Mothers’ and Children’s Coaching and Dismissing of Positive Emotions from Early to Middle Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Emotion coaching (EC) involves acceptance and validation of another’s emotions, whereas emotion dismission (ED) involves the rejection and invalidation of another’s emotions (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996). Parents’ EC is related to better child outcomes, including fewer externalizing and internalizing behaviors, whereas parents’ ED is related to detrimental child outcomes (see Katz, Maliken, & Stettler, 2012 for review). Much of the research on EC and ED has focused on negative emotions. When both positive and negative emotions are included, coaching of positive as well as negative emotions is associated with better outcomes (i.e., Hernandez et al. 2018). Furthermore, research on EC and ED has relied either on parents’ report through questionnaires or structured interview, or behavioral observation during reminiscing tasks. Despite the benefits of these methods, task demands often fail to evoke dismissal of positive emotions, which may be an important element of EC/ED in families’ busy everyday lives. In the current investigation we observed EC and ED during frustrating joint problem-solving tasks, which we expected might more commonly elicit discouragement of positive emotion due to the implicit demand of completing a product. Because emotion socialization differs according to child gender (Cervantes & Callanan, 1998), we included child gender as a potential moderator of bidirectional longitudinal associations between mothers’ and children’s EC/ED. The current study investigated the roles mothers and children played in responding to each other’s positive emotions over time.
Three hundred sixteen mother-child dyads participated in a larger study when children were 3-, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old. The current study includes 232 mother-child dyads for whom behavioral coding is complete at 3-, 4-, and 9-year-old waves (120 boys, 112 girls). Dyads completed an etch-a-sketch task at both 3- and 4-year-old waves and a marble maze task at 9-year-old wave. For each task, children controlled one knob and mothers controlled the other, and they had to work together to complete pictures (etch-a-sketch) or maneuver a marble through a maze. Video-recordings were coded for mothers’ and children’s EC/ED of positive emotions using an adaptation of an established coding scheme (Dunsmore et al., 2013). Reliability was satisfactory, ICCs=(.511-.851) . Four unconditional linear growth models (mothers’ EC/ED, children’s EC/ED) and four linear growth models (change in mother’s EC/ED influencing change in child’s EC/ED, change in child likewise influencing change in mother) were conducted in HLM, with child sex included as a moderator. Time point was included as a within-subject variable in all models.
Table 1 shows the HLM results. Mothers’ EC showed a significant increase over time, as did children’s EC. However, change in mothers’ or children’s EC was not related to each other’s change in EC over time. Regarding ED, both mothers and children displayed stability over time. Boys dismissed their mothers’ positive emotions more than girls when they were 3 years old. Mothers’ ED was not significantly related to children’s ED over time, or vice versa. Altogether, results suggest increasingly active engagement of mothers and children in coaching each other's positive emotions from 3 to 9 years of age.

Authors

• Karen E Talley, University of Houston
  Presenting Author

• Danhua Zhu, University of California - Irvine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julie C Dunsmore, University of Houston
  Non-Presenting Author