Smiley, P. A., Ahn, A., Blackard, M. B., Borelli, J. L., & Doan, S. N. (2024). Undoing mothers’ avoidant coping with children’s negative emotion: A randomized controlled trial of relational savoring. Journal of Family Psychology, 38(3), 365–376. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0001186
Key Points
- Relational savoring (RS) improved emotion-coaching behaviors in mothers who strongly endorse strategies to avoid their children’s negative emotions.
- Mothers who more strongly endorse avoidance of their children’s negative emotions were less adept at emotion-coaching.
- The effect of RS on emotion-coaching was not significant for the overall sample of mothers.
Rationale
The rationale for this study is grounded in emotion socialization models, which emphasize the crucial role of family emotional climate and parenting practices in shaping children’s emotional development and overall adjustment (Eisenberg et al., 1998; Morris et al., 2007).
These models emphasize the direct impact of parental responses to children’s emotions, particularly negative ones, on children’s ability to recognize, express, and regulate their own emotions effectively.
Key components of emotion socialization models include parental emotion expressivity, discussion of emotions, and reactions to children’s emotional displays (Eisenberg et al., 1998).
According to these models, parents who create a supportive emotional climate and engage in sensitive parenting practices, such as emotion coaching (Gottman et al., 1996), can foster children’s emotional competence and well-being.
Conversely, parental avoidance or dismissal of children’s negative emotions may hinder children’s emotional development and increase their risk for behavioral and adjustment problems (Eisenberg et al., 2001).
Previous research has demonstrated the potential of relational savoring interventions to enhance emotional experiences and interpersonal interactions within families compared to control conditions (Borelli et al., 2023; Borelli, Smiley, et al., 2020).
Relational savoring (RS) is a specific form of attachment-based savoring in which individuals recall in vivid detail a time they responded sensitively to another’s need for comfort, protection, or support.
RS involves guiding individuals to vividly recall and appreciate moments of positive connection with others, which may activate secure attachment representations and promote sensitive caregiving (Borelli, Smiley, et al., 2020).
However, there is a gap in the literature regarding the effectiveness of a brief, one-time, laboratory-based RS intervention in improving sensitive parenting behaviors, especially among mothers who tend to avoid their children’s negative emotions.
Avoidance of negative emotions can hinder parents’ ability to respond sensitively and support their children’s emotional development (Gottman et al., 1996).
Parents who respond nonsupportively to their children’s negative emotions—with minimization or punishment or by becoming distressed themselves—tend to have children with stronger negative emotion (Shaffer et al., 2012), inappropriate emotion regulation strategies including avoidance (Fabes et al., 2001), and lower awareness of their own and others’ negative emotion states (Warren & Stifter, 2008).
Therefore, this study aimed to address this gap by examining the impact of an RS intervention on mothers’ emotion-coaching behaviors during an emotionally charged conversation with their child.
Emotion-coaching involves validating, naming, and discussing emotions, as well as teaching emotion regulation strategies (Gottman et al., 1996), and is considered a sensitive and supportive way of responding to children’s negative emotions.
Moreover, the study sought to investigate whether mothers who are more prone to avoiding their children’s negative emotions would benefit more from the RS intervention.
This is based on previous findings suggesting that vulnerable populations, such as those uncomfortable with negative emotions, may derive greater benefits from savoring interventions (Burkhart et al., 2015; Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009).
By examining these questions, the study aims to contribute to the understanding of how brief interventions can promote sensitive parenting practices, particularly among mothers who struggle with avoiding negative emotions.
The findings could inform the development of targeted interventions to support children’s emotional development and well-being.
Method
This was a parallel-group randomized controlled trial with a 1:1 allocation ratio.
Mothers completed online questionnaires prior to the lab visit. At the lab, they were randomly assigned to either the RS or weekly routine memory condition.
After the intervention, mothers recounted a time when they felt rejected by their child and then discussed this incident with their child. The conversations were videotaped and coded for emotion-coaching behaviors.
Sample
122 mothers (M age = 33.42 years) and their preschoolers (M age = 41.80 months; 48.4% female) from diverse backgrounds (41% Latina, 40% White; 42% under $60,000 annual income) participated.
Measures
- Coping with Children’s Negative Emotion Scale (CCNES): measures mothers’ responses to children’s negative emotions.
- Emotion-coaching behaviors: coded from videotaped conversations using a 7-point scale developed for this study.
Statistical measures
Hierarchical regression was used to test associations of independent variables with emotion-coaching scores, controlling for mother age, child age, and family income. SPSS PROCESS Model 1 with bootstrapping was used to examine the moderation effect.
Results
- Hypothesis 1 (RS will improve emotion-coaching) was not supported. The analysis of covariance showed that the difference in mean emotion-coaching scores between the savoring (M = 3.06, SD = 1.32) and routine memory conditions (M = 2.83, SD = 1.31) was not significant, F(1, 113) = 0.97, p = .33.
