Family communication and children's emotion regulation

Abstract

There is literature which indicates that parent-child interaction could be a factor in how children regulate their emotions. For this study, we used data that was gathered as part of the Family and Schools for Health or FiSH project. The data was collected from 740 children and their mothers from rural Midwestern towns. To measure family communication, we used the Family Assessment Device or FAD. To determine emotion regulation, we used the Children's Emotion Management Scale. After conducting bivariate correlations using SPSS, we had 29 percent of the correlations be significant. Overall, the results partly supported our hypothesis that good family communication results in better emotion regulation in children. In conclusion, we can infer from the results that family communication is in some ways linked to anger and worry regulation in children. However, caution should be taken when interpreting the results due to the low internal consistency of the scales.