Introduction: Parent-child reminiscing (i.e., the way in which parents involve children in oral narratives about their emotional past experiences) has been recognized as a strengths-based and culturally responsive context for the investigation of children’s development in Latin American communities. Prior work has identified two Latino parental styles in reminiscing (i.e., elicitor and constructor) and one of these studies (i.e., Leyva & Nolivos, 2015[1]) has found that elicitor style is related to children’s attention and impulsive control. Aims: In this study, we extend our prior work by including both cognitive and emotional self-regulation preschoolers’ outcomes. Methods: We videotaped 64 Chilean parent–preschoolers dyads talking about positive and negative memories. We used Slots and colleagues’ (2017)[2] observational scheme. Ordinary Least Squares regression models with robust cluster correction were conducted. Results: We found that parent’s constructor style was positively related to children’s emotional self-regulation in positive events (B=1.12, p<.001) and negative events (B=1.34, p<.001). These relations remained even when accounting for important covariates including child age (in month), child vocabulary (i.e., Woodcock–Muñoz Picture Vocabulary subtest), and parent education (dichotomous variable: parent had high school diploma or not). However, parents’ constructor style was not related to children’s cognitive self-regulation in positive events (B=.29, p>.10) or negative (B=.24, p>.10). Parent’s elicitor style was not related to children’s emotional or cognitive self-regulation. Discussion: Our findings support parent–child emotional reminiscing as a critical contributor to children’s emotional self-regulation development.

[1] Leyva, D. & Nolivos, V. (2015). Chilean Family Reminiscing About Emotions and Its Relation to Children’s Self-Regulation Skills. Early Education and Development, 26(5-6), 770–791. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2015.1037625

[2] Slot, P. L., Mulder, H., Verhagen, J., & Leseman, P. P. M. (2017). Preschoolers’ cognitive and emotional self-regulation in pretend play: Relations with executive functions and quality of play. Infant and Child Development, 26(6), e2038. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2038