Relationship of Young Children’s Regulation of Negative Emotions, Their Caregivers’ Coping With the Children’s Negative Emotions, and the Development of the Children’s Externalizing and Internalizing Problem Behavior:

The purposes of the present study were to conduct a longitudinal study of the relation between young children ' s self-regulation of their negative emotions and their caregivers ' reports of how they cope with these emotions, and to explore the process through which young children ' s internalizing and externalizing behavior emerges. The children were tested when they were 3-4 , 4-5 , and 5-6 years old with drawing boards that portrayed possible experi-ences that children might have during negative emotional events. Of the original group of children, 47 boys and 44 girls completed the tests on all 3 occasions. In addition, their caregivers (final N ＝85 ) completed the Coping with Children ' s Negative Emotion Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist 3 times each. The results suggested that the caregivers ' punitive and minimizing reactions did not have a significant effect on their children ' s regulation of negative emotions, but did interact significantly with their children ' s externalizing and internalizing problem behavior when the children were 3-4 years old. Furthermore, the 3 - to 4 -year-old children ' s regulation of negative emotions appeared to inhibit the development of externalizing problem behavior. This may have been a result of the young children ' s development of conceptual thinking pertaining to negative emotions.