ABSTRACT
Accordingly, it is our first goal to report new findings on how parental socialization of emotions contributes to preschoolers' emotion understanding, both contemporaneously and across the period from 3 to 5 years of age. Our study focuses on three possible mechanisms of socialization of emotion knowledge: parental expression of emotions, parental reactions to their children's emotions, and parental teaching about emotions (Halberstadt, 1991). These elements of socialization of emotion center upon the emotional transactions between parent and child. Current theorizing and empirical findings would predict that parents' positive emotional expression and experience, their accepting and helpful reactions to children's emotions, and their emphasis on teaching about emotions in the family would contribute to their young children's more sophisticated emotion understanding (Gottman et al., 1997; Tomkins, 1991).
