Children's emotional regulation skills are a fundamental aspect of child development during their early years. Without emotional regulation, i.e., the ability to manage challenging emotions, children cannot form and manage healthy social relationships, make good choices, learn effectively and cope with life's challenges. This can have a long-term impact on functioning across many domains of life, including mental health and wellbeing.
A study by UCL researchers, published last year in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), suggests interventions by early years educators that help parents and caregivers support children with high irritability could reduce their future risk of mental illness as they get older.
WHAT ARE EMOTIONAL REGULATION AND IRRITABILITY?
We all experience multiple emotions every day: we are happy, sad, angry, disappointed, embarrassed, to name just a few. The emotions we experience are a response to events in our environment, our thoughts and internal feelings in our bodies.
While all our emotions provide important and helpful signals to us about our bodies and our environment, it is also important that we learn to identify and manage or regulate them in order to ensure we are able to respond in the best manner for a given situation.
For example, a younger child may get very upset or frustrated by spilling their drink, whereas an older child might be able to explain what has happened or even pick up their cup and get a new drink. We need to appreciate that our emotions provide us with only one part of the picture in a given situation and combine the information given to us by our emotions with other information to make the most appropriate choice in that moment.
The commonly used term ‘emotional regulation’ describes exactly this – a child's ability to understand and manage their emotions in a healthy and appropriate manner given the circumstances. This can include being able to identify and verbally explain their feelings, to control impulsive or inappropriate behaviours, to calm themselves down when they experience strong emotions and to draw on past experiences to inform choices and behaviour.
Irritability is an aspect of emotional regulation that can be thought of as a tendency to feel frustration and anger. It can indicate difficulty with managing the emotion of anger; this may present as a tendency to experience annoyance or distress at relatively minor stressors, to get angry quickly and to have explosive reactions.
Irritability can lead to difficulties in relationships and social interactions and is also subjectively and unpleasant state to experience.
Those familiar with young children know irritability is common; this is reflected in the language of phrases such as the ‘terrible twos’ and ‘threenagers’.
It undergoes developmental changes; it is highest at around three years, followed by a steady decline until around nine years; there is then a small peak in adolescence and then further decline.
We all experience things differently, have different responses to the same event, and some people find it easier to regulate their emotions than others. This means that some children may present as more irritable than others.
Irritability may be considered problematic if a child appears more irritable relative to others of the same age and developmental stage, and it is causing distress or impairment.
Relating to this, irritability is one of the most common reasons for a referral to child and adolescent mental health services.
HOW DO WE DEVELOP EMOTIONAL REGULATION?
Regulating our emotions is a skill. It is a complex process that requires an individual to use many other skills – attention, planning, cognitive, social and language – all of which are still developing in children. This is why children who struggle with one aspect of development may have difficulties with emotional regulation related to this.
Children develop the skills that contribute to emotional regulation, and emotional regulation skills at different times; this is why there can be substantial variation in emotional regulation ability at the same age. Many factors, including genetics, underlying temperament and home and cultural environment will influence this.
Managing your emotions also takes effort, so other factors, such as tiredness, hunger or illness also affect how well an individual can emotionally regulate in a specific moment. As we have all probably experienced, many people can struggle with emotional regulation when tired or hungry.
The development of emotional regulation starts early through interactions with caregivers. We learn from our caregivers’ responses to our emotions and also by observing how they behave. As children grow older, they also learn from their interactions with peers. It is a gradual, ongoing process, refined over time, and is not perfect. It is something we all struggle with from time to time!
WHY IS EMOTIONAL REGULATION IMPORTANT?
Emotional regulation is important because our emotions are intimately connected to how we think and feel about ourselves. Our thoughts and feelings influence our behaviour – they help us decide how we respond to a given situation. Furthermore, how we responded in the past and how effective it was can go on to influence our thoughts, feelings and responses in future.
The ability to manage emotions means we can think through our choices, rather than reacting more impulsively in a manner we may later come to regret.
This is important because it means we can problem-solve and manage our relationships more constructively – this affects our day-to-day lives.
