THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMOTION REGULATION

 Although emotion regulation starts in infancy, the preschool years are critically important in developing emotion regulation and control. Further Exploration contains additional readings and resources about these developmental changes. During these years, most children spend increasing amounts of time in group settings. These settings require children to balance their own wishes against those of others, to wait for things, to conform to routines, and to deal with others’ strong emotional responses. Denise and other early childhood professionals play a central role in this process.

No matter how skilled she is, however, Denise is not the sole regulator of her children’s expression of emotions. Children’s success or difficulty in emotion regulation has already been shaped by many factors even before the 2-year-olds enter Denise’s class. Maturation of the brain and nervous system helps children to inhibit emotional expressions and delay gratification of impulses. Denise’s children are better at waiting for turns on the tire swing than they were last year, in part because they are maturationally able to do so. For better or worse, children’s early family experiences have already affected their regulatory competence (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996). The center where Denise works enrol many children whose families experience great adversity. Poverty, violence, and instability of care have made it especially difficult for some of Denise’s children to express their anger and sadness in flexible, adaptive ways. Some children have disabilities that have already influenced them to adopt certain strategies for cop- ing with their own and others’ emotional states.

What Practitioners Believe and Can Do

So much has happened before children enter early childhood programs. What exactly is the role of the early childhood professional in fostering emotional regulation in young children? Little consensus exists. In surveying American and Korean teachers and program directors, Hyson and Lee (1996) found great variations in practitioners’ endorsement of statements about certain emotion-related beliefs and strategies, such as, “When a child is upset, I try to put it in words”; “Teachers should ‘let their feelings out’ in class”; and “Children should be encouraged to display feelings openly.” These variations existed within cultures as well as between cultures.

Rather than identifying one best role for teachers to adopt in support- ing children’s emotion regulation, it may be better to examine an array of possible roles. As recent discussions of appropriate practices and professional preparation have emphasized (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997; NAEYC, 2001), early childhood professionals need a broad repertoire of strategies to help young children learn. With skill in all of these strategies, practitioners can select those that are best suited to children’s individual needs, cultural expectations, and educational purposes. When Alexander’s car crashing became wild and uncontrolled, Denise had many options from which to choose. Her gentle distraction and guidance to a new activity worked effectively, but other choices were possible. Another child (or even Alexander on a different day) might have been able to regain control with a look from Denise. Simply moving closer to Alexander and the other boys might have been sufficient. On the other hand, at times Denise may need to take over the regulatory function completely, physically removing Alexander from the area and holding him firmly until his excitement and anger subside.

AN ENVIRONMENT FOR EMOTION REGULATION

Using the roles of smorgasbord host, scaffold, and cultural guide, early childhood professionals can construct an environment within which children can strengthen their abilities to regulate their own emotions and to respond appropriately to others’ feelings.

Establishing the Interpersonal Climate

The strategies presented in earlier chapters help children build regulatory skills: creating a secure emotional environment; helping children understand their own feelings and those of others; and serving as a model of genuine, appropriate emotion expressions. A positive interpersonal cli- mate will also support the development of emotion regulation.

Children who are in “good moods” are more likely to tune in to others’ feelings, to be generous to others, and to help those in trouble (Moore, 1985). Denise’s class and other high quality programs are happy places for children and adults. Despite conflicts among children and occasional reprimands for mis-behaviour, the dominant mood is positive and loving. Rose, the director of Denise’s program, says that the first thing many visitors comment on is how happy everyone seems to be. Staff turnover is low. Foster grandparents, parent helpers, and other community volunteers enjoy being around the center; children who have graduated to public school come back to visit. Children bask in the warmth of the center’s nurturing extended family.

Although she instructs children in culturally valued patterns of regulation, Denise matter-of-factly and openly accepts children’s expression of a wide variety of emotions.

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Helping Children Understand Emotions

 

THE “BASICS” OF EMOTIONAL UNDERSTANDING

What do children need to understand about emotions? The concepts that toddler Brenda, as well as the rest of Terry’s children and other young children, are developing probably include the following “basics” (Saarni, 1990):

1. Every one has emotions.I feel happy this morning. So does Brandon, and so does Barry. Terry, my caregiver, has feelings too. She is excited and surprised sometimes, and sometimes she is serious or unhappy .

