Emotion Regulation in Infants Essay

A child who utilizes his/her affect as a coping mechanism is relying upon the ability to express or ventilate through emotion. He/she will require opportunities to share anxieties, fears, anger, sorrow, and grief, and have those emotions validated by the adults in his/her life.”

At the start of their lives, babies are programmed to seek out the things that they want by crying. As they mature, though, children's emotional capabilities expand, allowing them to develop a variety of skills that they will need in their adult lives.

Children are very complex, unique and varied individuals whose genetics, connections and backgrounds all perform significant roles in their emotional development (Wilson, 2003). The genetic blueprint a child inherits from its parents may plot a course for development but the environment and the influences within can affect how the child is shaped, how they connect with and are perceived by others and how their emotions are or are not expressed. Wilson (2003) points out emotions as an experience that is linked to cognitive interpretation, context, subjective feeling, physical reaction and behavioural expression. Campos, Campos, and Barrett (1989) suggest emotions are processes of establishing, maintaining, or disrupting the relations between the person and the internal or external environment, when such relations are significant to the individual.

Children learn multiple emotion-regulating strategies, from their own experiences and from the observation of adults. For example, when a toddler seeks comfort she crawls up on to the lap of her caregiver, while Connie covers her eyes with her hands during an unpleasant part of a movie to avoid the emotionally arousing situation (Kostelnik et al. 2015, p.135). Adults can help children learn how to better cope with their emotions in a number of ways. Effective ways of responding to emotions include talking about emotions and using affective reflections. Affective reflections involve recognizing the emotions a child is facing and then using a reflective statement to help identify the child’s emotions (Kostelnik et al. 2015, p.144). For example, a reflective statement could be as simple as: “It’s frustrating to be interrupted” (Kostelnik et al. 2015, p.144). Verbally identifying emotions helps children distinguish their emotions and gives adults the opportunity to show their care and understanding towards the child, which plays an important role in the building of strong adult-child

Lewis (2013) explains the ability to control your emotions does not begin until a child nears the age of six (as cited in Berger, 2014, p. 276). The need to maintain control of feelings and emotions remains important throughout adulthood. It would not be normal for a 38-year-old lawyer to throw a temper tantrum in the courtroom because they did not win a case. Not everyone is great at controlling their emotions, but there is always room for improvement (Berger, 2014). A child is not born with this control, nor can one learn it on their own. Morris et al. (2007) discussed the importance of parents, teachers and other adults that may be in a child?s life to instruct and inform children of appropriate ways to manage their feelings for them to learn or develop over time (as cited in Berger, 2014, p. 276). It is the same aspect as manners. A child does not come out of the womb saying ?please? and ?thank you,? but must be taught to use such mannerisms. Eric Erikson explained that children believe they can achieve any goal just as long as they keep trying because their view of their abilities is not yet within reason (Berger, 2014). A child may see a fish breath underwater and believe they too can breathe while swimming

The development of attachment bonds to other biological figures plays an important role in emotional development. Throughout life, an individual will form several relationships, some of which will be sincere and intimate while others will be superficial. However, collectively these relationships provide the foundation of our communities, families, and friendships and become essential to our survival as a species. A secure attachment bond can be classified as the interactive emotional relationship between a caregiver and infant involving the emotional responses of the caregiver to the infant 's cues (Bowlby, 1969). These emotional responses can be expressed in a variety of forms including gestures, sounds, or even movements. Thus, this interactive emotional relationship between the caregiver and infant brings the two closer together creating an environment that allows the infant to feel safe and secure, further developing their ability to communicate and interact with others (Bowlby, 1969).

At 6 weeks infants develop a social smile, at 3 month laughter and curiosity develop, at 4 months full responsive smiles emerge, from 4-8 months they develop anger, from 9014 months they develop a fear of social events, at 12 months the are fearful of unexpected sights and sounds, and at 18 months they are self-aware, feel pride, shame, and embarrassment. In the first two years, infants develop from reactive pain and pleasure to complex patterns of social awareness. Emotions in infants are produced from their body as opposed to their thoughts. Therefore fast and uncensored reactions are common in infants. During their toddler years, the strength of their emotions will increase.

