Parental Emotion-Coaching and Emotion-Dismissing Styles, Internal State Language Use, and Children’s Emotional Competence: A Longitudinal Study

Emotional competence is an important set of skills, including the ability to recognize and manage emotions, that develop in early childhood (Saarni, 2007). Parental emotion socialization styles (i.e., emotion-coaching and dismissing) are theorized to influence this development, perhaps by influencing parents’ discussion of emotions and other internal states (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Gottman et al., 1996; Morris et al., 2007). The current study examined links between parent emotion-coaching and emotion-dismissing styles, parent internal state language use, and child emotional competence in the context of a larger longitudinal study. At Time 1, 205 parents of toddlers (children aged 1-2 years) self-reported emotion-coaching and emotion-dismissing styles, and their internal state language use was coded from a wordless book-sharing task. Children’s emotion competence was measured at Time 1 using observed regulation during a wait task and at Time 2 (children aged 3-4 years) using a direct assessment of emotion knowledge and a parent-report of frustration tolerance. Contrary to hypotheses, preliminary analyses found no significant links between parental variables and child outcomes. Emotion-dismissing (but not emotion-coaching) styles were significantly correlated with internal state language use. However, regression analysis revealed that parental education was an independent predictor of internal state language use, whereas emotion-dismissing was not. These findings provide support for further research on the links among parental education, emotion socialization styles, and parent language use.