The Influence Of Parental Meta-emotion Philosophy On Preschool Children's Emotion Regulation Strategy

The purpose of the present research was to develop a Parental Meta-emotion questionnaire and analyze the relationship between parental meta-emotion and emotional regulating strategies of pre-school children. Participants in Study 1 were 281 children (156males,125 females) and their parents and teachers who came from Kindergarten Attached to Xinyang Normal University and Kindergarten Attached to No.1 Aviation Academy. Two research tools are employed. One is the Parental Meta-emotion Questionnaire which is designed for parents of which 80 percent were mothers. The other is the Questionnaire of Pre-school children's emotional regulating strategies which is designed for both parents and teachers.Study 1 indicated the Questionnaire of Parental Meta-emotion is inconsistent with western or Taiwanese scholars in term of dimensions categorization. It has empirical features of good psychometric properties (including stability, convergent validity, and construct validity), Study 2 indicated that there existed distinctive differences of the impact of pre-school children's emotion regulating strategies impose by parental meta-emotion and there is different prediction of Children's emotion regulating strategies imposed by parental meta-emotion.For those parents who emphasized the philosophy of emotion-coaching, their children had higher scores on attention focusing, perceptual sensitivity and inhibitory control. Parents'philosophy of emotion-noninvolvement did not affect their children's emotion regulation, but was negatively correlated with emotion regulation scores. Parents'emphasized philosophy of emotion-dismissing predicted their children's higher impulsivity, lower perceptual sensitivity and inhibitory control. Parents characterized by the philosophy of emotion dysfunction had children with less perceptual sensitivity and inhibitory control scores. In addition, children's emotion regulation showed differences between genders. Girls performed higher scores than boys on attention focusing, perceptual sensitivity and inhibitory control, but not on impulsivity.