Babies have learned how to express a wide variety of emotions by the time they are nine months old. Their emotions are all over the place. They can go from intense happiness to intense sadness extremely quickly. By the time they are twelve months, babies are aware of other people’s expressions and their emotional states. At this time they are making the connection that expressions match feelings on the inside and show on the outside. By age two, toddlers can show a wide range of emotions and are becoming more aware and are able to cope with their emotions. Their ability to use language becomes more apparent, learning words that mean something to them. They are known to use a single word with an emotional emphasis to express a complete thought, question or request. During the second year their language becomes more sophisticated. Toddlers began to put 2 to 3 words together forming easy phrases. Their vocabulary grows from there. From infancy to toddler and onward, language and emotional development are

Infants communicate important aspects of their lives, such as joy, fear, sadness and interest through emotions. In reference to behavioral organization, emotions help regulate social responses and adaptive behavior. Also, infants have negative and positive emotions. Infants’ emotions are influenced by both biological foundations and a person’s experiences. Chapter four provides that in a recent study of 18-24 month olds found that parents’ elicitation of talk about emotions was associated with toddler’s sharing and helping behaviors. Emotional interchanges also help the infant create attachment. Guilt, pride, despair, shame, empathy, and jealousy are all emotions that could potentially appear in the second year, if not before. By age two, infants can use language to define their feelings, such as the phrase “puppy scary”. Emotions are very developmentally important in the second

Recently, when I was in the hospital I saw a father guard and caress his sick child while the 18 year old was resting on the hospital bed. Just like in the photo on the right the parent worries for the child because of their concern for the child’s health. Humans feel all kinds of emotions everyday whether they be positive, neutral, or negative. Emotions are feelings that play an important part in human’s lives. It allows humans to understand themselves, communicate with one another, and emotions are mostly responsible for humans’ thoughts and actions.

Adults, for example, experience anger mostly because of their ego and anger which generally occurs because they are trying to protect or enhance their self-esteem (128). Too, adults generally put the blame onto somebody whether it be who has seemingly mistreated them or they tend to feel guilt or shame toward themselves (128). In contrast, Lazarus feels that a baby at three months, cannot understand the intent of an action, and therefore cannot find a reason to feel angry (129). Therefore, a baby’s anger is much different from that of an adult’s anger. It is difficult for babies to understand the actions of another or to act out in a way that attends to their ego or their self-esteem (129). With this theory, it suggests that emotions occur in three stages overall: the experience, physiological arousal and the

Infants are very helpless and extraordinarily dependent. Their earliest behaviors are goal driven for gaining a caregiver to focus and engage reciprocity in their behavior (Sroufe, 2011). The infants task is to gain their survival needs and regulate fear and stress by creating contingent responses so that the world may be predictable and comprehensible (Sroufe, 2011). Regulating emotions can only occur in relationship with the parents; an infant is ill equipped to reduce arousal on their own (Seigel, date, Sroufe, 2011, cite.) The infants work is most effective when circumstances and contingent responses are anticipated and more challenging when they encounter unpredictability and transitions (Hughes, 2014).

The author described the four main functions, providing a sense of security; regulation of affect and arousal; promoting the expression of feelings and communication; and serving as a base for exploration. In providing a Sense of Securities, in this article, he explained the purpose of this function is to keep in mind that the infant needs to feel secure, because when the infant gets upset both the parents and the infant act to re-establish the sense of security (Bowlby, 1969). Regulation of affect and Arousal, the emphasis here is the state of mind of the infants, and both the infants and the parents develop transactional patterns of relieving the infant’s states of imbalance.

Affect dysregulation is assumed due to the description provided of Jack’s extreme reactivity and behaviours such as constant crying as an infant, kicking, screaming and disproportionate reactions in relation to the antecedent event. Affect dysregulation is promoted when a care-giver is unable to help modulate stress and reduce the internal tension and conflict within an infant (Cicchetti et al., 2005). Ally reveals that she often would lock herself in a room to avoid Jack’s constant crying which implies that she did not strive to help modulate Jack’s obvious stress and internal conflict. The development of affect dysregulation is detrimental as it can be accompanied by the development of lesser effective organisation of neurological systems (Cicchetti et al., 2005). The neurological

Observation of an infant in the family setting 'provides the observer with an opportunity to encounter primitive emotional states in the infant and his family...' (Rustin in Miller, 1989, 7). According to Rustin infant observation allows to 'explore the emotional events between infant and mother' and 'the aim is to describe the development of the relationship between infant and others (...) and try to understand the unconscious aspects of behaviour and patterns of communication' (Rustin in Miller, 1989, 7). Early infant observation plays a vital role in the psychodynamic training and it gives a thesis of how early emotional development is being influenced by subconscious family dynamics.