Promoting healthy emotional development in children.

This paper considers the fact that the literature on childrearing has traditionally not dealt with children's emotional processes. Developmental research has moved from a focus on permissive vs. authoritarian parenting attitudes toward a concern with promoting competence and coping skills in children; the prevention literature on effective parenting has been from a behavioral management or communication skills perspective. The argument is presented here that children's emotional expressiveness is a natural coping mechanism which serves a positive function in the prevention of psychopathology and the promotion of mental health, and that mental health professionals need to begin incorporating this information both into the primary prevention literature and training programs in effective parenting.