MERRILL-PALMER QUARTERLY, VOL. 48, No. 2 Parents' Reactions to Elementary School Children's Negative Emotions: Relations to Social and Emotional Functioning at School Sarah Jones, Nancy Eisenberg, Richard A. Fabes, and David P. MacKinnon, Arizona State University This sfudy addressed the role of specific parenting practices in children's expres- sion of emotion and social competence. The specific objective was to examine the relations of parents' reactions to children's negative emotions with children's social and emotional competence at school and to explore the moderating role of children's dispositional emotionality in this relation. A diverse sample of first to fourth graders was observed at school; teachers reported on children's social competence and affect, and parents reported on their reactions to their children's negative emotions and the intensity of children's negative emotions. Parental problem-focused reactions were positively related to socioemotional competence for boys but negatively associated for girls. Parental punitive/minimizing reac- tions were associated with low socioemotional competence. Moderating effects were obtained for emotion-focused (comforting) parental reactions: Children prone to intense negative emotions were especially low in socioemotional com- petence if their parents reported using high or average levels of these reactions. Problems in regulating emotion have been linked to a variety of neg- ative outcomes for children, including social and behavioral problems Sarah Jones. Department of Psychology': Nanc\' Eisenberg, Department of Psychology': Richard A. Fabes. Department of Family Resources and Human Development: David P. MacKinnon, Department of Psychology. This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Mental Health (1 ROl HH55052 and 1 ROl MH 60838) to the second and third authors and a Research Sci- entist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health |KO5 M801321) to the second author. The authors wish to thank the parents, teachers, and children involved in this study at Nevitt Elemental' and Holdeman Elementary. Tempe. Arizona. The authors would also like to thank Amie Forbes, Rachelle Fitch. Caroline Blackwell, Kathy Lippincott. Jennifer Johovich. Cheryl Gilmore. Jenmfer Wood, and Diane Olson for their hard work collecting the observational data. Correspondence may be sent to Nancy Eisenberg. Department of Psychology. Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-1104. Electronic mail may be sent to nancy eisenberg Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Apnl 2002, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 133-159. Copyright t 2002 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201 133