These findings reflect the fact that children who are able to regulate their responses to emotional situations are more likely to respond in a socially appropriate manner during social interactions with their peers. Conversely, a greater capacity for controlling one’s emotional responses and more positive emotional expressiveness has been directly linked to better social skills, which in turn are associated with higher peer reported likeability ( Denham et al., 1990 Keane & Calkins, 2004). For example, research suggests that deficits in emotion regulation and higher levels of negativity in emotional expression are linked to greater levels of behavior problems, difficulties with peers, and later psychopathology ( Calkins, Gill, Johnson, & Smith, 1999 Eisenberg et al., 2001 Shipman, Schneider, & Brown, 2004). We focus on two indictors of emotional competence, children’s negative emotional expressiveness and their ability to regulate their emotions that have been linked to a number of outcomes. During childhood, some indicators of emotional competence include children’s emotional expressiveness, their emotion knowledge and their ability to identify others’ emotions based on situational and affective cues, the ability to manage and control emotions, the emerging capacity to empathize with others’ emotional experiences, and learning the cultural and social expectations for expressing emotions across different situations and relationships ( Denham et al., 2003 Miller et al., 2006 Saarni, 1999). The current study explores how maternal parenting behavior and toddler risk, characterized by externalizing behavior problems and poor emotion regulation strategies, interact to predict children’s social and emotional competence during the transition to kindergarten.Įmotional and Social Competence during the Transition to KindergartenĬhildren’s emotional competence encompasses a range of abilities that are vital for their development of self-efficacy during their social interactions and when building relationships ( Saarni, 1999). This is consistent with a developmental psychopathology perspective, which posits that multiple factors interact to either enhance or impede children’s developmental outcomes and that understanding these complex interactions is critical for understanding individual differences ( Cicchetti, 1993). Recent research suggests that the effect of parenting behaviors such as maternal control and responsiveness on children’s outcomes is complex and differs depending on characteristics of the child and broader aspects of the caregiving environment ( Belsky, Hsieh, & Crnic, 1998). ![]() ![]() However, these factors do not always account for the individual differences observed in children’s emotional and social competence during the transition to kindergarten. Multiple factors, including parenting behaviors and child characteristics, are notable predictors of children’s emotional and social competence ( Denham, McKinley, Couchoud, & Holt, 1990 McCollum & Ostrosky, 2008). The development of children’s emotional and social competence during the transition to kindergarten provides a foundation for children’s later functioning across peer and school contexts ( Keane & Calkins, 2004 Rubin, Coplan, Fox, & Calkins, 1995), and can potentially constrain the development of a range of emotional, cognitive, and social skills as children grow ( Calkins & Fox, 2002 Nigg & Huang-Pollock, 2003). Overall, it appears that there are multiple developmental pathways, depending on child and maternal characteristics that lead to early emotional and social competence. Specifically, maternal control tended to be more detrimental for children’s emotional competence during the transition to kindergarten, when children exhibit higher levels of risk. In some instances, maternal control has differential implications for children’s emotional and social competence dependent upon the child’s level of early risk and maternal positive parenting. Maternal parenting behavior was not directly associated with children’s emotional and social competence. There were some significant interactions although the pattern of results was not consistent across all competence outcomes. Given that we were interested in the multiple pathways that may result in emotional and social competence, we examined the interactions among maternal parenting behavior and toddler risk. ![]() Toddler risk was characterized by early externalizing behavior and poor emotion regulation skills. ![]() The longitudinal associations between maternal parenting behavior and toddler risk with children’s emotional and social competence were examined during the transition to kindergarten, in a sample of 253 children.
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