Bidirectional longitudinal relationships between parents’ dysregulation, children’s emotion regulation and children’s internalizing problem

The internalizing problem has emerged as a significant risk factor for children’s psychological well-being, and emotion regulation is closely related to it. However, most of the existing studies have examined emotion regulation as an individual characteristic rather than as a system variable. In fact, in family systems, emotion regulation is often a dynamic process in which both parents and children interact with each other. That is, parents influence children’s emotion regulation while being influenced by them in the opposite direction. Therefore, the present study examined the combined relationship between parent–child emotion regulation and internalizing problems from both individual and parental perspectives. Based on this perspective, a three-wave longitudinal design was adopted in this study to explore the bidirectional relationship, as well as their potential intertwined relationship. A series of questionnaires were completed at three different time points by parents and children from 754 Chinese elementary school families. The results revealed that: (1) parents’ emotional dysregulation at T1 predicted more internalizing problems in children at T2, while children’s emotion regulation at T2 predicted fewer internalizing problems at T3; (2) children’s internalizing problems at T1 predicted poorer emotion regulation at T2, and from T1 to T2 and from T2 to T3, children’s internalizing problems had a stable predictive effect on parents’ increased emotional dysregulation at a later time point; (3) children’s internalizing problems at T1 could further influence their internalizing problems at T3 through their impact on children’s emotion regulation at T2, and parents’ emotional dysregulation at T1 could further influence their emotional dysregulation at T3 through their impact on children’s emotion regulation at T2, ultimately leading to two vicious cycles. These findings will provide more comprehensive information about the development of emotional problems in children.