As young children develop socially and interact more and more with peers, emotion regulation ability becomes increasingly important. Good emotion regulation ability has an important impact on children's security building, peer relationships, and psychological health. Previous studies showed that emotional coaching for parents could enhance children's emotional and social interaction skills. This study aimed to explore the effects of parental coping styles and children's temperament type on children's emotion regulation ability, and further investigated the beneficial effects of emotional coaching on parental coping styles and children's emotion regulation ability.
This paper includes two studies. In Study 1，281 young children's parents were recruited to examine the effects of parental coping styles on young children's emotion regulation ability, and explored the role of children's temperament type between parental coping styles and young children's emotion regulation ability through the multigroup structure equation model. The results found that parental supportive reactions reduced emotional instability and improved emotional regulation ability of young children; parental non-supportive reactions increased emotional instability and reduced emotional regulation ability. The higher the mother's education level, the better the emotional regulation ability of young children. The temperament type has a moderating effect between children's emotion regulation ability and parental coping styles, namely, intermediate temperament plays significant moderating roles between parental supportive reactions and young children's emotional instability, parental supportive reactions and young children's emotional regulation; slow-to-warm-up and intermediate temperament play significant moderating roles between parental non-supportive reactions and young children's emotional instability.
Based on the findings of Stu即1，Study 2 randomly assigned the recruited parents of young children into the training group (n=121) and the control group (n=124). By conducting six sessions of emotion coaching training with parents of young children, we explored the beneficial effects of parents' coping styles and young children's emotion regulation ability. Parental coping styles and young children's emotion regulation ability were assessed at baseline, post-test, and 3-month follow-up test. The results showed that the parental coping styles and the emotion instability of the young children in the training group improved significantly, and the training effect could last for 3 months. Specifically, parental encouragement of emotional expression scored significantly higher at post-test and follow-up test, while parental minimization responses, punitive responses and distress reactions scored significantly lower at post-test and follow-up test. Young children's emotional instability scored significantly lower at post-test and follow-up test. There was a significant increase in parental support reactions for children with intermediate temperament, a significant decrease in parental non-support reactions for children with difficult and intermediate temperament, and a significant decrease in emotional instability for children with slow-to warm-up and intermediate temperament.
This study shows that parental coping styles have a significant predictive effect on children's emotional regulation ability, and children's temperament type plays a moderating role between parental coping styles and children's emotional regulation ability. The emotion coaching training significantly improved the parental coping styles and young children's emotional instability in the training group. The current study provides important evidence for the improvement of parents' emotional socialization behavior and young children's emotional regulation ability, which has important theoretical and practical significance.
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