"Research Findings": Early childhood workers (ECW's) play a pivotal role in shaping children's emotional competence. This study examined the efficacy of Tuning in to Kids for Kindergarten Teachers (TIK-KT) used with CLASS observations to improve ECW's emotion socialization, kindergarten emotional climate and children's functioning. Five…

In this study we investigated how early childhood teachers' emotion socialization behaviors contribute to children's social-emotional competence (SEC), as well as whether these contributions differ by culture. Participants included 117 teachers and 381 preschoolers in US or Italian classrooms. Teachers' and children's emotions and reactions to…

Research Findings: Talking about emotions with their caregivers help young children develop emotional competence, and is particularly beneficial for children who display elevated externalizing behaviors. However, prior descriptive work has shown that teacher-child emotion talk in preschool classrooms is scarce. As children are spending increasing…

Research Findings: Research with older children and adults reliably demonstrates that individuals raised in poverty tend to evaluate concerns related to moral concerns (i.e., related to harm, welfare, and justice) differently than do wealthier individuals. However, little work has examined these patterns in young children. Children (N=214, Mage =…

Autonomy-supportive parenting is found to foster children's adjustment but relatively few studies have been conducted with toddlers. In the present exploratory study, parents (N = 182) reported what practices they use when asking their toddlers (M age = 26.9 months) to engage in important yet uninteresting activities. Parents rated twenty-six…

Research findings: This study advances our understanding of early childhood teachers' emotion socialization styles by innovatively exploring how these relate to teachers' beliefs about emotions and levels of mind-mindedness, while controlling for age, level of education, teaching experience, and training in emotion education. Sixty female teachers…

Research Findings: Drawing from a diverse community sample of 89 children, ages 4-6, their primary caregivers and teachers, this study examined the interplay of child emotional behavior problems, parent emotion socialization practices, and gender in predicting teacher-child closeness. Teachers reported on perceptions of closeness with children.…