- Hypothesis 2 (mothers who endorse avoidant strategies will be less adept at emotion-coaching) was supported. In the hierarchical regression, nonsupportive responses on the CCNES (i.e., strategies to avoid negative emotion) were negatively associated with emotion-coaching, after controlling for mother age, child age, and family income.
- Hypothesis 3 (the effect of RS on emotion-coaching will be greater for mothers high in avoidant strategies) was supported. The interaction between condition and nonsupportive responses was significant in the hierarchical regression, accounting for 4.3% additional variance in emotion-coaching scores, F(1, 110) = 6.13, p = .015.
Insight
This study demonstrates that a brief relational savoring intervention can enable mothers who typically avoid their children’s negative emotions to coach their children through an emotionally fraught interaction more sensitively.
Mothers who struggled the most with avoiding or dismissing their children’s negative emotions benefited more from the relational savoring exercise compared to those who used avoidant strategies less often.
The findings extend previous research showing the benefits of RS for vulnerable populations (e.g., Burkhart et al., 2015).
Future studies could compare the effects of RS with interventions that directly teach emotion-coaching strategies and assess potential mediators of the intervention effect.
Strengths
- Ethnically diverse community sample
- Observational measure of emotion-coaching behaviors
- Experimental design allowing causal inferences
Limitations
- One-time, lab-based measure of emotion-coaching that may have limited generalizability
- Self-report measure of mothers’ responses to children’s negative emotions
- Fathers were not included in the sample
ClinicalImplications
The intervention effect of relational savoring has important implications for several groups of parents at risk for non-supportive responses to their children’s negative emotions.
These include parents with high anxiety, difficulties regulating their own emotions, tendencies toward anger/frustration, controlling or intrusive actions, potential for maltreatment, and those with temperamentally difficult children.
Identifying teachable skills like relational savoring that can improve mother-child interaction quality is an important public health goal. Relational savoring is a brief, easy-to-administer intervention that can potentially be included in existing efficacious programs for high-risk parent-toddler dyads.
Improving emotion-coaching skills is potentially valuable for nurturing children’s socioemotional competence, even among high-risk groups.
References
Primary reference
Smiley, P. A., Ahn, A., Blackard, M. B., Borelli, J. L., & Doan, S. N. (2024). Undoing mothers’ avoidant coping with children’s negative emotion: A randomized controlled trial of relational savoring. Journal of Family Psychology, 38(3), 365–376. https://doi.org/10.1037/fam0001186
Other references
Borelli, J. L., Kerr, M. L., Smiley, P. A., Rasmussen, H. F., Hecht, H. K., & Campos, B. (2023). Relational savoring intervention: Positive impacts for mothers and evidence of cultural compatibility for Latinas. Emotion, 23(2), 303–320. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001102
Borelli, J. L., Smiley, P. A., Kerr, M. L., Hong, K., Hecht, H. K., Blackard, M. B., Falasiri, E., Cervantes, B. R., & Bond, D. K. (2020). Relational savoring: An attachment-based approach to promoting interpersonal flourishing. Psychotherapy, 57(3), 340–351. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000284
Burkhart, M. L., Borelli, J. L., Rasmussen, H. F., & Sbarra, D. A. (2015). Cherish the good times: Relational savoring in parents. Personal Relationships, 22(4), 692–711. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12104
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998). Parental socialization of emotion. Psychological Inquiry, 9(4), 241–273. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli0904_1
Fabes, R. A., Leonard, S. A., Kupanoff, K., & Martin, C. L. (2001). Parental coping with children’s negative emotions: Relations with children’s emotional and social responding. Child Development, 72(3), 907–920. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00323
Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1996). Parental meta-emotion philosophy and the emotional life of families: Theoretical models and preliminary data. Journal of Family Psychology, 10(3), 243–268. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.10.3.243
Morris, A. S., Silk, J. S., Steinberg, L., Myers, S. S., & Robinson, L. R. (2007). The role of the family context in the development of emotion regulation. Social Development, 16(2), 361–388. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.2007.00389.x
Shaffer, A., Suveg, C., Thomassin, K., & Bradbury, L. L. (2012). Emotion socialization in the context of family risks: Links to child emotion regulation. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 21(6), 917–924. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-011-9551-3
Sin, N. L., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2009). Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: A practice friendly meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(5), 467–487.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20593
Warren, H. K., & Stifter, C. A. (2008). Maternal emotion-related socialization and preschoolers’ developing emotion self-awareness. Social Development, 17(2), 239–258. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14679507.2007.00423.x
Keep Learning
- What are some everyday situations in which parents might avoid their children’s negative emotions? What are the potential consequences of this avoidance?
- How might cultural beliefs and values influence parents’ responses to children’s negative emotions?
- What are some ways that parents can practice relational savoring in their daily interactions with their children?
- Beyond emotion-coaching, what other parenting practices might be important targets for intervention to promote children’s emotional competence?
