Parental Meta-emotion Philosophy And Social Adaptation Of 5-6 Years Old Children

Social adaptation is an important part of preschool children’s learning in the social field.Good social adaptation not only directly affects children’s academic achievement when they enter primary school,but also lays a foundation for the future development of interpersonal relationship,career achievements and so on.Based on the ecosystem theory,the previous studies on the factors of influencing children’s social adaptation mainly focused on the usual parenting styles,ignoring the special influence of parents on children in the emotional field.However,parental meta-emotion philosophy,as a cognitive and reaction mode in which parents deal with emotions of children and their own,has an subtle and far-reaching influence on children.In addition,the levels of children’s social adaptation are not passively affected by the influence of parental metaemotion philosophy,and the level of children’s own emotional regulation will also affect the final adaptation results.The previous studies have drawn inconsistent conclusions on the relationship between parental meta-emotion philosophy and children’s social adaptation,and it is not clear that the mechanism of children’s emotional regulation in that relationship,which still needs to be explored by more empirical studies.Therefore,this study was trying to explore the relationship between parental meta-emotion philosophy and children’s social adaptation as well as the mechanism of children’s emotional regulation in the relationship.In this study,374 children aged in 5 to 6 years old and their parents from two private kindergartens in H city of Hubei Province were selected as participants,and their fathers were invited to fill in the “father’s meta-emotion philosophy scale”,the mother filled in the “mother’s meta-emotion philosophy scale”,“emotion regulation checklist” and “children’s social ability and behavior evaluation scale”.The results of research were found that:Firstly,the meta-emotion philosophy that fathers and mothers held respectively were different,and there were significant differences in their educational background.In addition,there were differences in children’s emotional regulation and social adaptation in terms of age and primary caregivers.The main differences were as followed: fathers had a lower level of emotion-coaching meta-emotion philosophy and a higher level of emotion-dismissing meta-emotion philosophy than mothers;the more educated the parents were,the lower their levels of emotion-dismissing meta-emotion philosophy,and the same was true for the mother’s emotion-dysfunction meta-emotion philosophy;children aged in six years old had lower levels of emotional instability,anger aggression and anxiety withdrawal than children aged in five years old;children whose grandparents were primary caregivers had higher levels of emotional instability and angry aggression than children whose parents were primary caregivers.Secondly,there was relevant relations among parental meta-emotion philosophy,children’s emotional regulation and social adaptation.Parental emotion-coaching metaemotion philosophy had a significant positive correlation with children’s emotional regulation and sensitive cooperation respectively,but had a significant negative correlation with children’s emotional instability,anger aggression and anxiety withdrawal.Parental emotion-dismissing and emotion-dysfunction meta-emotion philosophy were inversely related to the above variables.Mothers’ emotionnoninvolvement meta-emotion philosophy was significantly negatively correlated with children’s emotional regulation and sensitive cooperation,but parental emotionnoninvolvement meta-emotion philosophy was significantly positively correlated with children’s emotional instability,anger aggression and anxiety withdrawal.There was a significant positive correlation between children’s emotional regulation and sensitive cooperation,but a significant negative correlation with children’s emotional regulation and anger aggression,anxiety withdrawal.Children’s emotional instability was inversely related to the social adaptation variables mentioned above.Thirdly,children’s emotional regulation was a complete mediator between parental meta-emotion philosophy and children’s social adaptation,which showed that parental meta-emotion philosophy affected children’s social adaptation completely by influencing children’s emotion regulation.The results were shown that fathers and mothers held on different meta-emotion philosophy,and there were significant differences in their educational background.Children with different ages and primary caregivers showed different emotional regulation and social adaptation.The correlation between parental meta-emotion philosophy and children’s social adaptation was notable,in which children’s emotional regulation was completely mediating.These conclusions can not only enrich the theories of social adaptation in early education,but also provide a reference for parents and preschool educators.