2. Emotions arise because of different situations. Lots of things make me happy: my toast on my high chair tray, a hug from Terry, the click of beads on the chain when I tug it. When someone takes my toy, or when I fall off my bike, or when I just get tired after lunch, I get angry or sad.

3. There are different ways of showing feelings.Warren fusses alot when he doesn’t have something he really wants, like his bottle. Doreen just comes right over and grabs things. Nina tries to talk me into giving her my toys or gives something in trade. And sometimes I whine and pout.

4. Other people may not feel the same way I do about everything. When I am tired, I want my “woober,” but Barry just sucks his thumb when he’s tired. I like to ride around the patio on my trike very, very slowly, but Nina wants to go fast and get ahead of me.

5. I can do things to change how I feel and how others feel. When I’m sad, I can go sit in Terry’s lap or in the big chair and after a while I feel better. Sometimes when baby Warren is fussing, I make funny faces at him, and he starts to laugh. 

OBSTACLES TO UNDERSTANDING ABOUT FEELINGS

Children do not arrive at this emotional understanding quickly or automatically. As Exploration 3 in Part II emphasises, developmental limitations, family and community environments, and cultural differences may create challenges along the way. Infants and very young children have only limited ability to infer the reasons for others’ happiness, sadness, or anger. And even somewhat older children have a hard time drawing conclusions about the causes of emotion when the situation is unfamiliar, or when the other person’s feelings are different from those the child would have. Young children may also have trouble understanding the cause-effect connections between an event and an emotional response, and they have particular difficulty under- standing complex emotional experiences or mixed emotions (Denham, 1998).

Differences in family expressiveness (Dunsmore & Halberstadt, 1997; Halberstadt, Crisp, & Eaton, 1999) also influence children’s ability to understand various emotional situations. Generally, more expressive families provide richer opportunities to develop emotional understanding. How- ever, there are limits to the benefits of expressiveness. Conflict-ridden families and violent communities offer many emotionally intense experiences, but these environments often leave young children frightened, confused, and unable to process emotion signals in accurate, adaptive ways (Camras et al., 1996; Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman, 2002).

Finally, cultural contexts may complicate children’s development of emotional understanding. For example, rules about how and when to show feelings may be easy for children to understand in the familiar culture of home and community. In Nina’s Mexican American household, children are encouraged to express their feelings less intensely than is permitted in her family child care home. In a culturally diverse child care or school set- ting, the rules may be confusingly different. And for children whose home language differs from that of their early childhood program, even the words that represent feelings can be obstacles.

Teachers should not be discouraged by these multiple challenges to emotional understanding. Teachers can do more than just sit back and wait for children to mature. The emotion centered professional will develop a rich array of strategies to help children of every age, family history, and cultural environment gain a better understanding of their own and others’ feelings.

SETTING THE STAGE

Much positive learning about emotions occurs without direct adult instruction. Terry supports children’s emotional understanding by establishing an environment that enhances concept development, by allowing children opportunities to experience, observe, and express feelings dur- ing spontaneous peer play, and by being attuned to teachable moments throughout the day.

Supporting General Concept Development

In many ways, learning about emotions parallels and is a product of children’s understanding of many other concepts, such as time, space, number, and causality (Scholnick, Nelson, Gelman, & Miller, 1999). By support- ing concept development and learning in all domains, early childhood professionals will simultaneously enhance children’s understanding of concepts of emotion (see Resource Note 3.1 and Exploration 2 in Part II).

As in Terry’s family child care home, children gain conceptual under- standing when their learning is embedded in many real-world exemplars of a particular concept. Young children may use these exemplars to con-struct models or prototypes of particular concepts, including concepts about emotions (Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O’Conner, 2001). A child’s mental representation of “sad,” for example, comes to include not just the vocabulary word sad, but also associated causes, frequently observed sad situations, and memories of sad behaviours. 

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