Understanding Diverse Preschoolers’ Knowledge of Emotion Regulation Strategies

ABSTRACT This study examines expressions of self‐regulation and social emotion regulation strategies in over 600 racially/ethnically, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse preschoolers in an American public school district based on open‐ended interviews conducted in fall and spring of the preschool year. We capture children's self‐reports of their emotion regulation strategies—namely, what they would do and how they would help their peers to feel better and calm down. Consistent with prior emotion regulation research, older preschoolers expressed more supportive emotion regulation strategies relative to their younger peers. At fall, girls outperformed boys in expressing supportive strategies for sad and angry; by spring, their advantage shifted to emotional self‐regulation contexts. Extending prior work, we examine variability in these strategies, demographic differences in ability to produce supportive strategies, common strategy themes, and differences in strategy expression and themes from fall to spring of the preschool year. Existing work on preschool‐aged children's emotion regulation behaviors and knowledge of strategies has relied heavily on small samples from the United States and Europe that fail to adequately represent the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity that characterize the US preschool population. We contribute to the literature by capturing children's self‐reported emotion regulation strategies in a large, urban, socioeconomically‐ and racially/ethnically‐diverse sample of preschoolers, providing insights on diversity in emotion regulation development in the broader US preschool population.