Effects Of Maternal Adult Attachment On Emotional Regulation In Preschool Children:the Mediating Role Of Maternal Meta-emotion And Sensitivity

Emotional regulation in preschool children is the basis for their emotional socialization and plays an important role in their social interaction and personality formation.The development of emotion regulation is influenced by the children’s own temperament type and the external environment with the family being one of the most important external factors influencing the emotion regulation of preschool children.Therefore,this study combines mothers’ adult attachment,meta-emotion philosophy and sensitivity to explore the mechanisms of mediating effect of meta-emotion and sensitivity in relation to the influence of mothers’ adult attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety on the emotional regulation of preschool children aged 3-6 years.It is hoped that the findings of this study will provide mothers with suggestions for family education,help mothers reflect on their own attachment behavioral representations in the process of family parenting,use reasonable emotional parenting concepts to confront their preschool children’s negative emotions,increase their sensitivity to children’s needs,become more familiar with children’s emotion regulation,guide children to adopt positive ways to regulate their emotions and promote the improvement of preschool children’s emotion regulation and emotional socialization.This study uses the Disappointing-gift Paradigm,Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory,the PMEPS and the maternal sensitivity scale to measure 336 children and their mothers to investigate the effects of maternal adult attachment on preschool children’s emotion regulation and to examine the mediating effects of maternal metaemotional concepts and sensitivity on these two factors.The conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)There were no differences in age,occupation or educational attainment on either dimension of maternal adult attachment.(2)Children’ positive emotion regulation scores increased with age while negative emotion regulation scores decreased with age.There were significant differences between the emotion regulation scores of junior and senior children.There was no significant gender difference between positive emotion regulation and negative emotion regulation in preschool children.(3)Mothers’ emotion-coaching scores were generally higher,with significant differences in mean scores for emotion-dismissing,emotion-dysfunction and emotionnoninvolvement among mothers with different occupations,significant differences in mean scores for emotion-dismissing among mothers with different levels of education,and non-significant differences in age for each dimension of mothers’ meta-emotion philosophy.(4)There were significant differences in the mean scores of maternal sensitivities by age and education level,and non-significant differences by occupation.(5)The two dimensions of maternal adult attachment directly and negatively predicted preschoolers’ positive emotion regulation and positively predicted preschoolers’ negative emotion regulation,respectively.(6)Maternal emotion-coaching partially mediated the relationship between maternal adult attachment and preschoolers’ positive emotion regulation and partially mediated the relationship between maternal adult attachment and preschoolers’ negative emotion regulation.That is,maternal adult attachment can affect preschool children’s positive emotion regulation by influencing their emotion-coaching,and can also affect preschool children’s negative emotion regulation by influencing their emotioncoaching.(7)Maternal sensitivity partially mediates the relationship between maternal adult attachment and the preschool child’s positive emotional regulation and partially mediates the relationship between maternal adult attachment and the preschool child’s negative emotional regulation.That is,maternal adult attachment can affect preschool children’s positive emotion regulation by affecting their sensitivity,and can also affect preschool children’s negative emotion regulation by affecting their sensitivity.(8)Maternal emotion-dysfunction partially mediates the relationship between maternal adult attachment and the child’s negative emotional regulation.That is,maternal adult attachment can affect preschool children’s negative emotion regulation by influencing their emotion-dysfunction.(9)Mothers’ emotion-coaching and sensitivity play a serial mediation role between mothers’ adult attachment and children’s positive emotion regulation and also play a serial mediation role between mothers’ adult attachment and children’s negative emotion regulation.That is,maternal adult attachment can affect preschoolers’ sensitivity and finally affect preschoolers’ positive and negative emotional regulation by influencing their emotional-coaching.In response to the findings of this study,families,kindergartens and society should work together to develop children’s emotional regulation.In family education,mothers should examine the impact of their own attachment styles on children’s emotional education,try to create a harmonious family atmosphere for children,change their own negative emotion coping behaviors,set good role models for children in emotion regulation,establish scientific and reasonable emotion guidance concepts,improve appropriate emotion parenting styles,give children guidance on emotion regulation methods and strategies and consciously develop their own sensitivity to children’s needs.They should be sensitive to children’s needs,take responsibility for their own parenting,improve their overall parenting quality and provide a safe base for preschool children to practice their emotion regulation skills.Kindergartens should also play a role in guiding and providing services to families by holding talks for parents on emotional parenting and organizing parent-teacher meetings to provide a platform for mothers to learn and exchange parenting experiences.In addition,as an external system that indirectly affects the emotional development of preschool children,relevant departments and the community should also try their best to provide mothers with a reliable and effective platform to share their emotional parenting experiences through the “Mother Quality Project”,care for their mental health,urge them to learn about relevant theories,promote the formation of a harmonious family atmosphere,and guide them to establish a scientific concept of emotional parenting so as to ultimately promote the emotional stability and positive development of children.This will ultimately promote children’s emotional stability and positive development.