Discuss how the caregiving experiences in the first 3 years of life of of securely attached children promote development of emotional self-regulation.

Introduction

Securely attached children are repeatedly associated as the essential component to develop their own set of skills that create long lasting positive emotional self-regulation practices and research has concluded that these secure attachments are most prominent with authoritative parents, whom are discovered when examined using the Strange Situation study. This is due to encouraging parental factors and the subsequent reactions displayed when provided with stability, responsiveness, consistency and positive emotional responses and behaviours rather than parental instability, conflict and emotional distress. This study will include findings that support various positive environments that can effectively contribute and provide the right skill set in supporting and influencing a child’s temperament, relational behaviours and successful development and promotion of their own emotional self-regulation.

Caregiving Experiences

This essay has been produced to effectively and concisely support the findings that children who form secure attachments with their parents in the first 3 years of life are in the best position to be able to effectively and appropriately promote emotional self-regulation for themselves when given the ideal environments to grow. Appropriate caregiving experiences that develop emotional self-regulation can be found using Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation study, where infant’s in the first 12-16 months of life are placed in a room with their parent/s and the reactions and emotional functions of the infants are observed in a series of circumstances relating to the parents presence, absence and return which is assessed and used to identify the different patterns of attachment style. The emotional reaction and experiences that occur from this study help to evaluate which environments, behaviours and relations encourage and enable children toward promoting and obtaining emotional self-regulation.

In the Strange Situation task, if the parent is authoritative the child will respond, according to Baumrind (1967), to have a happier disposition, have good emotional control and regulation, can develop good social skills and are self-confident about their abilities to learn new skills due to general stability and a healthy environment the parents have provided. Authoritative parents display a parenting style that is actively engaged in their interactions with their children and provide a loving and supporting environment. They are open and honest and set standards and behaviours, which are acceptable or are not acceptable and show flexibility and understanding in extenuating circumstances. They express pleasure and support for their children and encourage them to be independent and when old enough, to incorporate them to contribute and be a bigger part of the family decision-making. Baumrind (1994) found that authoritative parents tended to raise the best-adjusted and most mature children. She argued that because authoritative parents balance sensitivity with moderate restrictiveness, their children feel secure in the world and are able to learn and function independently due to the parents demonstrating behaviours they except in return from their children. They are role models for managing their emotional control and show greater understanding and are consistent in their expectations of their children.
Parental behaviour, like authoritative parents, if conducted positively will correlate and promote their child’s emotional self-regulation. There are three separate measures that influence this; (Statistics Canada [Statcan] 2011) Monitoring behaviour, which reflects the awareness of what their child is doing and how they are doing it such as safety, well-being and support, an example of this would be knowing where they are in the house and