Parents' and toddlers' emotion regulation the importance of emotion talk

Through emotion socialization, parents shape their children’s emotional development. Parents’ characteristics determine how they do this. We investigated parents’ emotion regulation, belief in the importance of emotion talk, and emotion socialization in the form of emotion talk in relation to toddlers’ emotion regulation. During an online video-call task 75 Dutch mothers talked with their toddlers (M-age = 23 months, Range = 21-25) about illustrations depicting emotion-related situations. On average 2.33% of the total words used by parents were emotions words. The emotion regulation strategies of parents did not relate to their emotion talk and the emotion talk of parents did not relate to children’s emotion regulation. However, parents with stronger beliefs in the importance of emotion talk, did use more emotion words and reported more effective emotion regulation in their children. Possibly time is needed for emotion talk to consolidate into children’s emotion regulation.