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Chapter 7 - Parental Coregulation of Child Emotions

from Part III - Influence of Parenting on Child Emotion Regulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2024

By
Manfred Holodynski  and
Joscha Kärtner
Edited by
Isabelle Roskam ,
James J. Gross  and
Moïra Mikolajczak
Isabelle Roskam
Affiliation:
Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
James J. Gross
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Moïra Mikolajczak
Affiliation:
Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
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Summary

Emotional development can be described as the emergence of a child’s self-regulation out of coregulation by their caregivers, especially parents. This chapter highlights this transition, focusing on two interwoven facets of emotional development: the regulation of actions by emotions and the regulation of emotions by volitionally applied actions, called reflective emotion regulation. The significance of parental coregulation strategies is considered, specifically how they contribute to the differentiation of emotion qualities throughout ontogenesis as well as to a conceptual awareness of a child’s own elicited feelings and the inferred feelings of others, which is required for reflective emotion regulation. The chapter addresses core parental strategies such as context selection and modification, affect mirroring, modeling, reflective functioning and talking about emotions as well as levels of coregulation, and also presents a brief overview of the field. The chapter closes with a look at noteworthy issues for further research.

Keywords

emotional developmentemotion regulationcoregulationself-regulationaffect mirroring
Type
Chapter
Information
Emotion Regulation and Parenting , pp. 129 - 148
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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