The importance of emotion regulation in children and youth – and how to assess for it

Why is emotional development so important in child development?

Emotional development is crucial for several reasons, including building a positive sense of self, developing social skills, and fostering emotional wellbeing. These skills are essential for school readiness, healthy relationships, and academic and job/career success. 

Emotional wellbeing

Developing strong emotional skills is crucial for mental wellbeing. Children who can manage their emotions effectively are more likely to have positive self-esteem, resilience, and overall emotional health. Emotional development equips children with the ability to cope with challenges and setbacks, helping them to recover from difficult situations. 

Social skills

Emotional development includes understanding and managing emotions, which is essential for developing strong social skills. Secure attachments with caregivers, which involve warm and supportive relationships, are foundational for emotional development. Children who feel safe and secure are more likely to develop a positive sense of self and have the confidence to explore their environment. Children can also learn to understand the feelings of others, which is vital for building empathy and forming strong relationships. Emotional skills help children navigate conflicts and develop healthy ways to resolve disagreements. 

Cognitive development

Emotional development is closely linked to self-regulation and executive function, which are essential for managing thoughts, actions, and impulses. Emotion regulation helps children focus and pay attention, which is crucial for learning and academic achievement.

Emotion regulation during childhood

Children can regulate their emotions from an early age [2] and these skills increase during adolescence [3]. Children must learn to distinguish between what they themselves are feeling and what others are feeling and then learn to express (in words and symbols), allow, accept, and reconcile conflicting feelings.

The UK Government’s Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework highlights that understanding children’s emotions is critical to understanding their behaviour and building a sense of self and relationships:

Emotion regulation in adolescence

Although individual differences in emotion regulation take shape as early as birth, adolescence is a particularly critical period for the development of emotion regulation strategies. Whereas younger children primarily use behavioural emotion regulation strategies for dealing with everyday negative emotions (e.g. seeking distraction), adolescents often require more complex cognitive emotion regulation strategies for dealing with the ‘storm and stress’ associated with this stage of life [5]. However, adolescents do not always have the skill to adequately deal with this stress, the result being they are overwhelmed by emotions. This is often seen as a period of emotional instability and adolescents will experience more negative, intense, and unstable emotions than during childhood and adulthood [6]. 

How to assess emotion regulation

There are a number of ways to approach how to measure emotional regulation. Physiological measures and behavioural observations can be used to map brain activity such as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) or capturing real-time data on people's emotions and behaviours, for example through Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA).

Personality assessments can also be used to measure emotional stability, which is a trait related to the ability to remain calm and resilient under stress, can also provide insights into emotion regulation. 

For practitioners working with children and adolescents, an efficient and reliable method is by using self-report measures or simple tasks. 

Two such tests which are published by Hogrefe are the Intelligence and Development Scales – 2^nd Edition (IDS-2) and the new Emotion Regulation Strategies Questionnaire (FEEL-KJ-2). Both assessments were developed by Professor Alexander Grob of the University of Basel, Switzerland, together with his colleagues and associates, based on his many years of experience in the fields of child and adolescent psychology, educational psychology and developmental diagnostics.

The IDS-2 and what it measures

In the IDS-2 (for ages 5–20 years), Social-emotional skills are assessed in the General Development Domain. These assessments are based on the constructs of emotional and social competence. Emotional competence is the ability to be aware of one’s own feelings and the feelings of others, to express these feelings and to independently regulate emotions. Social competence describes the cognitive, emotional and motor behaviours that are important for social interaction. To become effective agents in their social environment, children and adolescents must develop the ability to regulate their behaviours and emotions in different situations. 

