| Emotion regulation is the process used to change one's own emotional state, to prevent or initiate emotional responding, to modify the significance of the event, and to modulate the behavioral expression of emotion (Gross & Thompson, 2007). Learning how to effectively regulate emotion facilitates healthy and adaptive psychosocial and emotional functioning (Bridges, Denham, & Ganiban, 2004), while overuse of maladaptive emotion regulation skills has been linked to both externalizing and internalizing problems in early childhood and adolescence (Batum & Yagmurlu, 2007; Larsen, Vermulst, Geenen, van Middendorp, & English, 2013; Rajappa, Gallagher, & Miranda, 2011). Parenting and family experiences have been documented as playing a fundamental role in children's emotional development (Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman 2002). This study examined relationships between parent emotion regulation strategy use, parenting style, adolescent emotional regulation strategy use, and adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptoms. A sample of 27 mothers completed self-report measures of parenting style and their own emotion regulation skills, as well as a parent report of their child's emotional and social functioning. Adolescents provided a self-report of their own emotion regulation skills. Results showed a moderate positive correlation between maternal and adolescent use of an adaptive emotion regulation strategy. According to PROCESS 4 basis mediation model, parenting style did not play a role in this relationship. Additionally, no relationship was found between maternal and adolescent maladaptive emotion regulation strategy use or between adolescent emotion regulation strategy use and adolescent psychopathology. Implications for these results and future directions are discussed. |
