Parent Emotion Coaching and Emotion Regulation in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Background: Emotion coaching refers to the ability of the parent to use emotional situations to help his or her child label the emotions, validate the emotional experience, problem-solve how to deal with these emotions, and/or understand the emotions. There is a growing literature examining the positive effects of emotion coaching on children’s ability to develop emotion regulation skills. However, to date, this research has focused exclusively on typically developing children. Due to the emotion regulation difficulties of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, emotion coaching may provide an effective way for parents to improve emotion regulation skills in their children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Objectives: To examine the influence of maternal emotion coaching on child emotion regulation skills

Methods: Mothers were recruited from local and national autism groups, and were directed to a website where they completed the measures online. The Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC) was used to assess maternal perception of emotion regulation skills in children. The emotion coaching subscale of the Parent Emotional Styles Questionnaire (PESQ) was used to assess self-reported use of emotion coaching.

Results: Data were collected from 127 mothers of children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Regression findings indicated that maternal emotion coaching was positively associated with child emotion regulation skills, F (1, 128) = 5.255, p = .024. Increases in the use of an emotion coaching parent style in mothers predicted better emotional regulation skills in children. 

Conclusions: Results indicate that greater use of maternal emotion coaching is related to improved child emotion regulation skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. It is unclear whether or not parent emotion coaching is directly affecting child emotion regulation or whether children with better regulatory skills create interactions in which parents can draw from more emotional resources. It is also not clear if these results generalize to fathers. Future research should further examine the potential benefits of emotion coaching on the development of emotion regulation in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.