 |
|
|
|
||
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
Spaceships, video games and the science of emotions When scientists set out to study parenting and the emotional development of children, they came face to face with an enormous problem that has plagued parents since the dawn of time: just how do you get a kid to sit still? Put them in a spaceship! Not a real one, of course, but a mockup that served as a fun and comfortable “laboratory” that would put kids at ease while researchers went about the serious job of studying the interplay of thinking and feeling. A spaceship was just one of the tools psychologist Dr. John Gottman used during his three-year study of families and emotions. Detailed interviews, questionnaires, videotaped play sessions and other tasks all provided new and rich information about how children benefit when parents help guide and encourage their emotional development. This research led Gottman to develop the five steps of Emotion Coaching, a practical guide for parents who want to help their children understand and cope with the wide and wonderful world of human emotions. The steps include:
Gottman’s work suggested two important connections. First, a parent’s attitude toward emotions can have a big impact on the way children learn to cope with feelings. Second, children whose parents respond to their emotions with patience and empathy do better in lots of ways, including academic achievement, better overall health, and stronger friendships, among other things. An intimate family portrait The study began with families with children between four and five years old. The idea was to gather a great deal of information about the families’ emotional life, study the children’s physiological responses to emotional situations, and then check back after three years to see how the parents and children were doing. Researchers spent about 14 hours with each family, both at home and in the laboratory. The team taped sessions with the couples that explored how they dealt with negative emotions in general, and their children’s bouts with anger and sadness in particular. In another session, the researchers asked the couples about their marriage and how they felt about each other. To learn about children’s social skills, they videotaped the kids playing with a close friend. They studied the tape to determine just how the children in the study got along with other kids. All of this gave Gottman and his team a good understanding of each family’s emotional style. Some were dismissive or disapproving of feelings, and others completely hands-off. And some of the families were natural emotion-coaches, taking the time to guide and encourage their children during emotional moments. Exploring emotions In addition to interviews, questionnaires, and observations, there was a powerful focus on how a child’s body responds to emotions. And here’s where the spaceship came in handy. The children donned “spacesuits” that allowed researchers to attach sensors to measure changes in heart rate, breathing, and the amount of hand sweating. The kids then took part in a series of tasks designed to produce emotional responses and the team measured how their bodies reacted. Parents, too, took part in these tasks, which were designed in some cases to mimic everyday conflicts between mom, dad and child. In one test, the researchers told the child a somewhat uninteresting story. The parents' task was to learn as much about the story as they could from the child, whose attention was being diverted by the chance to play a video game. Next the parents were asked to help the child learn how to play the video game. The idea here was to study how the parents and the children interacted. In another test, the child was shown a series of film clips chosen to spark feelings such as fear and sadness. The researchers used the frightening flying monkey scene from the “Wizard of Oz” and the heart-wrenching death scene in “Charlotte’s Web,” among others. Throughout each of these tasks, the researchers took note of facial expressions, tone of voice, and word choice in addition to the physical reactions recorded by the sensors attached to the children. The data gave researchers the chance to see various parenting styles in action and how the children’s bodies responded to a range of emotions. The results Three years later, Gottman and his team met with the families a second time. They again taped play sessions between the children and a friend. Their teachers were asked to fill out detailed questionnaires about the children’s performance in school, their behavior in the classroom, and their ability to get along with others. Mothers were asked about how often their children got sick and what they came down with. Gottman found that children from emotion-coaching families were happier, healthier and better adjusted than children who didn’t have as much emotional guidance and support from their parents. The data showed emotion-coached children performed better in school, especially in math and reading. They also got along better with friends and classmates and showed stronger social skills. Teachers and mothers reported fewer behavior problems, fewer negative emotions and more positive ones. The children seemed to get sick less often and there were also indications that they suffered less stress overall. Emotional athletes So why did these children do so much better? The data suggests a connection to what scientists call a “high vagal tone.” The term refers to a part of the nervous system that helps control heart rate and breathing when the body is under stress. By measuring these things with the “spacesuit,” Gottman found emotion-coached children were a lot like well-trained athletes in terms of how their bodies reacted. In a race, an athlete’s muscles will respond quickly to increase performance, but when the race is over the well-tuned body takes less time to recover and return to normal. An emotion-coached child’s emotional “muscles” seem to act much the same way during an upsetting incident—they respond strongly to the event, but then recover quickly once things settle down. Gottman believes this ability to “self-soothe” helps explain why these kids do so much better. Take a school fire drill, for example. A child with high vagal tone would be more likely to stay focused during the drill. He would also calm down quickly and focus on schoolwork once the excitement was over. Children with lower vagal tone might be more confused at first and then have a harder time settling down after returning to class. The ability to self-soothe comes in handy during a host of everyday
situations. Whether children are angry at a playmate or sad about not
getting their favorite cereal for breakfast, the ability to self-soothe
allows them to deal with the situation more effectively and move on.
       
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