There are three subtests which look at Identifying emotions, Regulating emotions and Socially competent behaviour. In Identifying emotions the ability of respondents to recognise and name emotions is assessed by younger children only as this is a basic ability. In Regulating emotions, children and adolescents must specify emotion regulation strategies for negative emotions. An emotional strategy is considered adaptive if it shows high coping efficiency, so that emotions can be beneficially regulated, i.e. problem-oriented action, distraction, mood enhancement, acceptance, forgetting, re-evaluation, cognitive problem-solving). A maladaptive strategy is one that leads to damage to the self or to others, e.g. aggressive behaviour, self-depreciation, giving up or withdrawal. The third subtest, Socially competent behaviour, focuses on knowledge of conflict resolution, relationships and prosocial skills. The development of emotional skills such as emotional recognition and regulation are prerequisites for the development of social skills and the test scores here can be used to assess the developmental level of the respondent’s emotional skills.

If a child shows difficulties in any of these areas, support can be aimed at building competence in naming emotions, learning to recognise different emotions, developing the motivation to implement positive behaviours in real situations and developing social self-efficacy. 

The IDS-2 norms and validity

The IDS-2 was normed in 2018–2020 with 1367 UK children and adolescents. Measured against a parent ratings assessment (Parent Rating of Social Competence; PRSSC), the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and the Inventory of Social Competencies (ISK-K), the IDS-2 Social-emotional tests show good predictive validity across different groups.

The FEEL-KJ-2 and what it measures

The FEEL-KJ-2 is an assessment of emotion regulation used with children and young people aged 9–20 years. The central assumption is that (bad) emotion regulation underlies a wide range of psychopathology. The assessment is used to identify the strategies an individual uses to regulate their emotions. Children who tend to use maladaptive strategies, rather than adaptive strategies, to regulate their emotions are at risk.

Links with mental health and neurodiversity

There are links between emotion regulation and all kinds of diagnoses, including ADHD and ASD, which are widely found in research and practice. The FEEL-KJ is useful for identifying children and young people who are at risk of developing mental health problems or who may be neurodivergent. It may be particularly helpful in identifying traits related to anxiety and oppositional defiant disorder. Further investigation would be required in order to obtain a diagnosis of ASD, ADHD, anxiety or depression.

Whether there is some form of neurodivergence or presence of mental health problems, or neither or both, it is important for children and young people to learn strategies that help them cope with their emotions in a healthy, effective way.

FEEL-KJ-2 norms and validity

The FEEL-KJ-2 was normed with 409 UK children and young people. It correlates well with the most widely used diagnostic measures of emotions, the Beck Youth Inventories, Second Edition (BYI-2; Beck et al., 2005). Differences are observed in the FEEL-KJ-2 scores between individuals without any clinical diagnoses and those with clinical diagnoses or receiving support services. Furthermore, individuals with a clinical diagnosis or receiving support services for neurodevelopmental problems compared to non-clinical individuals show less use of adaptive strategies and more use of maladaptive strategies.

Building effective emotional regulation

Practitioners can use these assessments to work with parents/caregivers and teachers to record and assess emotional development, emotional coping strategies and socially skilled behaviour. These coping strategies can include problem-focused emotion regulation, taking action or seeking social support [7]. In schools, in families and in the wider society, emotional development is recognised as critically important so that children can develop a range of skills, such as how to form positive relationships, develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings

References

1. https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/mental-health-of-children-and-young-people-in-england/2023-wave-4-follow-up
2. Zeman, J., & Shipman, K. (1996). Children’s expression of negative affect: Reasons and methods. Developmental Psychology, 32(5), 842–849. 
3. Zeman, J., Cassano, M., Perry-Parrish, C., & Stegall, S. (2006). Emotion regulation in children and adolescents. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 27(2), 155–168.
4. help-for-early-years-providers.education.gov.uk/areas-of-learning/personal-social-and-emotional-development/emotions
5. Dahl, R. E. (2004). Adolescent brain development: A period of vulnerabilities and opportunities. Keynote address. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1021(1), 1–22.
6. Larson, R., Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Graef, R. (1980). Mood variability and the psychosocial adjustment of adolescents. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 9(6), 469–490.
7. Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer.