Inspired by the work of Haim Ginott and building on the analogy with meta-cognition, Meta-Emotion: How Families Communicate Emotionally explores how parents feel about their own and their children''s emotions. The author presents evidence showing that the way that parents talk to children about their emotions during the children's emotional episodes is strongly related to their subsequent cognitive, social, and emotional development. They identify two styles of parenting - "Emotion coaching" and "Emotion dismissing" - and present data for a new theoretical model of model of emotion regulation, linking emotion coaching to the child's regulatory physiology ability to focus attention, and subsequent ability to regulate emotion. The book also shows how meta-emotion is related to interactions between spouses and between parents and children. The authors present findings on the search for buffers that might protect children from the harmful intra-and inter-personal effects of an ailing and dissolving marriage. Results suggest that emotion coaching families are able to buffer their children from virtually all of these effects, including behavior problems ranging from failure at school and in relationships with other children, to increasing aggression and delinquency. This book will appeal to family therapists, marriage counselors and therapists, social workers, developmental psychologist, clinical psychologist, psycho physiologists, and sociologists of the family. --- from the author Contents: Foreword. Part I: The Emotional Life of Families. Introduction to the Concept of Meta-Emotion. Research on Parenting, and Meta-Emotions. Popular Parenting Guides: Introducing Ginott. Appendix: Life Space Interviewing in More Detail. Part II: Measurement and Conceptualization. The Selection of Developmental Outcomes. The Meta-Emotion Interview. An "Emotion Regulation Theory" of Meta-Emotion, Parenting, and Child Outcomes. Appendix: How Specifically Might Meta-Emotion and Parenting Affect a Child's Development? Appendix: Necessary Concepts From Child Physiology: A Brief Review of Research. Designing a Family Psychophysiology Laboratory: The Methods of Our Study. Appendix: More Detail on Measures and Coding. The Internal Structure of Parents' Meta-Emotions. Validity of the Meta-Emotion Interview. Part III: Parenting, Meta-Emotions, and Child Outcomes. Parenting, Parental Meta-Emotions, and the Child's Peer Relations. Parenting, Parental Meta-Emotions, and the Physical Health and Negative Affectivity of Children. Parenting, Parental Meta-Emotions, and Children's Academic Achievement at Age 8. Part IV: Mechanisms: Process Models, and the Parents' Marriage. How Might Meta-Emotions Have Their Effects? Preliminary Tests of Our Theory. Parenting, Meta-Emotion, and the Parents' Marriage. The Effects of Marital Conflict and Buffering Children From Marital Conflict. Part V: Extensions. Meta-Emotion and Gender. When Parents Feel Emotionally Out of Control. Meta-Emotion, Emotional Expressiveness, and Parental Social Class. Appendix: Vagal Tone and the Inhibition of Expressiveness. Appendix: Child Temperament. Discussion and a Research Agenda. Emotion Metaphors. Appendix: Methodology for the Vagal Tone Computations. |