How our families express feelings, talk about feelings and react to feelings can have ripple effects into the next generation.
When someone becomes a parent, the models they had can become embedded in how they in turn parent.
A parent's organised set of thoughts and feelings about their own and their child's feelings is what some psychologists call parental meta-emotion philosophy. Understanding this can make a big difference in parenting and children's development.
I lead research projects that investigate the usefulness of programmes that teach parents how to understand their feelings about feelings and guide their children in healthy emotional regulation and coping strategies.
The family emotional climate
All of us have a long emotional history that comes from the emotional climate we grew up with. Early experiences become ingrained in how we feel about feelings, and affect our ability to form healthy relationships.
Based on their emotional history, some parents become good at what psychologists call emotion coaching.
These parents have learned to recognise and accept their feelings, for example that it is okay to be sad. They are aware of their children's lower-intensity feelings and view their children's emotional displays as a time for connection and teaching.
Becoming aware of feelings
Other parents have learned to ignore or deny their feelings and develop a tendency to dismiss emotions. These parents tend to avoid uncomfortable feelings like sadness and anger. Emotionally dismissive parents will likely try to make uncomfortable feelings in children go away quickly or brush them off by saying things like you'll get over it.
Gaining the ability to be aware of, understand and manage feelings is an important part of child development. Studies have shown that parents who have an emotion coaching philosophy support their children's emotional regulation, behaviour and social skills.
The question is, how effective is teaching parents to understand their feelings about feelings at improving the family emotional climate and child development outcomes.
Parenting programmes
Parent education programmes teach parents about children's needs and development and offer them tools to enhance their parenting behaviours. Some parenting classes and programmes are delivered through organizations like family centres and social services.
Others are offered through medical clinics like pediatricians' offices. There are many programmes that help parents respond to children's challenging behaviours for example, teaching parents how to positively reinforce children's appropriate behaviours.
More recently, some parenting programmes have begun to focus on parents' feelings about feelings: emotion-focused parenting programmes. These programmes teach parents specific parenting behaviours that support their children's emotional needs.
