Parental meta-emotion philosophy and emotion coaching in families of children and adolescents with an anxiety disorder

Katherine E. Hurrell, Frances L. Houwing, Jennifer L. Hudson*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    41 Citations (Scopus)
    107 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Using a multi-method approach, this study examined differences in parental meta-emotional philosophy (including, parental emotional awareness and emotion coaching) for families with anxiety disordered (AD; n = 74) and non-AD (n = 35) children (aged 7 to 15). Further, it was investigated whether children’s emotion regulation (ER) varied across the AD and non-AD groups. Parent(s) were interviewed about their awareness of emotions and emotion coaching; completed a battery of questionnaires that included a measure assessing children’s emotion regulation; and engaged in a parent-child discussion task. Results indicated that compared to parents of non-AD youth, parents of AD youth were less aware of their own emotions and their children’s emotions, and these results varied by emotion type. Parents of AD youth engaged in significantly less emotion coaching than parents of non-AD youth. AD youth were identified as having significantly greater difficulty regulating their emotions when compared to non-AD youth. Implications for the role of parental meta-emotional philosophy and AD youth’s emotion regulation are discussed.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)569-582
    Number of pages14
    JournalJournal of Abnormal Child Psychology
    Volume45
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Apr 2017

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright the Author(s) 2017. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

    Keywords

    • childhood anxiety
    • emotion regulation
    • parenting
    • emotion socialisation

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