“Emotion Regulation” and “Mentalization” Foundational Skills of Child Emotional and Social Development

by Krista Nelson, Wilder Foundation Center for Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder

Is how a child learns to manage or organize different feeling states in his/her body in order to cope with them
Is about being able to contain impulses and emotions and respond flexibly or resourcefully in the face of stress or challenge
Is learned within attachment relationships, starting in infancy
“Affective Attunement”- Adult caregiver shares emotions of baby in countless moments- quiet alert, joy, or distress. Adult mirrors baby, baby mirrors adult with facial expression, voice, movement, gestures, touch, interactive play
Caregiver soothes distressed infant by accurately, but not overwhelmingly reflecting feeling state back to child
Caregiver “contains” baby’s intolerable distress by both mirroring distress and taking action to shift distress through soothing and coping
Baby identifies with way adult manages stress, learns his caregiver’s strategy
Baby learns to feel secure when his caregiver is available and responsive to expressions of need
As baby feels secure, she puts energy into engaging with others and exploring her world. She learns more ways to respond to strong feelings within her body through thinking and acting. From using her adults to calm her down, she ultimately learns to calm herself down when distressed. She can “self-regulate”

Allows child to respond not only to other people’s behavior, but to his conception of their beliefs, feelings, hopes, plans, etc. (“I know what you are thinking!”)
Other people then don’t just act in random ways, a child can begin to try to make sense of what others do and why they do it, just as he is making sense of what he does and why he does it.
Mentalization helps a child manage his impulses, organize his feelings and monitor his own actions.
A sensitive caregiver observes moment by moment changes in a baby and toddler’s mental state and makes meaning of changes (“You must be tired- You are yawning.”) Caregivers and young children make meaning together of shared experiences, both verbally and nonverbally, as they are attuned to one another.
As a child learns to take his caregivers’ perspectives, he learns to think about his own perspective and the perspectives of others. He then can shift his own behavior in response to what others might feel or think.

(From publications of Sroufe and Carlson & Fonagy and Target c. 1997 and DBT Skills Training for Parents- Pat Ha