A new study is finding that watching adults can help toddlers learn how to regulate their emotions. When a mom welcomes her baby into the world, she is aware of all the things that she has to teach them and guide them with throughout their lives. She also understands that children are not born with the ability to regulate their own emotions, and this is when toddlers can be seen throwing tantrums and screaming. They need to learn how to regulate their emotions, and since there are no guidebooks to parenting, moms can only rely on studies and the words of experts on how they can help their child develop this very important skill.
According to Medical Xpress, a new study was done that shows that toddlers can (and do) learn how to regulate their emotions by watching the adults around them. Showing that our children are always watching us, and they are learning how to act and behave in a world from the way we act and behave.
This study was done by the Society for Research in Child Development, and it can be read in full here. Emotional regulation is an incredibly important skill in childhood and adulthood. An adult can show how they regulate their emotions by not getting frustrated when the checkout line is going slow.
These are situations that all adults find themselves in at one point or another. It could be the slow check-out line; it could be the traffic jam and it could even be when bills come in higher than we had thought and budgeted for. If our toddlers are with us in these scenarios, it is important that we show our ability to regulate our emotions because they are learning from us. The study found that toddlers will use distraction as a method of calming themselves down, and that is because they watch adults do it.
The study also found that they learn this skill by watching the adults around them, and not just their parents. They are also watching the strangers around them. The researchers stated that this calls for larger studies to be done to see just how society as a whole plays a part in the emotional regulation in toddlers. It appears that the neighborhood a child grows up in can have an impact on their ability to regulate emotions, and it takes the phrase “it takes a village” to a different and more important, level.
Sources: Medical Xpress, SRCD