Irritability, in particular, may result in a child experiencing more negative social interactions and conflict with both peers and caregivers, relative to children who experience anxiety or forms of distress which elicit a more supportive, comforting response.
For example, a child may be very excited about a trip to the zoo. However, the car breaks down, meaning the trip is cancelled. The child will understandably feel frustrated and disappointed. One possibility is that the child responds impulsively by having a tantrum; this may result in the child getting in trouble, or there simply not being enough time to plan a different activity. An alternative is that the child might be able to take on board the explanation about the car, talk to their caregivers about how they feel and is then able to contribute to a plan to do another enjoyable activity.
Research shows that children who can manage their emotions well do better academically and socially; we also know that people with better emotional regulation have better longer-term outcomes relating to education, employment and physical and mental health.
THE RESEARCH
The new study from researchers at University College London (UCL) highlights the importance of a child's early years for their development of emotional regulation, specifically irritability, to their later mental health.
The study used data from more than 7,000 children who participated in the Millennium Cohort Study, a large UK-based nationally representative population study of children born between 2000 and 2002.
Parents answered questions about their child's irritability at three, five and seven years of age and, when the children were teenagers, they answered questions about their experiences of depressive symptoms and thoughts of self-harm. Due to the availability of irritability data at three, five and seven years, researchers were able to examine how changes in the presentation of irritability across early childhood were related to later mental health.
The study found children whose irritability did not decline between the ages of three to seven years experienced higher levels of depression and self-harm as teenagers; whereas irritability which was high only at three years was not linked to later mental health.
This result illustrates that some degree of irritability in the toddler and pre-school years is to be expected and is part of normal development. It also highlights the importance of developing skills to manage irritability between the ages of three to seven in terms of protecting future mental health. Taken together, these findings emphasise the importance of the early years with regard to emotional development.
HOW CAN PRACTITIONERS PROVIDE SUPPORT?
So how can we all help? Firstly, we need to recognise that supporting the development of emotional regulation is one of the most important things we do during the early years!
This starts when children are babies. It is important to build a trusting, consistent and comforting relationship; children with secure relationships have better emotional regulation.
Responsive caregiving where caregivers identify and support children with their emotions helps them to understand and express their feelings.
From this solid foundation, the next step is about identification and validation of a child's feelings. It is helpful to talk about and label emotions in different contexts, for example, when reading books or talking about both the child and your own day-to-day experiences. Encourage children to recognise and name their own emotions using different methods, including pictures for younger children.
There are many strategies to help children develop emotional regulation and it is useful to employ a range of approaches.
Reading stories where a character has to manage their emotions, particularly anger, can be very helpful. Linking these stories to their experiences can build on this and help children reflect.
If there are specific situations where a child experiences more difficulty, it can be helpful to give warnings and to plan some strategies to manage this frustration in advance.
If the child is old enough, you can ask them to help come up with solutions; this not only means that the plan is more likely to be effective, but it also helps the child to develop their own problem-solving skills.
Similarly, helping children think about things they find helpful in one situation and how these might translate to others can be useful.
Children love to learn through play, so role-playing scenarios, either with dolls or by acting them out, can help with reflection and learning.
Praising children for good behaviour rather than focusing on negative behaviour is important, because not only do negative reactions not help children learn but also because children who experience more difficulties with emotional regulation are more likely to experience negative reactions, which may affect how they feel about themselves.
In the context of emotional regulation, this may look like positive attention when a child verbally expresses their frustration or behaves in an appropriate manner, e.g., leaves the park without a fuss, rather than a punishment when they have a tantrum.
Children also learn by observation, so we need to think about our own behaviour; we need to slow down and model self-reflection and emotional regulation. We can do this in the moment when we experience a challenging situation by narrating what has happened, how we feel and then talking through how we are coming up with a solution.
Finally, we need to remember that frustration and disappointment are a part of life. We want to give children the skills for how to cope with challenges; part of this is allowing them to experience difficulties and supporting them to manage these, rather than over-protecting or providing solutions.
Developing emotional regulation is an ongoing process, so it can take time; consistency is key across settings and caregivers. Most children do learn to manage their emotions, and the process is ongoing for many people right the way into adulthood!
