Mothers' "emotion coaching" helps children overcome impacts of family violence.

2004 NOV 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- When women engage in a technique called emotion coaching, even in families where there is domestic violence, their children are less aggressive, depressed, and withdrawn, researchers have found.

The new study also suggests that women who are victims of low levels of battering are just as likely as non-battered women to coach their children about their emotions, protecting youngsters from some of the behavior problems associated with being exposed to family violence.

The role of fathers was less clear, although the study indicates that when fathers do emotion coaching, their children are less withdrawn, too, according to Lynn Fansilber Katz, lead author of the study and a University of Washington research associate professor of psychology.

"Fathers are a mystery and we know very little about them as parents in families where there is domestic violence," said Katz. "We do know that the more violence there is in a home, the more behavior problems children have. However, in our community-based study, when violence was present children seemed to experience their father as less threatening and more supportive if he was aware of the child's feelings and helped his child manage strong negative feelings."

The study was unique because it looked at a community-wide sample of families rather than focusing on families living in shelters where women and their children have fled from more severe domestic violence.

The 130 families in the study were drawn from a larger project looking at child conduct problems. In the past year, 48 of the couples reported engaging in low levels of domestic violence such as pushing, grabbing, or shoving a partner or blocking a partner from leaving a room. None of these couples or the remaining 82 couples used more severe forms of violence, including punching, kicking, biting, and threatening or using a weapon.

"The families in our study only reported low levels and frequencies of domestic violence, the kind of day-to-day violence that occurs under the radar, but is still damaging to children," said Katz.