Reflective Parenting, Psychological Needs, and Parental Interpretation of Children’s Negative Emotions

Parents’ ability to understand and respond effectively to children’s negative emotions plays a critical role in children’s emotional development and regulation. However, it remains unclear whether parents interpret negative emotions as potential signals of underlying psychological needs. Based in the conceptual framework of parental reflective functioning and basic psychological needs theory, and grounded in interpretivist- constructivist paradigm, the purpose of this basic qualitative study was to examine how parents interpret children’s negative emotions and how their meaning-making processes relate to basic psychological needs. Semistructured interviews were conducted with parents of children between ages 3 and 9 years old (N = 14) and analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis, involving hybrid inductive-deductive coding and theme development. Seven themes were identified indicating that parents consistently treated emotions as meaningful disclosures of the child’s lived experience, varied in the depth and accuracy of their interpretations, inferred underlying psychological needs both within and beyond basic psychological needs, and achieved effective emotion regulation when their interpretations accurately identified those needs. These findings may contribute to development of parent education programs, clinical practice, and caregiver training that aim at strengthening responsive and developmentally supportive co-regulation during children’s negative emotions.