Estratégias de regulação emocional de mães e pais em relação a seus filhos

Abstract

The role played by adults in the emotional regulation of children is relevant to teaching them alternatives of emotional responses, welcoming their emotional expressions and building positive conditions in the management of emotions with children. Parental reactions, which can be understood as welcoming and non-welcoming strategies, aim to favor (or not) the child's emotional regulation in the face of emotions, including those experienced as negative. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis was to analyze the reactions and strategies of emotional regulation that mothers and fathers used in the face of the children 's sadness and anger. Twenty triads participated in this study, composed of mothers, fathers and their children, from four to five years of age, from an urban context in the city of Petrópolis-RJ. Regarding the instruments and task, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire was applied to assess the emotional regulation of parents and the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotion Scale, which assesses the different parental reactions to the children's emotions. As for the task, the Emotion Inducing Task and Emotion Regulation Strategies Attempts was used, which aims to induce sadness and / or anger in the child, in which mothers, fathers and children participated. The empirical study was cross-sectional, including quantitative, descriptive and inferential analyzes and qualitative analysis, using observation with video image recording. The emotional expressions of sadness and anger of the children and the strategies of the parents in the face of these emotions of the children were analyzed. The results revealed that all mothers and most fathers used some strategy for the emotional management of children. They also revealed that Cognitive Reappraisal (- CR) was the strategy most used by mothers and fathers to help their children's emotional regulation, as well as for their own emotional regulation. All mothers used the same type of strategy that they used for themselves in relation to their children (CR), none of whom used Emotional Suppression - ES for themselves, nor did they use it for children. Most parents used CR for themselves and a father used the SE for his son. It was found that mothers and fathers did not show a significant difference in the use of “supportive practices” in the face of emotions seen as negative manifested by the children. They demonstrated involvement, providing alternatives for emotional responses when using strategies favorable to their children's emotional expressions. CR stood out in its use by mothers and fathers, indicating that it is a favorable strategy for the socio-emotional skills of parents and children. It was possible to examine the type of parental emotional self-regulation strategy and the use of various strategies by mothers and fathers with respect to their children as significant elements for children's emotional regulation. It is hoped that this study can enrich the understanding of professionals and caregivers who are interested in socio-emotional development. We believe in the importance of promoting parental intervention programs, so that the experiences and perceptions about strategies favorable to children's emotional regulation are discussed and encouraged, according to the socio-cultural context.