This is how toddlers can learn to regulate their tantrums

By Jim Leffman via SWNS

Watching how adults calm themselves down helps toddlers regulate their tantrums, a new study reveals.

And although parents play a leading role, kids also learn from watching how strangers manage their frustration.

With regulation of their emotions a key skill for getting on in life, scientists at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany decided to look at how children learn this.

"There is limited research about how toddlers learn to apply specific emotion regulation strategies and how this differs between children," said doctoral candidate Johanna Schoppmann.

"We found that toddlers increased their use of distraction as a mechanism to calm themselves in stressful situations after they had watched others calm themselves in the same way.

"The findings also demonstrated that toddlers can learn how to regulate their emotions by observing strangers, not just parents or other family members."

Between March 2018 and January 2020 researchers looked at 94 two year olds, half were girls and half boys with about two thirds of the parents having university degrees.

The toddlers were either used as control or assigned to one of two other situations.

After playing with their parents they were placed in two “waiting situations” for a treat designed to elicit negative feelings, specifically frustration.

Then they watched whilst the experimenter played with toys to distract themselves whilst they waited for their reward whilst another group saw the experimenter calmly wait.

The control group didn't see anyone distract themselves but just had to wait.

Toddlers’ activity level was measured by their parents’ reporting on a temperament questionnaire, through an actiwatch worn on their ankles, and through behavior coding.

The results, published in the journal Child Development, showed toddlers benefited from the observation of both calm and active distraction strategies.

This suggests that when experiencing frustration, toddlers may be able to use previously learned strategies to calm themselves down in a range of different situations.

“It was encouraging to learn that toddlers in this study imitated emotion regulatory behavior from a stranger, which suggests that emotion regulation skills can be strengthened by observing individuals outside of the family," saidSabine Seehagen, professor for developmental psychology at the university.

“Adults can also help toddlers regulate their emotions by providing them with toys that match their temperaments. Future research should look into the relationship between temperamental dispositions and different strategies for coping with anger and other emotions.”

Schoppmann added: "These results show a need for further research on the role of the wider social context for the development of emotional regulation beyond the parent-child relationship.

"These findings are considered informative for promoting child development in childcare environments such as nurseries, kindergarten, or preschools, where toddlers may observe emotion regulation strategies modeled by individuals outside of their family."