Parents’ Emotion Coaching Predicts Children’s Communication about Negative but Not Positive Emotions

• In Event: Emotions and Parenting

Abstract

Children’s skills for communicating their emotional experiences, termed children’s emotion communication (CEC), is important for garnering support for and learning to cope with mental illness, traumas, and all stressors. Parents’ emotion coaching (PEC) is parents’ pointed talk about their own, their child’s, and others’ emotions in a way that encourages children’s awareness and discussion of their emotions. PEC is often discussed as an adaptive parenting strategy that encourages CEC, though little empirical research supports that assumption, especially research on how PEC relates to CEC of positive emotions. Children’s negative emotions may be obvious and necessitate parental responses, while positive emotions may go unnoticed. PEC of positive emotions may be challenging and require unique parenting strategies, such as mindful parenting, to facilitate CEC of positive emotions. We hypothesize that a) PEC will be higher for negative than positive emotions and, similarly, CEC will be higher for negative than positive emotions and b) higher PEC will be associated with higher CEC for positive but not negative emotions. Data are collected and coded for the full dataset (N = 117), but summary scores are currently available for only a subsample (N = 52). Summary scores for all participants will be available and used in the analyses for the conference presentation. PEC and CEC were behaviorally coded while mother-child dyads (N=52; 50% male, Mage=9.06 years, SD=0.99) discussed two positively and two negatively valanced past family experiences; one experience from each valance focused on the child and the other involved the entire family. Behavioral rating scales ranged from 1-7, with higher scores indicating more frequent, detailed, and emotion-specific language, such as clear explanations of and questions about emotions. Coders achieved excellent inter-rater reliability on PEC and CEC ratings (ICCs > .93, Mean ICC = .95). The first hypothesis was not supported in that there were no significant differences, in ratings for positive (M=4.09) and negative (M=4.24) PEC, F=1.742, p=.188, or between CEC of positive (M=3.81) and negative (M=3.90) emotions, F=.855, p=.479. On average, PEC was moderately detailed and emotion-specific across all four emotional experiences. Regressions support the second hypothesis. Greater PEC of negative emotions was associated with greater CEC of negative emotions when discussing negative family, b=.45, p=.02, and negative child-focused, b=.59, p =.01, experiences. PEC of positive emotions was not associated CEC of positive emotions when discussing positive family, b=.27, p= .17, or positive child-focused, b=.16, p= .43, experiences. PEC and CEC were similarly frequent and emotion-specific for positive and negative emotions. However, PEC was related to CEC only for negative and not positive emotions. Past research supports variation in the types of emotion questions parents ask when reminiscing on past positive (yes/no questions) and negative (open-ended questions) events with their children. Parents’ questions about positive emotions may not elicit detailed and emotion-specific language, perhaps because we tend use only one specific label (happiness) for positive emotions. Interventions aimed at effective positive PEC may be fruitful for supporting children’s skills for sharing positive emotions and interpersonal connectedness.

Authors

• Kyrsten Anne Buote, Georgia State University
  Presenting Author

• Erin McDonald, Georgia State University

• Amanda Thompson

• Erin Christine Tully, Georgia State University