As Inside Out’s Sadness explains to her friend Joy, “Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life’s problems.”
Any parent who watched the Pixar movie with their child will remember the important theme of recognising negative emotions as being of equal importance to positive feelings.
Now, new research has looked at parents who support their children’s negative emotions and how exactly this impacts on kids’ emotional regulation.
Dr Vanessa Castro and her colleagues have published findings that suggest mums who are more supportive of their children’s negative emotions rate their children as being more socially skilled. However, these same children appear less socially adjusted when rated by their teachers.
Parents’ supportive reactions predicted fewer social and emotional skills and more problem behaviours, according to children’s second class teachers. Dr Castro says that these contrasting patterns point to a potential downside to mums’ supportiveness of children’s negative emotions for eight and nine-year-old children’s social adjustment in school:
“It’s not clear if the parents are causing these problems by hovering or providing too much support when less support is needed, if the parents are rightfully providing more support because their children are experiencing these social and emotional problems, or if the children are exhibiting very different emotional and social behaviours at home than they are at school.”
The research suggests that it may be helpful for parents to consider other strategies to guide their children to develop their own skills in emotion regulation and social interaction.
Hmm… We wonder what would Sadness and Joy have to say on this one?
