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Are you one of those parents who calm down their tantrum-throwing children with a digital device? Beware, it may hamper their ability to self-regulate their emotions later in adulthood, finds a study released on Friday.
In recent years, parents often use tablets or smartphones to divert their child’s attention when the child is upset. However, this seemingly quick fix may have detrimental long-term effects on children’s emotional development.
A team of researchers from Hungary and Canada has found that this approach, known as parental digital emotion regulation, can lead to an inability in children to effectively regulate their emotions as they grow older.
“Here we show that if parents regularly offer a digital device to their child to calm them or to stop a tantrum, the child won’t learn to regulate their emotions,” said Veronika Konok, a researcher at Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary. “This leads to more severe emotion-regulation problems, specifically, anger management problems, later in life,” she added.
For the study, published in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the team included more than 300 parents of children aged between two and five years old who were followed up for a year. The findings revealed that when parents frequently used digital emotion regulation, their children exhibited poorer anger and frustration management skills a year later.
“Tantrums cannot be cured by digital devices,” Konok pointed out. “Children have to learn how to manage their negative emotions for themselves. They need the help of their parents during this learning process, not the help of a digital device.”
The study suggests that parents should not avoid situations that could be frustrating to their children but should instead coach them to recognize and handle their emotions. This guidance helps children develop crucial emotional skills that will serve them throughout their lives.
Additionally, the researchers recommended training and counseling methods for parents to better support their children’s emotional development.
In light of these findings, parents are encouraged to rethink their strategies for dealing with tantrums and focus on long-term emotional growth rather than immediate peace. By doing so, they can help their children become emotionally resilient adults.
