In summary, we are born emotional creatures. Our experiences of emotion are intertwined with our cognitive development, social relationships, and culture. From infancy through adolescence, we grow in understanding our emotions and the emotions of others.

Emotion Regulation

Caregiving does matter in terms of infant emotional development and emotional regulation. Emotional regulation can be defined by two components: emotions as regulating and emotions as regulated. The first, “emotions as regulating,” refers to changes that are elicited by activated emotions (e.g., a child’s sadness eliciting a change in parent response). The second component is labeled “emotions as regulated,” which refers to the process through which the activated emotion is itself changed by deliberate actions taken by the self (e.g., self-soothing, distraction) or others (e.g., comfort).

Throughout infancy, children rely heavily on their caregivers for emotional regulation; this reliance is labeled co-regulation, as parents and children both modify their reactions to the other based on the cues from the other. Caregivers use strategies such as distraction and sensory input (e.g., rocking, stroking) to regulate infants’ emotions. Despite their reliance on caregivers to change the intensity, duration, and frequency of emotions, infants are capable of engaging in self-regulation strategies as young as 4 months old. At this age, infants intentionally avert their gaze from overstimulating stimuli. By 12 months, infants use their mobility in walking and crawling to intentionally approach or withdraw from stimuli.

Throughout toddlerhood, caregivers remain important for the emotional development and socialization of their children, through behaviors such as labeling their child’s emotions, prompting thought about emotion (e.g., “why is the turtle sad?”), continuing to provide alternative activities/distractions, suggesting coping strategies, and modeling coping strategies. Caregivers who use such strategies and respond sensitively to children’s emotions tend to have children who are more effective at emotion regulation, are less fearful and fussy, more likely to express positive emotions, easier to soothe, more engaged in environmental exploration, and have enhanced social skills in the toddler and preschool years.

From birth, parents are helping infants regulate their emotions. We know that parents are critical in the development of emotion regulation. They can teach children various strategies to cope with an array of emotional situations. This is considered extrinsic emotional control , as a child is coached on how to self-sooth when sad or control oneself when angry. While parents continue to play this role throughout their children’s life, over time, much of this extrinsic emotional control becomes internalized . Children know how to control their anger or gracefully lose when the soccer game does not go their way. Brain development (especially the prefrontal cortex), cognitive development, and language development all play a role in the development of emotion regulation. There is also new evidence that the regulation of negative and positive emotions may follow different developmental pathways (Campos, Frankel, & Camras, 2004; Martin & Ochsner, 2016; Woltering & Lews, 2009).

In summary, emotion regulation begins at birth and is largely extrinsic. Parents teach emotion regulation and being an emotion coach is the most successful and effective way to do so. Across childhood, this extrinsic emotion regulation becomes internalized. Finally, emotion regulation is key for academic and relationship success.

[Note: in much of the child development literature the term “parent” is used, however in most cases the theories apply to anyone who is a caregiver for a child]