Research on family socialization of positive emotion has primarily focused on the infant and toddler stages of development, and relied on observations of parent-child interactions in highly structured laboratory environments. Little is known about how children's spontaneous expressions of positive emotion are maintained in the uncontrolled settings of daily life, particularly within the family and during the school-age years. This naturalistic observational study examines three family behaviors - mutual display of positive emotion, touch and joint leisure – that surround 8 to 12 year-old children's spontaneous expressions of positive emotion, and tests whether these behaviors help to sustain children's expressions. Recordings taken of 31 families in their homes and communities over two days were screened for moments when children spontaneously expressed positive emotion in the presence of at least one parent. Children were more likely to sustain their expressions of positive emotion when mothers, fathers or siblings showed positive emotion, touched, or participated in a leisure activity. There were few differences in the ways that mothers and fathers socialized their sons’ and daughters’ positive emotion expressions. This study takes a unique, ecologically valid approach to assess how family members connect to children's expressions of positive emotion in middle childhood. Future observational studies should continue to explore mechanisms of family socialization of positive emotion, in laboratory and naturalistic settings.

Traditional approaches to the study of children's expressions of anger rely on tightly controlled study environments to test hypotheses about outcomes and correlates of expression characteristics. An unexplored area in the study of emotion expression is a naturalistic examination of school-age children's spontaneously occurring expressions of emotion in their real, uncontrolled family contexts. This observational study describes the naturally occurring characteristics and contexts of 8- to 12-year-old children's anger expressions with family members. Thirty-one families were videotaped for 2 days at home and in community settings. Children's expressions of anger were identified and coded for angry facial, vocal and physical behaviors, and for the expressions' instigating situational contexts. The majority of anger expressions were of mild intensity and brief duration, and most often contained vocal behavioral characteristics (e.g., loud voice, whining). The most common cause of an anger expression was a verbal disagreement; other frequently occurring situational causes included homework, requests for compliance, and reprimands. Patterns in the angry behaviors children exhibited in response to specific situational causes support a functionalist perspective on emotion expression in that children engaged in behaviors that appeared to be attempts to get their needs met. Few differences were observed between mothers' and fathers' rates of instigating children's anger expressions, and between boys' and girls' expression characteristics and contexts. This study offers an ecologically valid, uniquely naturalistic methodology to describe children's observable expressions of anger as they occur in family contexts.

Objective To describe children's emotion expressions, parent behavioral responses to their negative emotions, and children's subsequent emotional reactions. Background Past research typically has used questionnaires and structured laboratory studies to understand these constructs. The present study, by contrast, was designed to investigate how these behaviors unfold during families' everyday lives. Method Thirty‐one families were recorded going about their daily lives as part of a larger study of the everyday lives of families; footage of a parent and target child (8–12 years of age) together on screen was divided into 30‐second clips (N = 15,071). Children's expressions of positive and negative emotion were identified, and parent emotion coaching responses (those theorized to encourage emotion expression) and emotion dismissing responses (behaviors postulated to discourage emotion expression) to children's negative affective displays were coded. Results Multilevel modeling results indicated that children were more likely to react with negative emotion following parents' critical statements and negative commands. However, parent ignoring increased the likelihood of positive or neutral emotional reactions. Conclusion Although sometimes classified as a dismissing response, parent ignoring may facilitate opportunities to practice emotion regulation. Implications These naturalistic observations can help to inform parent training programs about differential responses to children's expressions of negative affect.

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