativity, emotion regulation, problematic behaviors (internalizing, externalizing) and prosocial behaviors. Five clusters were identified: poor-functioning/dismissing, well-functioning/coaching, engaged fathers, engaged mothers, and balanced/diffuse. Overall, poor-functioning/dismissing families had children with the lowest functioning and well-functioning/coaching families had children with the most optimal outcomes. The other three clusters were moderate in terms of child functioning with children of engaged fathers having less optimal outcomes than the other two. The nuanced variations among clusters and meaning of results are discussed in relation to Chinese cultural contexts. Findings support the utility of a person-centered approach for illuminating how parents’ socialization practices interconnect holistically within dynamic family systems.     

Emotion Socialization in the Context of Risk and Psychopathology: Maternal Emotion Coaching Predicts Better Treatment Outcomes for Emotionally Labile Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

We examined whether maternal emotion coaching at pretreatment predicted children's treatment response following a 12‐week program addressing children's oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) symptoms. A total of 89 mother–child dyads participated. At pretreatment, mothers and children engaged in an emotion talk task. Mothers also reported their beliefs about emotions at pretreatment and their child's disruptive behavior symptoms, emotion regulation, and emotion lability/negativity at pre‐, mid‐, and post‐treatment. Clinicians reported children's symptom severity at pre‐ and post‐treatment. Children's emotion lability/negativity moderated effects of maternal emotion coaching on children's post‐treatment ODD symptoms, with stronger benefits of emotion coaching for children high in emotion lability/negativity. Results suggest that emotion coaching may promote treatment response for children with ODD who are especially at risk due to their emotionality.     

Mothers' and Fathers' Emotion Socialization and Children's Emotion Regulation: A Within‐Family Model

In the current study, we examined whether mothers' and fathers' reactions to young children's positive and negative emotions were associated with children's negativity and emotion regulation. We utilized a within‐family design with 70 families (mother, father, and two siblings between the ages of 2 and 5 years). Mothers and fathers completed questionnaires about their emotion socialization as well as children's negativity and emotion regulation. Results indicated that mothers' and fathers' unsupportive reactions to children's positive emotions were associated with children's negativity. Fathers' unsupportive reactions to children's emotional displays were differentially associated with older and younger siblings' emotion regulation. Fathers' unsupportive responses to children's positive and negative emotions also contributed jointly to children's emotion regulation. The results suggest that exploring the within‐family correlates of children's emotion regulation and negativity is useful for understanding children's emotional development.     

Temperament,mothers' reactions to children's emotional experiences,and emotion understanding predicting adjustment in preschool children

It is expected that both children and their parents contribute to children's development of emotion knowledge and adjustment. Bidirectional relations between child temperament (fear, frustration, executive control) and mothers' reactions to children's emotional experiences were examined to explore how these variables predict children's emotion understanding, social competence, and problem behaviors. Preschool‐aged children (N = 306) and their mothers were assessed across four‐time points. Children's temperament and mothers' non‐supportive reactions to children's emotional experiences were assessed when children were 36 and 45 months of age. Emotion understanding was assessed when the children were 54 months of age and teachers reported on children's problem behaviors and social competence when the children were 63 months of age. Covariates included family income, child cognitive ability, gender, and child adjustment at 36 months. Results from path analyses demonstrated that bidirectional relations between children's temperament and mothers' non‐supportive reactions were not significant. However, mother's non‐supportive reactions directly predicted fewer problem behaviors, and children's emotion understanding mediated the relation between children's executive control and their later social competence. As such, emotion understanding appears to be one mechanism through which executive control might impact social competence.     

‘I may not know who I am,but I know where I am from’: the meaning of place in social work with children and families

Although social work around the world is understood to be a ‘person‐in‐environment’ activity, policy in UK places more emphasis on individual characteristics than on environmental influences on development and behaviour. This results in social work practice which rightly places a strong emphasis on children's attachments to their parents and other significant people, but which largely fails to recognize their attachments to important places in their lives. Evidence from a range of disciplines is used to demonstrate the fundamental links that exist between place, identity and well‐being. The implications of this evidence for social work with children and families are explored, using practice examples to highlight some of the consequences of a lack of ‘place awareness’, as well as ways in which greater place awareness can be used to promote the well‐being of children and families.     

Within‐ and between‐individual variation in fathers’ emotional expressivity in Chinese families: Contributions of children’s emotional expressivity and fathers’ emotion‐related beliefs and perceptions

Parental emotion socialization is a dynamic process encompassing moment‐to‐moment fluctuations in parents’ emotional displays and responsiveness. This study attempted to examine the within‐ and between‐individual variation in fathers’ emotional expressivity during a real‐time father–child interaction in Chinese families. Eighty‐five children (M_age = 7.58 years, SD = 0.50 years, 47.1% boys) from east China and their biological fathers participated in the study. Fathers’ and children’s emotional expressivity were observed during a problem‐solving interaction task. Fathers’ beliefs about children’s negative emotions and fathers’ perceptions of their children’s emotion regulation ability were assessed via self‐report questionnaires. Results showed that (1) At the within‐individual level, fathers’ and children’s emotional expressivity covariated with each other in concurrent intervals when controlling for their emotional expressivity in previous intervals; fathers’ emotional expressivity gradually became less positive over time whereas children’s emotional expressivity did not change significantly over time; (2) At the between‐individual level, fathers’ perceptions of children’s emotion regulation accounted for the between‐individual variance in the dynamics of fathers’ emotional expressivity. These findings chart the dynamics of paternal emotion expressivity during father–child interactions and shed light on the relevant roles of children’s emotional expressivity and fathers’ emotion‐related beliefs and perceptions.     

Maternal responses to negative emotions and child externalizing behavior: Different relations for 5‐, 6‐, and 7‐year‐olds

Emotional and behavioral maturity expectations increase as children transition to primary school; thus, maternal responses that support and encourage children's expression of negative emotion may not benefit school‐age children as much as preschoolers. The current study explored a change in the utility of these maternal responses among 187 families (62 5‐year‐olds, 75 6‐year‐olds, and 50 7‐year‐olds). Mothers reported on their responses to children's negative emotions and children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors at two time points over 1 year. Multiple group analysis within cross‐lagged path models revealed a positive association between non‐supportive maternal responses and later child externalizing behaviors among 5‐year‐olds. However, non‐supportive responses were related to decreases in externalizing behaviors among the 7‐year‐olds. Discrepant findings between the 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds may represent a developmental shift in the function of mothers' emotion socialization practices.