Open Access Kent State (OAKS)

The way parents socialize their children’s negative emotional expressions provides an important context for the development of adequate emotion coping skills in childhood and can influence how the child will exhibit negative emotions in the future. There are six traditional emotion socialization approaches that have been established in previous literature (Eisenberg et al. 1996): problem solving, providing support, encouraging emotion expression, minimizing, punishing, and parent getting distressed. However, most studies have investigated how parents socialize the emotions of infants and young children, and none have explored these socialization strategies using open-ended interview question.

To address these limitations and to identify other strategies used with older children, parents of children 9 to 14 years of age were given an open-ended questionnaire with five different contextual situations that varied in terms of the child’s responsibility for what has occurred (e.g., child becomes ill and is disappointed or upset because he/she can’t go to a party versus child loses or breaks an expensive electronic item and then gets upset). Parents were the asked to respond to each question with how they would approach their child’s negative emotions. Our results suggest that parents continue to use the six traditional approaches with their older children, but also report using three new approaches: parent allows child to self-regulate, parent seeks explanation of situation, parent helps child understand or reframe the situation. These findings provide evidence that parents may adopt new strategies as children get older, and that the use of parental socialization strategies are context dependent.

Two studies addressed the normative aspects of attachments to mothers and fathers in middle childhood. Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons, we tested the hypothesis that children show no changes in perceptions of availability of attachment figures across the later middle childhood years, but do utilize attachment figures less at older ages. The first study included a cross-sectional comparison of third and sixth graders, and the second study was a follow-up on the third graders when they were in fifth grade. Both studies suggested a decline in utilization, but not in perceptions of availability of attachment figures within the later middle childhood years. Study 1 also demonstrated that children turn to parents to meet attachment needs, and peers to meet companionship needs. Study 2 examined individual differences in attachment by exploring how changes in attachment to mothers from third to fifth grade were related to children's social adjustment at fifth grade. Increases in perceptions of availability forecast better emotional and behavioral regulation at fifth grade. Changes in utilization of attachment figures showed both linear and nonlinear relations to regulation.

Although a number of measures have been developed to assess parent–child attachments, validity data on middle-childhood measures are lacking. The present study tested attachment-based measures of parent-child relationships designed for the later middle-childhood years (9–12 years of age). Self-reports from children assessed perceptions of security and avoidant and preoccupied coping. Some children also completed a projective interview assessing attachment state of mind. Mothers and fathers reported their willingness to serve as an attachment figure and were rated for responsiveness. Data were collected from a cross-sectional sample of 3rd and 6th graders and their parents. A 2-year follow-up on the younger sample provided data on the stability of the measures. There were modest associations across the different measures and moderate to high stability. The attachment-based measures were also related to teacher ratings of children's school adaptation.

Although a link between attachment and peer relationships has been established, the mechanisms that account for this link have not been identified. The 1st goal of this study was to test emotion regulation as a mediator of this link in middle childhood. The 2nd goal was to examine how different aspects of emotion regulation relate to peer competence. Fifth graders completed self-report and semiprojective measures to index mother-child attachment, mothers reported on children's emotionality and coping strategies, and teachers reported on children's peer competence. Constructive coping was related to both attachment and peer competence, and mediated the association between attachment and peer competence, suggesting that emotion regulation is one of the mechanisms accounting for attachment-peer links. Constructive coping was more strongly associated with peer competence for children high on negative emotionality than for children low on negative emotionality.